Humanising The Other

One of my friends made an insightful comment after watching a Chinese serial that I had recommended to him:

I realize the power of cinema and TV serials in shaping the attitudes of foreigners about a culture. The serial may have been written primarily for Chinese residents. But in this day and age, people around the world watch these shows. Someone like me may never watch another Chinese show or ever go to China. This show, then, might have a huge influence on my view of China. With nothing else to inform me otherwise, this show becomes my reality of China.

Thus the serial is very influential, and I think the Chinese government understands this, and that's why they have told makers of shows to project only positive images of the country.

His comment brought to the surface a theory I have been having for a while. It's the importance of "Humanising the Other" in today's world. I believe there are two aspects to it.

Soft power as a political tool of governments

When I was a kid, my dad was a professor of foreign languages and for a time was teaching Russian. We used to get to read a large number of Soviet books and magazines, and also had the opportunity to watch a number of Russian movies. I remember many of those movies very fondly. They showed the lives of average Russians and the problems they faced and overcame. Over time, an audience exposed to a series of such movies develops a deep sense of empathy with the characters and by extension, the society they come from. For a long time, I used to think Russian people were among the warmest in the world, until the horror stories from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan started coming out, and I realised Russians could be as brutal as anyone else.

It's also true that American soft power helps the US immensely. The US routinely does terrible things to other countries, and in recent times, even the pretence of noble intentions is no longer bothered with. Yet lots of people around the world still think of the US as a benign power. I read about a recent survey that reported that Iranians have a generally positive image of the US! For citizens of a country long subject to American meddling, and still suffering crushing American sanctions, to report such a positive view of the US points to the extent of American soft power.

So it's perfectly natural for the Chinese government to try to use the soft power of its movies and TV serials to create a positive image of Chinese society.

Positive stereotyping as a means of counteracting negative stereotyping

I was reminded of my own impressions of other groups of people during my formative years.

I grew up in Bangalore, capital of the South Indian state of Karnataka. For many years, my only travels outside Bangalore had been to Madurai, Madras (now Chennai) and other places in my home state of Tamil Nadu. I had never visited North India (even the central Indian state of Maharashtra was considered "north"), and in those pre-television days, I hardly heard any Hindi at all. "North Indians" were an unknown group of people.

We mostly used to watch English movies, because the staff club at the Indian Institute of Science where my father worked would only show English movies. A few times a year, my parents would take the whole family to a theatre in the city to watch a Hindi or Malayalam movie, perhaps because my mother had heard good reviews about it from her schoolteacher colleagues.

I remember the time we watched the Hindi movie Bawarchi. In one scene, the character played by Jaya Bhaduri wakes up her kid cousin, saying, "ucho, ucho". I found it very cute that she didn't say "uTho, uTho" (Hindi for "Wake up, wake up") but used affectionately diminutive language (what we in Tamil call "chella bhaashai") to speak to a kid. That immediately humanised North Indians for me. I was already aware that Tamilians say "okachu" instead of "okaru" ("sit") and "taachiko" instead of "paDutuko" ("lie down") when speaking to kids, so this "ucho" thing, although a tiny part of the movie, had a huge impact in terms of suddenly turning those strange and unknown people into human beings like my own kind.

I understand that the same thing happens to non-Muslim Indians who watch Pakistani TV serials. After watching episode after episode of regular characters going through day-to-day troubles similar to their own, they start to realise that at a fundamental level, Pakistanis (and by extension Muslims) are just human beings like themselves.

I think this is a very good thing. There is too much "othering" going on, and social media is exacerbating it rather than healing it. Recently, one of our Indian friends told us that she gets into fights on family WhatsApp groups because there are people who post nasty things about Muslims. When she asks them if they personally know any Muslims or have Muslim friends, they say, "We know what they're like". Of course they have no idea what Muslims are like. They're just perpetuating stereotypes that they consider to be truths.

I imagine it's the same thing with Indians and the Chinese. I think Indians in the main have a very negative view of the Chinese (all thanks to the 1962 war and the unresolved border issue that erupts into public consciousness from time to time).

I know that many non-Chinese people, not just Indians, have a negative opinion of China for many reasons. While most of them would justify their viewpoint based on a ready list of facts, those facts themselves probably suffer from "selection bias". In other words, people tend to see what they want to see. There is no objective truth, only subjective opinion.

Before I quit Facebook and other social media platforms, I had been engaged in a never-ending battle with people who in my view were bent on perpetuating hatred between communities, based on nothing but prejudice.

And so, given the amount of hatred and othering that is swirling around social media, it's probably not a bad thing to counteract negative stereotypes with some positive ones.

A Dire Prediction - A Disastrous Military Debacle For India In November 2020

Indians tend to grossly overestimate their country's power with respect to China, and they are about to receive both a nasty surprise and a costly lesson.

[Update 13/09/2020: In the week since this post went up, I have received a number of negative comments, all from Indians as expected. However, I'm more convinced than ever that this scenario is going to be played out in November. An article in the Financial Times makes a similar prediction about timing.]

I have a scenario to share, based on a synthesis of several disparate factoids from history and current affairs, generously garnished with my own perceptions and opinions. Some of these opinions are politically incorrect, and will no doubt offend many readers, but I am putting them out there for the simple reason that the scenario I am presenting is an important one, and it requires this unvarnished perspective. [Thanks to Rock Dawar for reviewing a draft and providing useful comments.]

A map of India and China (The borders are the official ones from the Indian perspective, but many areas shown as Indian territory here are actually held by China and Pakistan, and others are still disputed)

1. From what I have understood of the Chinese (and at the great risk of generalising across 1.4 billion Chinese people, the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government and the People's Liberation Army), it is their commonly held belief that their country and civilisation have been historically humiliated by colonial powers (the "Century of Humiliation"), and that their time has finally come. They see themselves as one of the greatest civilisations on earth, if not the greatest, and yearn to be recognised as such by the rest of the world. They would like to see China regain its rightful place in the world as one of its great powers, with no threats or challenges in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US is of course China's main rival in today's world. The hawks in the Chinese establishment, especially in the increasingly influential PLA, view the US as the main impediment to China's rise, and hence as Enemy Number One. The hawks in the US would return the favour. It is a classic replay of the Thucydides Trap, in which an established power (Sparta then, the US now) is threatened by the rise of a new one (Athens then, China now). According to analysts, the Thucydides Trap has been responsible for war in 12 of the 16 cases when shifts of power occurred in world history.

Japan is one of China's historical enemies but not a hugely credible one today, except in alliance with the US. Other Western countries are viewed with suspicion as continuing to harbour colonial ambitions, and as threats to the degree they are aligned with the US. Indeed, the West may have been responsible for the current state of strained relations, having prodded China into opening its market in the 1970s. China has now beaten them at the capitalist game, and grown rich and powerful on the back of that achievement. This is what has led to the Thucydides Trap of the present day. Sparta has created Sparta's own threat, and now has to deal with it. It is highly unlikely that the West can ever put the genie of China's rise back into its bottle. However, other non-Western nations may serve as useful proxies to delay that rise, even if they are sacrificed in the process.

Which brings us to India.

India has so far not been high on the Chinese radar, but the recent friction along the India-China border may have raised India's profile within China as a hostile nation, and one in a loose alliance with the West to boot.

