It is essential for the Chinese and the Pakistanis, Bhutanese, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Lankans and Maldivians to understand the mentality that spawns waves of mercenaries that try to capture foreign countries.
Mr. Bharat Verma represents the thinking of the Indian establishment. He personifies the thoughts of not only the Saffron Brigade, he represents the mainstream Indian intellectuals and the public. His ideas of a more aggressive foreign policy have landed Delhi in the soup it is in—a belligerent Pakistan, an antagonized China, a miffed Lanka, an angry Nepal, a passively resistant Bhutan, an alarmed Maldives—even Bangladeshis consider India one of their biggest enemies.
The neighbors of Bharat are Hindu, Buddhist, communist, Muslim and secular. All of them hate the policies of Delhi and love the culture, the food and the music. Either every country in South Asia is wrong, or there is something fundamentally wrong with Indian thinking? The Naxals control 40% of Bharati territory do not agree with the coterie that rules Delhi. Only history can decide whether Delhi was right, and everyone else was wrong-- however the fact remains that Bharat cannot achieve regional ascendency through hegemony, and it cannot achieve global status without the help of all her neighbors.
Mr. Verma’s egregious comment about Balochistan represents Bharati designs on Pakistan. Though Mr. Verma constantly continues his drum beat of obfuscation—the fact remains that he is totally ignorant of Pakistani geography. Pakistan is successor state to the British rule. According to the Indian Act of Independence Balouchistan, as a Muslim majority area went to Pakistan. Kalat represent only a small portion of Balochistan. The state of Kalat signed an article of accession with Pakistan. Unlike the article of accession of Kashmir (which Delhi claims is now lost—as if it ever existed), the Baloch article of accession is a living document in the archives of history and seen by the world. All Baloch parties signed the 1956 constitution, the 1963 constitution and the 1973 constitution renewing their 5000 year old relationship with the Sindhis, Baloch, Pakhtuns, Punjabis and Kashmiris to continue to live together.
Mr. Verma’s irredentist writings are an interested read—representing an encircled mentality that is helpless and unable to do anything—this sick mind then lashes out at anyone and everyone in sight.
India, argues Bharat Verma, needs to aggressively counter China's imperial ambitions.
New Delhi [ Images ] cannot afford to sit around while others plot its destruction.
Surrounded with sullied strategic environment and the spreading fire that engulfs the region, New Delhi can either continue to live in fear as it has in the past, or fight back.
There are two distinct threats that endanger the existence of the Union.
First are China's imperial ambitions that threaten to ultimately dismember India into 20 to 30 parts. To succeed in its aim, Beijing [ Images ] over a period of time unleashed the first phase of the strategy and intelligently encircled India. This initial phase resulted in shrinking New Delhi's strategic frontiers in its vicinity.
The Indians unwittingly made the Chinese task a cakewalk as they were preoccupied with internal bickering for short-term personal gains, overlooking the vicious expansionist agenda designed jointly by Beijing and Islamabad [ Images ] to tear apart the country.
Even as it pretended to withdraw its covert support to the rebels in India's northeast in the late seventies, China took advantage of Islamabad's hatred for India, and deftly invested in Pakistan to carry out the task on its behalf.
The primary segment of the Chinese strategy moved with clockwork precision by investing in autocratic and Islamic fundamentalist elements in countries on India's periphery -- Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Maoists in Nepal.
In Sri Lanka [ Images ], while Indians dithered, Beijing and its proxy Pakistan quickly moved in to help arm Colombo against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, develop the Hambantota port etc.
While the adversary invested in encircling India on its land and sea frontiers, the Indians merrily continued to indulge in their favorite past time -- meaningless and endless debates.
Invited by Islamabad, the Chinese moved into Pakistan occupied Kashmir [ Images ]. With growing irrelevance of Pakistan as a nation State, this area in times to come will become Chinese occupied Kashmir. Similarly, China fabricated its territorial claim on Bhutan and is working to eclipse the prevailing Indian influence there.