Detail of the various disputed regions between India, Pakistan, and China

2. Regardless of their opinion of the Indic civilisation based on some shared history (i.e., the Buddhist influence), the Chinese probably don't think much of India as a modern-day power, especially not in comparison with themselves. They have left India far behind. The two countries were at rough parity in the 1950s, but China's economy today is about five times bigger than India's and far healthier, which provides a robust underpinning for its corresponding military and geopolitical superiority.

While Indians still tend to think of the two countries as peers, with China only slightly ahead, this opinion is not shared by the Chinese (nor is it reflective of reality!) The Chinese probably feel indignant that a wretchedly poor and inferior country even dares to pose a challenge to their great civilisation. The likely reaction of the Chinese establishment (which may also have the approval of the Chinese people) would be a desire to show an uppity India its place in no uncertain terms, so that India stays down and doesn't dare challenge their country ever again. Indeed, it is possible that inflated Indian opinion about their country's power relative to China may increase the risk of a conflict, just as in 1962, when Jawaharlal Nehru's government unwisely provoked China into hostilities even as India was completely unprepared for the repercussions.

From one perspective, India and China have no real quarrel, and in the words of one analyst, "may as well be on different planets". But there have been border disputes between them for decades. It is my view that there were many historical junctures in the last seven decades since Indian independence for these disputes to have been settled relatively amicably, but India let them slip, believing it could get a better deal. Unfortunately, India's negotiating position has only worsened with time, and any settlement today will be on much more unfavourable terms. India has locked itself into a set of expectations that are increasingly at odds with reality, and something has to give. With the lessons of 1962 apparently still not learned in New Delhi, another reality check is overdue. China today is unlikely to be as generous towards India as it may have been in the 1950s, and the West is only too willing to exploit this schism between these two non-Western powers, egging India on into a confrontation it will lose disastrously.

3. Students of history will remember that China attacked Vietnam in early 1979 to "teach Vietnam a lesson" for deposing the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge in Cambodia the previous year.  A possible takeaway from this incident is that in addition to an understandable sensitivity to security threats, China is also not a particularly forgiving country where threats to national pride are involved. (There is of course the opposite view among some analysts that 1979 was an exception in China's otherwise exemplary record as a peaceful player in international relations, and among others that the war was related more to a decade-long period of tension with the Soviet Union, of which Vietnam was a client state.)

4. Students of history will also remember that in the India-China war of 1962, China attacked India (after months of Indian provocation, admittedly) on an extremely well chosen date - 20 October 1962. This was at the height of the Cuban missile crisis between the US and the USSR (16-28 October 1962), when the attention of both superpowers was exclusively on each other, and neither had the bandwidth to look at any issue anywhere else in the world. If China wanted to teach India a lesson today, it would probably look to find another such gripping event when world attention is irrevocably drawn elsewhere. 

5. From what I'm reading, the issue of mail-in ballots is crucial to the coming US election in Nov 2020. Voters supporting the Democrats seem to prefer mail-in ballots to a disproportionate extent. So the scenario that is being considered is that Trump is going to seem to win big on the night of Nov 3 (the so-called "red mirage"), but as the mail-in ballots continue to come in and get counted, state after state will flip to the Democrats. Since the delegate count in each state goes completely to one side or the other based on the parties' relative vote share, the balance of delegates will start to shift dramatically after a few days of counting. A few days after Nov 3, the mid-point may be reached, and thereafter the election will start to look like Biden's.

6. The political divide in the US has never been sharper or nastier. Both sides are uncompromising in their revulsion for each other. And Trump is a person who will not hesitate to use any means to stay in power. He and his Republican supporters will not allow the election to be taken from them in this way. But neither will the Democrats take it lying down if Trump tries to steal the election that they see themselves winning. I think there will be huge chaos in the US in the days following the election. Both sides will mount legal challenges in the courts of course, but I would not rule out widespread violence in the streets as well. We could even see a mini civil war.

7. Allowing a week for events in the US to escalate, that may be the time when China chooses to strike at India (around 10 Nov). The US will have no bandwidth to spare, being completely focused on its internal crisis. Russia today is a mere shadow of the USSR in terms of power, and cannot credibly intervene against China. In any case, Putin's Russia is more or less allied with China today and does not have any particular affinity for India. China will face no serious international opposition to such an adventure, and India will have to face this attack entirely alone.

8. India's own internal situation in early to mid-November is likely to be dire. The Covid death toll could be in the region of 200,000 (up from about 70,000 today). The Indian economy, already in recession, will be in far worse shape in a couple of months, with both inflation and unemployment up significantly. Parts of the country could be experiencing starvation. India will be at its weakest at that point, hit by the twin blows of a pandemic and unprecedented economic crisis.

9. What exactly will China do? I don't think the impact of China's actions will be as inconsequential as in 1962, when China invaded, but quickly withdrew to the old border after making a point. This time, I expect China's objectives to be more ambitious, so there will be some significant and permanent changes. I imagine that altering India's perceptions about the relative power of the two countries would be as important an objective to China as territorial gains. China will want to "fix" India for good, so they won't have to worry about their southern border again. 

10. As the first of three territorial issues, China is very concerned about the security of the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor). This is the economic lifeline to Western China, providing access to the Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, but it passes too close to the border with India for China's comfort. In the event of future hostilities, India has the potential to disrupt this corridor. However, if the Kashmir Valley can be annexed and made part of Pakistani territory, that then creates an additional buffer to secure the CPEC from external attack.

Notice how close the CPEC passes to the LOC (Line of Control) between India and Pakistan.

11. The second territory of interest is Ladakh to the east of Jammu and Kashmir. Ladakh is arid and largely uninhabited, but it is militarily strategic. Annexing all or a large part of Ladakh can secure China's Tibetan border against India much more effectively.

Ladakh lies east of Jammu and Kashmir, and borders Tibet.

12. The third piece of territory is Arunachal Pradesh in India's far east, which China has long claimed as "South Tibet". India's northeastern states are connected to the mainland through a narrow corridor in Siliguri (the "chicken's neck"). It may be relatively easy for China to cut off the entire northeast by seizing this narrow corridor, and later bargaining to give back Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya in exchange for Arunachal, and possibly negotiating an independent status for Sikkim, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram.

The region of Asia that lies between India and China is known as Indo-China for good reason, and reflects the historical interaction between the two ancient civilisations. The cultures of this region have both Indic and Sinic elements. While China may lack the appetite to actively annex regions with Indo-Chinese cultures, it would definitely prefer them to exist as independent buffer states rather than have them in the opposite camp.

Although the narrow "chicken's neck" corridor in Siliguri is buffered by Nepal and Bhutan, a determined China could hammer through at this point and cut off India's access to its entire northeast.

13. Expert opinion even within India has concluded that India's ability to fight a two-front war, never high to begin with, has weakened significantly. I believe this is how such a war will unfold. China will strike first at multiple points along the 4000 km long border, then after a few days, when India has shifted military resources away from its Western border with Pakistan to deal with this threat, the Pakistani army will strike to take the Kashmir valley in coordination with the PLA. They will likely get the full support of the local Kashmiri population. There could be an exodus of Hindus from Jammu into India. The entire state (comprising Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh) could be lost to India in days.

14. Together, China and Pakistan may be able to take many Indian POWs, just like India did to Pakistan in 1971, simply by cutting off access to territory and forcing the surrender of isolated troops. This would be an additional bargaining point for later. The Indian military could suffer massive casualties, especially in Kashmir, because the local people may ally with the Pakistanis and take their revenge for years of real or perceived oppression.

15. In about two weeks, by end-November, the war could essentially be over, leaving India with no options whatsoever. India will not be able to exercise its nuclear option against China because retribution would be immediate and incalculable.

16. Indian PM Narendra Modi and Pakistani PM Imran Khan may be summoned to Beijing (or a more neutral venue like Moscow) to sign a tripartite agreement between China, India and Pakistan, "settling" the border issue once and for all. India will essentially give up Kashmir to Pakistan, and Ladakh/Arunachal to China. Some of the northeastern states that are culturally Indic, like Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura, could be "generously" returned to India, and the others (Sikkim, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram) may be wrested from India and turned into "independent" countries. No prizes for guessing which way they will align thereafter.

17. As part of the agreement, India will have to accept China's suzerainty over Asia and agree not to oppose any Chinese initiative in future. India will also have to agree to limits on its own military power, especially its naval power.

18. Modi will return to India in disgrace after signing such an agreement, and I suspect he will not last long in power thereafter. After all, a humiliated nation needs scapegoats, and the Indian army also needs a "stabbed in the back" theory to avoid being blamed. There will be anti-Muslim pogroms throughout India, of course.

19. There could be a couple of silver linings to this debacle from the Indian perspective. First, there will probably be no further border conflicts, because a Pax Sinica will prevail thereafter. China wants a peaceful environment in which to do business, and it will probably prevail upon Pakistan to be satisfied with the acquisition of Kashmir and not create any further trouble in the region. Jihadist terror from across the Pakistani border is therefore likely to cease under Chinese pressure. Hence, in spite of smarting from a humiliating military defeat, Indians may paradoxically enjoy a prolonged period of peace and stability in the region. Second, as a result of this enforced peace, India will probably make great economic progress, like Japan or Germany after WW II. Indians will have no choice but to focus on the only thing that they can control without being perceived as a threat - the country's development, for which Chinese funding may also be available! In about a generation, India could achieve middle-income status and ensure a better life for its own people.

20. The million dollar question is - Is China likely to mount such an audacious attack on India in the first place? The risks of adventurism are high. After all, the invasion of Vietnam in 1979 is not considered an unqualified success by analysts. However, if events unfold as detailed in this post, the rewards to China are high too. The main development from China's perspective is that India will be forced to exit its incipient alliance with the US (as part of The Quad), and will pose no further threat to Chinese power for the foreseeable future. China will be free to engage with its primary rival, the United States, from a position of greater strength and leverage.

The one big factor that could negate this extreme scenario is China's traditional restraint, and patience to play an even longer game. In other words, the above events may yet play out, but over a couple of decades rather than in November 2020.

Literary RDX - The Explosive Debut of Subcontinental Spy Fiction

The Cold War and the threat of nuclear armageddon inspired most of post-World War II spy fiction. English language readers generally heard the Western side of the story with British and American heroes, and I'm sure there were equally gripping novels available on the other side of the Iron Curtain featuring heroes with names ending in -sky or -vitch, as PG Wodehouse would have said.

Considering that the threat of nuclear war today arises mainly from the Indian subcontinent, it's surprising that we haven't so far seen much spy fiction set in this region.

That long drought may soon be coming to an end. Two recent debut novels by Indian authors, featuring heroes from the Indian spy agency RAW and their escapades in neighbouring Pakistan, provide some welcome analysis, however fictional, of the issues that bedevil the South Asian region.

Shatrujeet Nath's "The Karachi Deception" of 2013 was soon followed by Bilal Siddiqi's "The Bard of Blood" in early 2015

[I reviewed Shatrujeet Nath's second novel on this blog in January. This book is a work of mythological fiction - "The Guardians of the Halahala".]

Without giving away the details of either story, let me just say they deal with topics that should be very familiar to Indian and Pakistani readers.

The name Dawood Ibrahim is notorious throughout India. Ibrahim was a Mumbai-based don who fled the country when the heat on him began to increase. He is believed to have been responsible for the Mumbai blasts of 1993. He has been sighted in the UAE on occasion but is now believed to be hiding out in Pakistan.

In The Karachi Deception, Irshad Dilawar is the thinly-disguised equivalent of Dawood Ibrahim, and the story is of a group of RAW agents who are sent into Pakistan to eliminate him. Of course, nothing is ever straightforward in a good spy novel, and there are twists and turns galore.

The separatist movement in Pakistan's province of Balochistan is likewise well-known in the subcontinent. Pakistan has long accused India of providing support to Baloch separatists, a charge that India denies. However, given Pakistan's own barely secret support for separatism in the Indian state of Kashmir (and its equally stout denial), Indian citizens would not be surprised at (and may in fact welcome) their government's tit-for-tat involvement in Balochistan.

The Bard of Blood is largely woven around the Baloch separatist movement, although it involves characters from the larger AfPak region, such as Mullah Omar of the Afghan Taliban. Again, the story focuses on a group of RAW agents on a mission to Balochistan, and there is betrayal and intrigue here too. There is a scene featuring a meeting between the fictional Indian prime minister Shailendra Patel and Chinese president Zhou Bocheng in Ahmedabad, a sly reference to the actual meeting of Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping in the same city.

Both books weave historical and contemporary facts with fiction to create an engaging story. Needless to say, the villains in both novels are members of Pakistan's spy agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence).

It is important to note that Bilal Siddiqi, the author of The Bard of Blood, is just twenty years old! This novel is a terrific accomplishment for one so young.

Having said that, Shatrujeet Nath's is by far the more polished work. The sophistication of the plot, the quality of the language and the richness of the atmosphere evoked by The Karachi Deception are first rate. This is not to say that The Bard of Blood is amateurish. It is also a very readable novel, but there are definitely better books in the author's future. Siddiqi is a good twelve years younger than Nath was when he wrote his first book, so he can certainly look forward to producing more sophisticated writing as he matures.

One thing I must say, though. I am a strong believer in quality as evidenced by the little details. Sloppiness in English grammar and composition detracts greatly from the overall impression of a book's quality, and Bilal Siddiqi should definitely get himself a more conscientious editor. There were at least three glaring errors of language in his book (apart from the constant and erroneous reference to the Baloch people as "Balochis").

1. The description of Mullah Baradar on page 76 alternates between the past tense and the present tense. It should have been in the past tense throughout.

2. On page 130 appears the line "Sadiq and him never got along well." That should have read "Sadiq and he never got along well."

3. On page 151, there is a reference to the "draft itinerary" of an important meeting. That should of course have been "draft agenda".

I'm pedantic about English, so these kinds of mistakes can ruin a book for me. I hope Siddiqi fixes these errors in the next edition of the book, and ensures that such mistakes don't mar his future writing. Shatrujeet Nath's novel has a couple of typos in it, but fortunately nothing more egregious.

I did enjoy both books, and would recommend them to other fans of the spy genre as well as to those interested in South Asian politics. Here's looking forward to more subcontinental spy fiction from these and other authors. It would be good to see Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal and China included in the ambit of future stories, since they no doubt play a role in real-life covert operations in the region.

Kashmiris Should Beware The Exasperation Of The Liberal Indian

"Beware the fury of the patient man", said John Dryden a long time ago.