Let us look at another version of historical events—if we can imagine for a second another possibility in South Asia. If Bharat had not conspired to illegally take over Muslim Kashmir, if it had not tried to bully Pakistan into subservience, if it had not sent Mukti Bahni mercenaries into East Pakistan (as it is today doing in Balochistan), she would have found an ally in Pakistan—this ally would have been invaluable in exterminating the external threats to South Asia. Bharat’s illegal occupation of Srinagar allowed Pakistan to liberate Aksai Chin---and its gift to China allowed China land access to Tibet. Without Aksai Chin, China would never have been able to move its forces into Tibet or run over India in the 1962 war. If Kashmir was part of a friendly Pakistan, Tibet would have been a friendly country for India and there would have been no Superpower China to contend with. Without Tibet, Xinjiang would have been very vulnerable and Manchuria would have been restless.
It has been century of missteps of the current leadership of Bharat. History would have been very different for Congress leadership had pursued sane policies before the Cabinet Mission Plan.
Bharat can again reverse the negative trends—by resolving Kashmir, Siachin, Sir Creek and abiding by the Indus Water Treaty. These simple steps would great goodwill among the Pakistanis and stop the hostility that Delhi faces. Each Mumbai creates losses of billions of Dollars for Bharat.
Is New Delhi prepared to defend its strategic frontiers in Bhutan unlike our timid response in Tibet [ Images ]?
The second phase of the long-term strategy to unravel India based on smaller geographical regions is now underway. After successfully encircling India, the recent spurts in Chinese incursions on the border, objections to the prime minister's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, lobbying against India at the Asian Development Bank [ Get Quote ], the drama of apportioning official annual budgets for the development of the so-called Southern Tibet (Arunachal Pradesh), devising opinion polls against India, issuing visas on separate sheets to residents of India from Kashmir are clear pointers in that direction.
The concluding part of the plot of unraveling the Union, if successful, will remove the challenge to China's unquestioned supremacy in Asia.
China's initial thrust succeeded not only in effectively rolling back India's influence in its external periphery, but also helped its proxies to extend their tentacles deep into India, threatening the Union's internal stability.
Therefore, the second distinct aspect that endangers the existence of the Union is the rapidly increasing internal security threat.
While the external adversary devised strategy to shrink India's influence in its 'near abroad', the individual states's inability to govern ensured rollback of authority towards their respective capitals.
Mr. Verma lists various reasons for the weak Bharati state. The reasons for the withering of the Indian state is not because of lack of aggressiveness of lack of governance. The reason for the weak Indian Union is because “India” was never a monolithic state. A Subcontinent fractured by hundreds of languages, cultures, religions, millions of regional Gods, hundreds of ethnicities, and Sub religions was represented by more than 570 individual and independent states. The system survived in the alliances and rivalries that stemmed from the political wrangling of the various interests. Both Locke and Hobbs had something to do with the mergers and acquisitions. In a classic case study of Hobsonain civilization theory many people or states of South Asia banded together to save themselves from the aggression of other peoples or states. Simultaneously South Asia was and has always displayed John Locke’s civilizational theories—many people and states got together because they wanted to—in a blaring vocalization of their desire for “nationhood”/statehood.
Colonization lasted only about a century. 1757 to 1857 was really the East India Company rule which was more cunning, craftiness, and persuasion than massive use of force. the century of Company rule and one century of direct British Raj made drastic changes to the the society so that the resources of South Asia could be massively and efficiently harvested. However the two centuries of British and European presence did not fundamentally change the political landscape of South Asia.
When the British came South Asia had approximately 570 states. When the British left South Asia there were 570 states in South Asia plus two dominions India and Pakistan. The unraveling of India (which Mr. Verma calls lack of governance) began when Delhi began thinking of itself as a “nation state’. Nehru forcibly began incorporating all the 560 or so states into the federal structure of the Indian Union. He declared all states that did not conform to the Indian Constitution, would be considered “enemy states” . On the backs of guns and tanks he tried to do what no emperor had ever done. He used Patel to conduct a Police Action against Hyderabad, and forcibly incorporated Junagarh, Kashmir, Bhopal, Manvadar, Assam into the Union. None of them wanted to be part of this grand experiment called “India”. The signed the papers, or were coerced into signing the papers—but the people resisted.