I'm one of the most liberal-humanist specimens one could find, subscribing as I do to a near-libertarian philosophy (I only draw the line at gun rights) and a deep and abiding suspicion of governments, corporations and society itself as forces inimical to the individual.

Still, Kashmir vexes me. If I can blurt my feelings out in one short sentence, it is that Kashmiris should stop being so precious.

The fuss they make about an Indian prime minister visiting the state! Shutting down an entire state in protest?

Kashmiris (and by that I mean the Muslim separatist agitators) need to take a long hard look at themselves, their environment, and their choices.

An independent Kashmir is not what Pakistan has been fighting for, and the people of Kashmir will experience a frying-pan-to-fire situation if they ever find themselves out of the Indian union. True independence is easier dreamt about than achieved.

Kashmir as an independent state is unlikely to be viable, in either an economic or social sense. Kashmir is a landlocked state that will depend on the goodwill of its neighbours to survive economically, and that goodwill is going to prove a scarce commodity since both India and Pakistan will be put offside by Kashmiri independence. Socially too, as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq himself admitted, the Kashmiri Muslim populace is itself divided into Wahabi, Salafi, Barelvi and Deobandi sects, not to mention the Shias of Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. Not to put too fine a point on it, Muslim sects have shown time and again that they will turn on one another with murderous ferocity the moment they are left alone with no external enemy to unify them. Iraq and Syria are the latest tragic examples. Kashmiris should be careful what they wish for. The killings will not stop after independence. Only their ability to blame the Indian army will.

Who is it in Kashmir who wants independence anyway? Only Muslims in the Kashmir valley. The Buddhists of Ladakh and the Hindus of Jammu know better than to trust their fate to the tender mercies of a Muslim majority, and would opt to stay with India. The examples of Pakistan and Bangladesh serve as a reminder, if one is required, of what happens to religious minorities in Muslim states. If it comes to a plebiscite, India will play its cards so that Kashmir is splintered even further. After all, the will of the people is the will of the people, and if the Ladakh and Jammu regions vote for India, who can deny them their choice?

Lastly, as economies go, India is ramping up while Pakistan is winding down (although the terrorist state may take another decade to finally sputter and die). If Kashmiris are smart, they will try and latch on to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, because that is what India is projected to be.

India has had enough of the Kashmiri stalemate, and it's not just Hindu right-wingers who want to see an end to the special status of Jammu and Kashmir as codified in Article 370 of the Indian constitution. The move to repeal Article 370 has broad support across all Indians, and it will happen sooner or later. Pakistan is not in a position to stop any Indian moves within its own territory, and the world (i.e., the West, Russia and China) has no more sympathy for Muslim separatist movements. It's only the Muslim world that could back Kashmiri separatism, but even this support is hardly likely to be unanimous or whole-hearted. Middle Eastern regimes are wary of extremist monsters like the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), so the Indian government could receive covert support even from many nominally Muslim countries in its face-off with Kashmiri separatists.

All in all, the Kashmir issue has festered for too long. Pakistan needs to disappear (which it will) and the Kashmiris need to set aside their juvenile ideas of independence and come to the party. The Indian juggernaut cannot be stopped, because things have reached a stage when even liberals have had enough.

Zardari's India Visit - Act II in Pakistan's Surrender

So Pakistani President Zardari has come and gone. A state visit thinly disguised as a private one, this is one that has raised the usual cautious optimism.

It has also prompted the weary cynicism that comes from repeated disappointment. As that cynical blogger has pointed out,

- Zardari cannot rein in his army and the ISI;
- He cannot call back the jihadists unleashed upon this country (India) by his predecessors and the army;
- He cannot stop or hand over Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and other terrorists operating with impunity from Pakistani soil; and [so]
- [...] he cannot deliver on his promise of living peacefully with India.

He's superficially right. However, I think this time is fundamentally different.

I don't believe Zardari is going to bring about a change in the Pakistani mindset towards India. If anything, it's the other way around. I think the Pakistani mindset has already been altered by harsh circumstance in recent months, which is why Zardari has been sent to India with an olive branch. The presidential visit is in fact the second straw in the wind that indicates a welcome Pakistani realism. The first was the decision by Pakistan to liberalise trade with India and move towards reciprocity by granting Most Favoured Nation status to India by the end of 2012. They need the economic lifeline that an open trade border with India will give them - cheaper imports and a large market for exports.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I have become extremely conscious of the role economics has to play in the destiny of nations. Once you're bankrupt, your options are pretty much limited to surrender and implosion. Pakistan is bankrupt, make no mistake about it. The 65-year war with India is over, and Pakistan has lost. What we're seeing is the surrender dance.

India needs to play its cards right to ensure that Pakistan has a "soft landing", so to speak. In hostility, Pakistanis have enjoyed the illusion of parity with India. In peace, they cannot escape the reality that India is an order of magnitude bigger on any scale. They will not take it well. Some elements may adopt a "death-before-dishonour" approach to derail the process of surrender (for that is what this is), and trigger one last, violent engagement that may even go nuclear. While the process overall is going India's way, that is the one aspect to watch out for that could spoil the party.

In business, acquisitions are often termed "mergers" to assuage egos in the corporation being taken over. India must adopt a similar stance in its PR and take care not to display triumphalism at the recent turn of events. Thankfully, we may not need to worry on that score. The mild, modest and totally self-effacing Manmohan Singh is probably the best person to shepherd the two countries into their new and extremely unequal relationship.

If the trend continues without disturbance, culminating in the collapse of the only counterweight to India in South Asia, we will be seeing a dramatically altered power structure in Asia. India will have the luxury of playing off the core powers (China, Russia and Iran) against the peripheral powers (the West) to its own advantage. Has the Indian foreign policy establishment gamed this scenario, and are they prepared to exploit it? The future is here now.

Kashmir as District 9

It need hardly be said that Kashmir is a complex and highly nuanced problem with no simple solution and indeed, no simple characterisation either. For an analogy, take your typical science-fiction movie pitting humans against aliens. In a movie like Independence Day, the aliens are incorrigibly evil and the humans are heroic freedom fighters. In E.T., the alien is cute and harmless and human officialdom is sinister and needs to be thwarted.

Kashmir though, is a lot like the movie District 9, in which neither side is good or evil.

Gritty realism where everyone is deeply flawed

Everyone in District 9, human or alien, is just wretched, pathetic and hopeless. That's the movie I'm reminded of whenever I think about Kashmir. The Indian government, the Indian army, the Pakistani government, the Pakistani army, pan-Islamic "militants", Kashmiri Muslims, Kashmiri Pundits, - all wretched, pathetic, and hopeless. I'm sorry if I either offended or left out anyone. This is what I honestly feel as a non-Kashmiri Indian who only gets to read the dribs and drabs of information coming out of that region.

Not a feel-good movie, not a feel-good reality

So here are just a bunch of random thoughts, in no particular order, that will have to do in lieu of a comprehensive analysis or a policy prescription.

1. Agreement on the status of Kashmir is virtually impossible because the terms of the debate are incompatible. Pakistan thinks it has an open-and-shut case because of the Two-Nation Theory that was used to justify its own creation. Hindus and Muslims cannot live together in a single country, so the Muslim-majority parts of India should by rights form Pakistan, the argument goes. Kashmir is majority Muslim, hence it naturally belongs with Pakistan. India rejects the Two-Nation Theory altogether because India is a secular state. Kashmir must stay with India, because being Muslim is not a reason not to be Indian. After all, we have 150 million Muslims who are Indians. No agreement is possible because Hindus and Muslims can either live together in peace (India's argument) or they cannot (Pakistan's argument). Both cannot simultaneously be true. There is thus no principle on the basis of which the Kashmir issue can be settled.

2. Pakistan ruined its case by acting rather than by talking. The invasion by Pashtuns backed by the Pakistani army in 1947 was a pre-emptive grab, which India's countermove prevented from fully succeeding. Pakistan managed to grab about a third of the state but damaged its own case by being an aggressor. The 1965 war and the Kargil war were simply Pakistan being its natural, obsessive, impulsive self. They will destroy themselves but never stop trying to get Kashmir by any means possible. I don't know whether to admire the Pakistanis for their tenacity, fear them for their fanaticism or pity them for their shortsighted self-destruction.

3. But this is District 9, remember? There are no good guys. India rigged the Kashmir elections in 1987. That was simply awful and unacceptable. India shot itself in the foot big time. That blunder continues to reverberate to this day.

4. Pakistan's support for terror in Kashmir is unacceptable. The rest of the world turned a blind eye in the past, treating Kashmir as a strictly bilateral dispute. But now the West has also received a taste of Islamic terror and is no longer neutral or sympathetic to the cause of Kashmiri freedom. Among the region's big powers, Russia has its Chechens and China its Uighurs in Central Asia. Kashmir would be another Central Asian Muslim nation. It's true that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter, but more and more nations now see him as terrorist rather than freedom-fighter. The cause of Kashmiri freedom likely has no backers at all, except in the OIC.

5. India is inexplicably and embarrassingly paranoid about Kashmir and refuses to discuss the issue openly as a democracy should be doing. The latest incident of banning the screening of a documentary and forcing a seminar to be cancelled (officially, "postponed") is shameful. Why is a democracy afraid of free speech? Blocking free discussion on Kashmir embarrasses Indians and convinces everybody that India has something to hide or that India is in the wrong on Kashmir.

6. I'm afraid I'm not a cheerleader for men in uniform. Men in uniform with guns and no accountability are dangerous. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act is a licence to commit atrocities. Yes, a soldier may risk his life defending his country against enemy soldiers and terrorists. The same soldier can also torture someone on suspicion or rape a woman when given a chance. Both extremes of behaviour are perfectly possible. Rather than treat our soldiers as unimpeachably noble martyrs against whom no criticism will be tolerated, we need to balance their deployment with layers of control systems, transparency and accountability. A free press does not handicap the soldier. It keeps him honest and out of mischief. India has ruined both Kashmir and the Indian army through decades of giving the army a free hand beyond the pale of media scrutiny. On top of it all, Indians who don't unquestioningly support the army are considered unpatriotic.

7. A very large number of Kashmiris killed have been at the hands of "militants" (terrorists). It's not just the Indian army that's doing the killing in Kashmir, much as the propaganda may proclaim otherwise.

8. "The right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people" sounds grand. But just who are the Kashmiri people? There are Muslims in the Kashmir valley, Hindus in Jammu and Buddhists in Ladakh, not all of whom would want the same thing. Does the majority vote of these groups decide the matter, or should we split the vote by region and decide the fate of each region separately?

9. Oh, and what about Pakistan-occupied Kashmir? Shouldn't we put that to a vote as well? How about the part of Kashmir that Pakistan gifted to China?

10. If self-determination is such a sacred thing, can we talk about Tibet or Baluchistan while we're about it?

11. What about the Kashmiri Pundits (Hindus) who were driven out of the state by "militancy" (terrorism)? Don't their votes count? If the Muslim majority in Kashmir votes to split from India, should the Pundits lose their land because of it? Kashmiri Muslims were quite happy to stay silent while the Pundits were ethnically cleansed from Kashmir. Many of them are now occupying the property of the Pundits who had to flee. They're unlikely to support a return of the Pundits. On the Pundit issue, both the "militants" (terrorists) and ordinary Kashmiri Muslims have a lot to answer for.

12. There are huge double-standards in the Muslim world when it comes to outrage about the treatment of Muslims as opposed to non-Muslims. The Pundit issue illustrates this perfectly. The world is supposed to feel outrage at India's treatment of Kashmiris because they are Muslims and India is seen as a Kaffir nation. No comparable outrage accompanies the killing by Muslims of other Muslims or of non-Muslims - Islam's double-standards on display. No sir, humanity is greater than the Ummah. "Universal" brotherhood based only on the Ummah is parochial and hardly universal.

13. Pakistan and Kashmir - their interests probably diverge more than either side will let on. From whatever accounts I have read, most Kashmiris want independence rather than merger with Pakistan. I don't believe Pakistan will respect that. A country that has bankrupted itself fighting a much larger one in its obsession to "get back" what it views as its rightful territory will not bother to play nice with Kashmiri nationalism once India is out of the picture.

14. India's position has weakened because prolonged army rule has made India unpopular in Kashmir. The unpopularity may be irreversible.

15. Pakistan's position has weakened because the country's economy has stalled and terrorism has now come under heavy international scrutiny. The US is no longer an ally willing to turn a blind eye.

16. The independence-minded Kashmiri Muslim's position has weakened because there is no sympathy for Muslim discontent in any non-Muslim country anymore. Islam's stock is at its lowest.

In short, Kashmir is still a stalemate, but it's in a spiral. Nobody can win. Just add frustration and resignation to the hatred already there. Kashmir is District 9 - wretched, pathetic and hopeless.

India the Afterthought

Synopsis: The nation-states of India and Pakistan came out of the same civilisational melting pot that has been stewing and bubbling in South Asia for over two millennia. But while modern India has embraced its inclusive and pluralistic heritage through its secular democracy where majority and minority groups enjoy equal privileges, Pakistan has been unwilling to do likewise. Pakistan's need to justify its separate existence from the mother country, India, have caused it to deny its own civilisational heritage of harmonious diversity and embark on a quest for a defining and unifying ideological purity that would be distinct from the Indian character. This quest has taken Pakistan towards more and more extreme and intolerant versions of Islam.

No superficial political analysis of recent decades, however even-handed, can provide the insight that it is in fact Pakistan's civilisational self-loathing that has spawned a cancer of violence that threatens itself, its neighbours and the wider world.

US-Pakistan relations have never been so bad, and the mutual recriminations are mounting. An article doing the rounds now is Bill Keller's "The Pakistanis have a Point", in which he tries to explain the Pakistani point of view to an American audience.

It's a fairly slick narrative, but unfortunately for him in this era of the Internet, there are enough others who know their history and can spot a spin job when they see one. [The comments section of the New York Times, where the article appeared, does an effective job of debunking the whitewash attempt.]

The Pakistanis have a point? I think what the Pakistanis have is an apologist. Or stated in the passive voice, Bill Keller's been had by the Pakistanis. Either that, or he's complicit. There's a lot of history that he provides, but he gives the game away to the cognoscenti by the history that he doesn't provide. Some glaring (and convenient) omissions from the Keller narrative that would be hard for the Pakistani establishment to explain away: The Bengal genocide of 1971, the Kunduz airlift of 2001 and the Mumbai attacks of 2008.