If one looks at the map of Bharat today and colors in the 200 or more insurgent districts, one would actually get the states that were forcibly incorporated into the Indian Union. Most of Hyderabad, Kashmir, and Assam are in open rebellion.
The genesis of the Naxal rebellion was not in the 70s, it was in the 50s. the notion of a monolithic South Asia for several thousand years is a figment of the imagination of Pandits who fed a line to John Princep about the glories of Ashoka—no mention of Ashoka existed in any Greek or Bharati text before John Princep no the advice of Panddit Ratnakar published “the History of India”. that notion of Ram Raj today permeates the temples—and creates the aggressive foreign polciy of Bharat as personified in the writings of Mr. Bharat Verma.
The reduction of the Bharti state internally and externally is a result of the way the ‘country was formed. There never was a nation called India, and there is no country called India today. The future is bleak. Mr. Verma confirms the above in the next paragraph.
The Indian sway unwittingly stands reduced simultaneously, within its borders and in its immediate vicinity. The combined intensity of the external and the internal threat, where each feeds on the other, if not handled with ruthlessness, will unravel India in times to come.
Negligence in governance is primarily responsible and permits the hostile external actors to take advantage of the internal dissent to further their imperial ambitions.
To power itself out of the largely self-inflicted external-internal encirclement New Delhi should work out a comprehensive counter-strategy with an offensive orientation. For an enduring win against the heavy odds, the national goal should be to emerge as the single most dominant power in Asia by 2020.
This aim envisages an economically powerful India backed by extraordinary military capabilities and reach, and formation of potent international alliances that help defend multi-cultural democratic values under adverse conditions in Asia.
Instead of endlessly ceding strategic space as in the past 62 years, we must learn to fight at multiple levels, and secure and extend our influence in Asia through hard and soft power on land and sea.
Pursuit of this singular national goal will automatically force us to gear up the entire infrastructure, resources, policies and strategies towards the fulfillment of this endeavour.
At present, we are an inward looking, bickering, dithering and indecisive nation. New Delhi lacks the key aspiration and therefore the vision, that motivates and impels a nation to excel and achieve worthy living standards for its citizens. Centrality of such national core ambition will remove the prevailing confusion and the attendant aimlessness.
However, to be the pre-eminent Asian power, it is essential that New Delhi first set its own house in order by reclaiming the space lost within to the non-State actors.
Lack of skills and direction, self-serving gimmicks and dwindling integrity in the civil administration ended up in handing over the control of 40 percent area to the Maoists and ten percent on the borders to the insurgents.
It is vital that the State recaptures this space in the shortest possible time frame and establishes its authority up to the borders. Otherwise, India will be the next State after Pakistan to be consumed by civil war.
Bharat Verma is right, Bharati policies have dug the hole that Delhi finds itself in. The more it digs now, the deeper in the hole it gets. Bharat Verma is only partially right ni the solutions—he advocates more aggressiveness on the part of Delhi.
In a Nuclear age with serious cracks in the Indian Union surrounded by enemies, more aggressiveness on the part of Delhi will only exacerbate the siltation for Bharat.
Bharat now has a hostile Tibet, and a nuclear armed Pakistan. It may be facing a nuclear armed Myanmar in the East and a violently angry Bangladesh. With Nepal as part of the Maoist arc, Delhi faces total rebellion in the Northeast stats of Assam. Delhi had plans to incorporate Bhutan into the Union, like it did Sikkim. Those initial gains have now been reversed. The annexation of Sikkim is being disputed, and Bhutan has moved towards China. Beijing has vociferously claimed South Tibet (which Indian occupies and call Arunchal Pradesh)
Since the Maoists and the insurgents are armed and supported by external actors, it is appropriate that they be dealt by exercise of requisite military force, before development and effective policing can take roots. The nation is witness to the fact that the Indian police and civil administration just do not have what it takes to disarm those who wield weapons against the State.
To rapidly develop the sinews of the civil administration including the police to face the war like situation brewing inside, it is crucial to inject military thinking and muscle.
First, the State should infuse military talent by offering attractive terms and conditions to retired military personnel on fixed tenure and contract basis to take the battle effectively into the heartland of Maoists and the insurgents. They are fairly young, have military skills, are motivated, and understand combat in all its hues to take on the Maoists and the insurgents.