Let's give him the benefit of doubt, though. Even with the presumption of honesty, his analysis fails a basic test. While his effort to provide "couples therapy" to the US-Pakistan relationship by trying to understand the other point of view is commendable, he falls victim to the very mistake that he blames US policy for.

The policy mistake that he identifies is what he calls "Pakistan the afterthought". His point is that Pakistan is by far the more important country when comparing Afghanistan and Pakistan, so Pakistan should be the focus of the US administration in the Af-Pak region. The article ends with a quote that compares a nation of 30 million people (Afghanistan) against a nation of 200 million that also has nuclear weapons (Pakistan), and rhetorically asks which would be more important to the US in the year 2020.

I have a similar question for the author. Which is more important, a nation of 200 million (180 million today) or a nation of 1.2 billion? In the entire article that purports to provide a historical perspective and a policy prescription, India is, well, just an afterthought.

I would submit that the Indian perspective matters.

It's not just that India is a large and important country and its views should be taken into account for that reason.

It's not just that it's Indians who can understand Pakistanis best (the cynical would use the words "see through").

It's not just that the Western world is coming around to understanding what India has been saying for decades, a fact that Tony Blair admitted recently.

It's that in order to understand Pakistan, one must not take the word of the Pakistanis themselves, however honest and well-intentioned they may be as individuals, because very bluntly, the Pakistanis are a people in civilisational denial.

And it's that Indians understand far better both the civilisation and the denial, and the consequent motive for everything that Pakistan does.

Fundamentally, if one wants to understand what is happening in the Af-Pak region, it is not enough to go back a few decades in the history of the various nation-states involved, even if India is included in the analysis. For this is not about nation-states but about civilisations, and how various peoples choose to define themselves. Those definitions, whether authentic or spurious, then drive the behaviour of those peoples, shape national policies, and create and destroy nations.

Let's start from the opposite end for an example. Pakistanis in their various discourses will invariably refer to India as "Hindu". That is a civilisational lens they choose to wear, and we will come to that point later. The interesting thing is that this is not how Indians would describe their country at all! Indians look at India as a secular state. And while the cynics in Pakistan might scoff, "secular" is not just a word on a piece of paper (the Indian constitution). This is something Indians accept in their bones. This is the first lesson in civilisational thinking - India is not secular because the 1950 constitution says so. The constitution says so because Indian civilisation has always been pluralistic and inclusive. Every language is spoken, every religion is followed, every conqueror is absorbed and made Indian. That is India's DNA, making it a melting pot like no other civilisation in history (except one other which I will talk about towards the end). The constitution of the Indian nation-state fits the civilisation, and therefore the modern Indian identity is authentic.

For the opposite example of where a nation-state and its underlying civilisation are at war, one need look no further than over the Himalayas to China. The communist ideology of the Chinese nation-state is often hostile to the traditions of Chinese civilisation, and the worst excesses occurred during the Cultural Revolution, when Mao's communists tried to erase all traces of Chinese civilisation and replace it with an imported Marxist ideology. The Chinese national identity is therefore ersatz.

Self-loathing is a pitiable trait, whether in individuals or in nations. And in both, there are strong indications that self-loathing can lead to cancer.

To any outsider, it would be obvious that Indians and Pakistanis are fundamentally the same people. But such a suggestion is anathema to Pakistanis. (The suggestion is abhorrent to an increasing number of Indians too, for a very different reason. Especially after the unequivocal statement that was the Mumbai attack of 2008, Indians feel no reason to nurture a sentiment of unreciprocated brotherhood.)

The fervent wish of a large segment of Pakistanis is to have their civilisation based on the Arab rather than the Indian substrate. As any advertising professional will tell you, India the nation-state already "owns" the Indian civilisation in a "positioning" sense. Not only would Pakistan feel like an also-ran if it acknowledged its identical heritage, it could also dilute the separate identity that it must sustain in order to justify its very raison d'être.

The justification for the creation of Pakistan was that Hindus and Muslims could never live together. This argument is called the "Two-Nation Theory" (TNT), and has proven to be as explosive as the acronym. All of Pakistan's subsequent actions, not least its treatment of minorities, have clearly supported that argument. India's argument against partition and the creation of Pakistan was that not just Hindus and Muslims, but every minority group, could live as equals in the country. This is the secularist ideal that grew out of India's historical pluralism and found expression in the modern Indian constitution. The presence of a growing and increasingly prosperous Muslim minority in India supports India's secularist argument.

Incidentally, this is the fundamental reason for the Kashmir dispute, which Pakistan claims is the core issue with India, but which is actually more symptom than cause. Pakistan believes that Kashmir belongs to it for the simple reason that parts of it are majority Muslim (Kashmir's Jammu region is majority Hindu, and its Ladakh region is majority Buddhist, so not all parts of Kashmir are covered by this argument). For a Pakistani, the Muslim-majority argument makes their country's case for Kashmir open-and-shut. The argument is often couched in terms of "self-determination for the Kashmiri people", but the fig leaf fools no one.

To an Indian immersed in the secularist ideal, this argument is not just patent nonsense, it's also dangerously sectarian and parochial. Being Muslim is no reason not to be Indian. And although a distant possibility, Kashmir could hypothetically be cited as an example by some future religion-based secessionist movement. India fears fissures in its harmonious diversity as much as Pakistan seems to fear diversity itself.

This is why I believe the Kashmir dispute can never be resolved. It is not a mere territorial dispute, but a clash of two irreconcilable ideologies. Hindus and Muslims can either live together in peace, or they cannot. The two cannot be true at the same time. Therefore, either India is right and Pakistan is wrong, or vice-versa.

It's easy to see that India can only win this argument through a demonstration of lasting peace and stability. Pakistan can only win this argument through a demonstration of strife - within secular, pluralist India. There is a compelling reason why Pakistan must support terrorism and insurgency in India, Kashmir or no Kashmir. Insecurity about their identity dictates that they prove the Two-Nation Theory correct, and if it means hell for India's Muslims, so be it.

The alternative is to admit to an identity that is essentially Indian, which implies pluralism. In other words, Pakistan would be a country that is secular like India, but which happens to have a Muslim majority just like India happens to have a Hindu majority. Clearly, this makes the Two Nation Theory look silly and calls into question the partition of undivided India. Therefore an Indian identity cannot be admitted to.

But if Pakistani civilisation cannot be Indian, what can it be?

There are two answers, both preposterous.

One is the transplantation of an Arab civilisational identity, which is patently false and easily disproved. Only those who fervently want to can believe this. If Pakistan was miraculously transplanted to the middle east and found itself surrounded by Arab countries, I suspect the Pakistanis would very quickly rediscover their South Asian identity (It would be too much to expect them to accept their Indian identity even with this shock!) So much for an Arab civilisational identity for Pakistan.

The other is the substitution of the term "Pakistan" for Muslim-ruled India in the treatment of history, as evidenced by Pakistani textbooks, taught not just in madrassas but in mainstream English-medium schools. ("Previously, India was part of Pakistan [...] By the 13th century, Pakistan had spread to include the whole of Northern India and Bengal…Under the Khiljis Pakistan moved further Southward to include a greater part of Central India and the Deccan".) This line of argument conflates a few centuries of Muslim rule in India with an Islamic identity for the civilisation as a whole, which is then called Pakistan. That which remains Hindu is called India. It is a comforting lie to the faithful, but a lie nevertheless.

India largely accepts its period of Mughal rule as part of its chequered history (with the exception of the Hindu right, who play into the hands of the Islamists by seeing this period as a national humiliation; their sense of shame from historical fact implicitly endorses the Two-Nation Theory.) The secureness of the majority of Indians in their pluralist identity manifests itself in their unqualified pride in the Taj Mahal, a masterpiece of Islamic architecture. This would not be the case if they (i.e., Hindu Indians) saw it as a symbol of their past subjugation by Muslim rulers. Most Indians, regardless of religion, would unhesitatingly name the Mughal emperor Akbar as one of the greatest rulers in Indian history, alongside Hindu kings such as Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka and Harsha. Indians take pride in all of Indian history, with its various twists and turns. This richness of cultural interplay is denied to more staid monocultures. Contrast this attitude with the insecurity of Islamists like the Taliban, who felt compelled to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.

Cultural insecurity is a trait common to all Islamists, but in Pakistan it acquires a special flavour, because a purist Islamic identity is an essential ideological bulwark, not against an external enemy, but against the fundamental pluralism of its own original civilisation that must be denied at all costs. This pluralistic ethos must be erased if the idea of Pakistan is to be preserved. As evidence, while any nation would celebrate its Nobel laureates, Pakistan is silent about the only one it has ever produced. That is because Dr. Abdus Salam belonged to the Ahmadi sect of Islam, and Pakistanis refuse to accept Ahmadis as Muslim. Such is their fear of difference.

The psyche that bedevils Pakistan with respect to India is a superiority/inferiority complex. It cannot be explained away by the simple "smaller country defeated by larger neighbour" syndrome. After all, India was defeated by China in 1962, and although Indians are wary of China, the predominant attitudes of India towards China are grudging respect and a desire to emulate China's progress. There seems to be no respect for India in Pakistan (whether grudging or not), no desire to emulate, only a sense of dismay.

This is the dismay arising from the sentiment that goes, "We regal Muslims ruled over these weak, cowardly Hindus for centuries, and now they're bigger, stronger and progressing faster ?!"

Forget the fact that India is not Hindu but secular. That is the lens through which Pakistan sees India, because that is the lens through which Pakistan wants to see itself. If Pakistan must be different, the difference must be between Muslim and Hindu. Secularism is confusing and perhaps even incredible.

Everything that Pakistan has done since its creation has arisen from this primal fear of India as the mirror of truth that will expose their invented identity. Bill Keller can seek the truth all he wants within Pakistan, from "the gated enclaves of Islamabad to the manicured lawns of the military garrison in Peshawar, from the luxury fortress of the Serena Hotel to the exclusive apartments of the parliamentary housing blocks", but he will not find it there.

India is where the truth lies, and India is the reason for Pakistan's perplexing and ultimately self-destructive behaviour. Cancer often springs from self-loathing. The internecine violence consuming Pakistan today can be traced back to the loathing of the image that Pakistan sees in the mirror that is India. India is everything that Pakistan could have been, but could never let itself be, because then there would be no reason for a separate existence. The truth is in this dilemma.

Ironically, the Pakistanis are right to fear India. But it is not the military might of the Indian nation-state that they need to fear, or even its growing economic muscle. The danger that Pakistan faces is the long-term threat to their national identity. In a hundred years, while the lumbering Indian civilisation will continue on like a juggernaut, Pakistani culture will have been swamped and their separate identity erased. Their people hum Bollywood songs today. Their descendants will call themselves Indian in a hundred years. Every invader since Alexander the Great has been absorbed, and this puny challenger will fare no better. That's what a civilisation can do to an ersatz nation-state. The phony sand castle built up in history textbooks cannot stand up to the relentless waves of an authentic civilisational identity that keep crashing upon it in an incessant reminder.

What can be done about Pakistan? This is not a prescription for US policy, for the US is a stranger to these civilisational battles. Indeed, the US is a newcomer in civilisational terms. They are only now building a civilisational identity for themselves that is distinct from the European one that they originated from, a new pluralistic identity that is powerful and authentic, but the exact contours of the American civilisation will only be recognisable a few centuries from now. It is simply not relevant in the South Asian region at this point in time.

For now, the Pakistanis must be encouraged, as gently as possible and as bluntly as necessary, to accept their insignificance before the Indian nation-state. That would be the first step towards realism. Pakistan is not a country that is half the size of India, or even a fourth. It is almost one-eighth the size of India by population and even smaller in economic terms. In hostility, Pakistan can pretend (at great cost) to a semblance of parity. In peace, they will be exposed for the pygmies they are. The attractions of continued hostility are therefore obvious. But this is no good for peace in the region and the wider world. That's why the illusion has to be broken.

In facing up to this bitter truth, and in accepting their long-term fate to be submerged once again within a pan-Indian civilisational identity (regardless of the contours of the nation-states that may make up South Asian geography), lies their salvation. They have nothing to lose but a fake identity, and everything to gain. But they need to take that step, if not by themselves, then from prodding by an increasingly impatient world. Long-term peace in the region can only then follow.

Now What Do They Have Against Liberia?

I had to laugh when I saw this photograph of Pakistani protesters burning what they obviously thought was the US flag.

Guys, this is the US flag:

This is the Liberian flag:

I don't think the Liberians did anything to deserve this.

India's Strategic Aikido

Much analysis has gone into the announcement of the strategic deal between India and Afghanistan. Under this agreement, India will train Afghan security forces to be able to shoulder the responsibility of holding their country together after the withdrawal of Western forces in 2014.

Even though there is no proposal in this agreement to put Indian boots on the ground, most analysts warn that the aspiration is as hopeless as it is ambitious. There is a feeling that Pakistan holds all the cards and can very easily play the spoiler in Afghanistan. India's influence in that landlocked country is handicapped by geography to the same extent that Pakistan is advantaged by it. When push comes to shove, it seems apparent that India is headed for humiliation. The lessons of India's disastrous excursion into Sri Lanka in the early nineties also come to mind. This seems to be a bad idea, no matter who thought it up.

However, there is another way of looking at this. The New Delhi-Kabul axis is bound to whip Pakistan up into a frenzy, and that may be its very intent among the policymakers in South Block. This could do to Pakistan what Ronald Reagan's SDI ("Star Wars") did to the Soviet Union - push it over the brink into bankruptcy by raising the costs of keeping up.

India can afford an arms race. Pakistan can't. Pakistan's traditional donor of military aid, the US, is increasingly reluctant to supply arms, partly out of pique at the duplicitous role of the Pakistani military, but also partly out of the forced frugality of its own internal financial crisis. The Chinese are vocal supporters of Pakistan, but have been pointedly reticent about opening their wallets to actually help. As for the Saudis, they would probably lean towards India in a conflict, as their behaviour during the Kargil war could attest. They do far more business with India than with Pakistan, and money talks. And that about exhausts Pakistan's list of friends.