Second, from the pool of retired military personnel, create military advisory cells in the home ministries of the states and at the Centre with adequate resources. Inter-link them with each other on a national grid to develop military appreciation of the situation on the ground and offer clear and decisive options.
Third, since it is a long haul, the central and all state police forces should pay the Indian Army [ Images ] and Navy to select and train at least 100 constables each year in their various regimental training centres to augment the armed constabulary.
Fourth, the Indian Army can select and train a few officer cadets every year for the Indian Police Service at its Officer Training Academy in Chennai on the same tough pattern as the military officer cadets. This will rapidly induct precision of military thinking and sinews that the civil administration urgently requires to fulfill the task at hand.
Mr. Bharat Verma’s so called solutions are akin to rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. These cosmetic measures may look good on paper, but cannot solve centuries of discrimination against the Dalits. Most of Maoists and Naxals are lower caste Hindus, who hate the establishment and the Brahman state. The policemen will not come from Mars, they will be part and parcel of the local topography. Neither the 100 policemen in every district, nor the retired army officer can make the tetrahedron monster go away. The ne policy will only be to better assist the Naxalites. The US Army trained upwards of 500,000 Iraqis for the local Iraqi Army—only to find the same soldiers fight them at night.
Unless and Until the Bharat Verma’s of the world are able to get tot he root cause of the rebellion, penury, poverty, illiteracy and lack of basic services—Bharat will continue to face Naxal rebellion upon Maoist rebellion.
The success of expanding Chinese strategic reach in Asia is due to the singular fact that, unlike other Communist parties, the Communist Party of China from its inception has the advantage of precise military thinking in the party, as the People's Liberation Army officers are integral to it. The above suggestions are particularly relevant to pacifist India, as military thinking in most of the other cultures is a natural component.
In addition, remove all man made barriers like inner line permits etc to allow inter-mingling of citizenry, and establishment of businesses and industry in the northeast and Kashmir and other states.
While the terrorist, jihadi and the infiltrator forcibly change the demography, citizens are not allowed to settle and buy land in many areas of the Union. Such contradictions besides being illogical defy national integration, consolidation and fusion of the nation into one entity. However, we should avoid forced settlements like the Han Chinese in Tibet or Pakistan in the Shia-majority Northern Areas.
But, of course, the writ of the State cannot be re-established within, unless it can deliver high quality governance and development programmes.
As long as Bharat continues to try to find stability in iron and steel symbols of power—trying to hoodwink the people into thinking that “superpower status is achieved by buying$3 Billion Dollars worth of “Gorshkov” steel—the Indian state will continue to wither away. Pakistan faces issues because of the war next door, Bharat faces issues because of fundamental problems of governance and thinking
If India had developed its military power on requisite scale and demonstrated the gumption to use it when and where necessary in the past 62 years, if the foreign office had injected military spine into its policy making, and if the enemy knew that New Delhi would respond ruthlessly if threatened, with a clear message, 'Don't mess with us!' -- I am convinced that multiple wars would not have been imposed on India.
Neither export of terrorism would have occurred on the scale it does nor China would have dared to be so nasty.
Adequate military preparedness and the ability to wield it tellingly act as deterrence, taking away the cost-benefit ratio of war from the adversary.
To emerge as the dominant force in Asia, it is therefore, essential that offensive orientation in thinking be injected across the spectrum from a young age. This entails confronting adverse geopolitical situations differently to achieve dominance.
Beijing has created an excellent infrastructure of roads and railway network in Tibet that allows them to bolster its hostile posture towards New Delhi. To create similar infrastructure on our side of the border is going to be time consuming. Therefore, if push comes to a shove, how can we innovate to neutralise the imminent threat posed by the adversary?
We should induct massive heavy lift capabilities for troops by introducing a fleet of helicopters and transport aircraft on a war footing. Initiation of superior means of mobility for the troops and extraordinary firepower will act as a robust deterrence.
We should create military capabilities to disrupt the enemy's rail supply line to Tibet.
Indian thinkers are nervous at China's declaration to further extend the railway line to Nepal and Myanmar. Brought up on pacifism, they forget that railway lines and roads can move traffic in two directions. Therefore, in case hostility breaks out, we must ensure military wherewithal to dominate these railway lines and use it to induct our troops in the reverse direction.
We must always plan to take war to the enemy using his vulnerabilities.
Kashmir legally acceded to the Indian Union, therefore, in my mind there is no dispute. However, Tibet and Sinkiang (East Turkistan) were forcibly annexed by China. These indeed are matters of dispute.
As sovereign nations, India and Tibet did not have any major boundary dispute. Therefore, illegal occupation of Tibet by China does not bestow on it any legitimacy to raise bogus boundary claims on India.
Similarly, Baluchistan was tricked into joining Pakistan. This also can be a subject of dispute. New Delhi should learn to think differently.
Wielding the weapon of psychological warfare, the Chinese recently prodded their friends in Pakistan to project via the Indian media that this is going to be the Chinese century and in Asia, the American influence is going to disappear leaving Beijing as the dominant power.
Therefore, India must decide whether it wants to side with the losing Western alliance led by America or the winning side led by China. These are symptoms of acute anxieties in Beijing and Islamabad. The presence of Americans in Afghanistan-Pakistan and the growing Indo-US strategic partnership unnerves China.
However, despite its technological superiority, the Americans cannot win the war in Afghanistan without India's help. They just do not have adequate boots on the ground.
Similarly, India on its own cannot prevail in this region and requires the Western alliance's assistance. There is a synergy of purpose. Equally true is the fact that the Americans are fighting India's war too. If they withdraw from the Af-Pak area, the entire jihad factory will descend mercilessly upon India to create mayhem.
Hence, it is in India's national interest to synergise with the West in Af-Pak to benefit from resource rich Central Asia and deny the centuries's old route of invasion to the adversary.
New Delhi must contest and reclaim the strategic space lost within and in its vicinity. Otherwise, in times to come, the Union will slip into civil war and finally wither away. How India must face the Chinese threat. Rediff News. Bharat Verma is the editor, Indian Defence Review. http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/nov/11/bharat-verma-on-how-india-must-face-the-chinese-threat.htm
Mr. Verma’s fire and brimstone about how Bharat should deal with China and Pakistan and Bangladesh—not to forget their internal Hindu enemies the Nazals and external Hindu enemies in Nepal is “a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury—signifying nothing”. The Bharati economy has achieved meager success in the past decade which is probably not a repeatable feat. As Paragh Khanna said in his book “The 2nd world”, Bharat has missed the boat on global status, and it is now stuck between the raised expectations of is relatively small Brahman led middle class and the reality of the rest of Slumdog India and the Naxals that control 40% of the territory of the Indian Union. Managing the expectations of 50% of the population of Delhi, Benares, Kolkota, Mumbai, Lucknow, Hyderabad who sleep on the sidewalk (paying rent to the city) is a Herculean task. Bharat thought that by purchainsg symbols of power (air craft carriers, planes and gadgets) it could dissuade the lower castes from revolting. It has been mistaken. The 3rd generation that sleeps on the sidewlaks, was born on it, lives on it and will die on it is up in arms. The Maoists are up in revolt and growing. Even Delhi cannot blame the biggest security threat to India on Pakistan or the Muslims. The biggest security threat to Bharat is from the Maosists---Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed Nepal, China, Bangladesh and Lanka for the Bharati Maoist problems. The problem resides in the minds of the Brahman mentality which wants to dominate millions of people inside Bharat and has revanchist claims on territory outside Bharat.
The temple education teaches the Bharatis that the IVC was Hindu—in actual fact no artifact has been unearthed that represents the Hindu Pantheon, Arjun, Agni, Kali Devi, Shiva etc etc (33 million Gods). The IVC distinctly is abent in Hindu symbology. However Bharati texts continue to spread the malicious and irredentist stories that Hindusim ruled Kabaul to Raj Kalhani and that land belongs to the Hindus. Hindusim is as much an import to South Asia as Christianity was. Agni and Mithra were Persian Gods---captured by the Vedas during their travels into the Ganges plains.
Unless and until this basic revanchist thinking is exterminated in Bharati minds, it will never be able to live in peace with her neighbors.
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