Aikido is the art of turning one's opponent's momentum against himself with a minimum of effort and no physical contact. By the mere announcement of the agreement with Afghanistan, India has ensured that Pakistan will devote even more frenzied energy into shaping Afghanistan to its own liking, a diversion of resources that it can ill afford at this point in its history. Pakistan has never been economically weaker. Its GDP growth rate last year was an anaemic 2.5%, when it needs 4% to even stay in the same place. Power shutdowns ("load shedding") are a feature of daily life, not because of increasing demand as in India, but because of decreasing supply. Power, or the loss of it, is an economic multiplier, and this does not bode well for Pakistan's GDP growth next year and the year after. Even without an exhausting military race, the Pakistanis are inexorably bankrupting themselves.

There probably is some even greater wisdom in the Indian strategy, because India is also simultaneously holding trade talks with Pakistan to eventually move towards a free trade agreement. That would of course benefit both countries, but it will benefit the weaker economy much more, since the savings would be all the more precious.

In other words, there is a carrot and a stick for Pakistan in the Indian strategy. An adversarial attitude towards India will hasten the onset of bankruptcy and the chaos that will ensue. A thawing of hostility can conversely ease the pain and gradually lead to a return to normalcy and eventual prosperity. The choice is entirely Pakistan's to make. But the path to redemption will require submission to the idea of India's superiority, a swallowing of pride that the Pakistani establishment has never been willing to accept.

They may have no choice. The reality they face is harsh and uncompromising. Pakistan's quest for strategic parity with India was always an unachievable dream. A country with just a seventh of another's population can never aspire to anything resembling parity. It may seem unjust, but India will always dominate South Asia on account of its inherent advantage of relative size. The pygmies (and yes, Pakistan is among them) may understandably chafe at it, but all the rest have come to terms with it. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and even Burma and Afghanistan further afield, are realising the benefits of warming to an economically resurgent India. [One only hopes that India will resist the tendency to arrogance and hubris, and maintain a "light touch" in its dealings with its neighbours, because India's greatest potential enemy is India itself.]

The economic carrot and stick may be just the tactic required to get Pakistan to accept the reality of its situation. With some deft footwork, India can get Pakistan to lurch to where it wants it. Like with the five stages of grief, Pakistan for its own sake needs to arrive at an acceptance, however bitter, of India's dominance in every sphere. Otherwise, survival itself will become a problem.

Terror Takes Two To Tango

I have no sympathy for terrorists. In fact, as an Indian, I consider Americans to be johnny-come-latelies to the anti-terrorism party. We in India knew of terror first-hand decades before 9/11, so it's amusing at one level to see how quickly Americans developed a sense of outrage at terrorism once it started to be directed at them. Till that point, Indians were being lectured on patience and restraint, and told to sit down and talk to the sponsors of terror to "resolve differences".

Yeah, we did see a lot of sitting down and talking between the US and Al Qaeda right after 9/11, didn't we?

In fact, after 9/11, we began to hear new vocabulary and new concepts. It was OK to detain people without trial because they were "enemy combatants". Er, wasn't there something called the Geneva Convention that specifically addressed the rights of enemy combatants? No worries there, no less a person than the US Vice-President (Dick Cheney) informed us that waterboarding was not torture. And if you were talking about real torture, that was called "enhanced interrogation" and outsourced to authoritarian allies like Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, because that wasn't something the US did. But then Abu Ghraib entered our vocabulary as well, letting us know exactly how the US itself treated its prisoners. The name didn't quite rhyme with My Lai, but there was a definite resonance.

This week, it appears American hypocrisy has reached new levels.

The radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed, and it appears that a Justice Department memo authorised his killing. We don't know for sure that Anwar al-Awlaki actually plotted any terror attacks, because State Secrets privilege was reportedly used to keep all discussion of his targetting out of the courts and out of the public eye. Sure, he preached hatred and terror, but one could argue that as an American citizen (he was born in the US) he was just exercising his First Amendment right to free speech. Hate speech is actually protected in the US, as Neo-Nazis are smugly aware.

So how is the Justice Department memo any different from a fatwa, and how is this killing any different from an assassination?

Again, let me repeat that I have no sympathy for a jihadist, because my country of birth has suffered from the effects of a jihadist philosophy from the eleventh century. I'm just pointing out that Western countries lecture others on human rights, the rule of law and due process, so what's happening here? I guess it all just means that when the chips are down, all pretence of being civilised is discarded, and it's the law of the jungle once more.

What a bunch of creeps all around, eh?

However, as they say, the wheels of God grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.

Now the news every day revolves around how the US is slowly turning on a country that it more and more reluctantly refers to as an ally. Call it nemesis or call it karma, decades of terror directed at India are finally receiving payback from another direction, and that's usually the way things work in this world.

And so, while the US and Pakistan are circling each other, snarling and spitting, Indians are minding their business with a studied indifference, biting their lips hard to suppress a grin. Don't look now, but doesn't that couple look absolutely made for each other?

That's some memo from that Justice Department in the sky!

India Takes the Moral High Ground

At last India has done the right thing and raised the amount of flood aid offered to Pakistan from the embarrassingly low figure of $5 million to a somewhat more respectable $25 million.

This could have been a wonderful opportunity for "disaster diplomacy", but Pakistan blew it by not accepting the aid directly and instead asking for it to be routed through the UN.

Obviously Pakistan's leaders have never heard the saying that a gift blesses both giver and receiver. They have turned away the potential blessing of a new era of peace and prosperity.

India has taken the moral high ground by accepting Pakistan's terms, since the objective is to help the people struck hardest by the floods, whether or not India is allowed to get the credit for it. Pakistan has not covered itself in glory by being so churlish about accepting India's help.

Reading between the lines then, I have to assume that aman door ast (Peace is far away).

Pakistan Must Not Refuse Flood Aid From India

Now this is the flip side of my earlier post.

Apparently, the Pakistani government is still “considering” the Indian aid offer of $5 million.

Wow, that seems to be a really hard problem! What should they do??? Can someone help them make up their minds?

It's sort of like the USSR refusing US aid under the Marshall Plan after World War II. Ideology is far more important than human life and suffering, it would seem.

According to this article, India’s initial offer of just $5 million is to test the waters. If Pakistan responds favourably, India will donate more. That makes sense given Pakistan’s contemptuous treatment of Indian aid during the 2005 earthquake (allegedly letting food rot at the border, ripping off the Made in India tags before distributing aid, etc.) Even now, they seem to want Indian aid to be routed through the UN rather than be made available directly.

All I can say is, this is a really callous leadership that doesn’t have the best interests of their people at heart.

From the article,

“Sources said the [Indian] government has already begun preliminary work on an assistance package with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA - awful website, by the way) which is resource-rich, and would even be willing to route the assistance through the UN if that’s what Pakistan wants.

But it feels the bilateral approach is better because given the short distances, India would be able to reach assistance much faster to the affected areas in Pakistan. In fact, India is even willing to be the source country for assistance material for other countries, multilateral organizations helping out Pakistan, even NGOs.

[...]

During the civil war in Sri Lanka, India had sent across family-packs that contained everything for a family for a specific time period. In Afghanistan, India supplies fortified biscuits which could be a good source of nutrition for children in Pakistan right now.”

Will Pakistan allow India to fly supplies directly to where it is needed, or will it prefer to let its own people die rather than grant air access to the “enemy”? Courage is not just the ability to face enemy troops in battle. It takes courage to once again venture help to someone who has never been gracious in the past, and it also takes courage to trust someone who is offering to help you.

India has passed the test of courage. Let’s see if Pakistan does.

What Pakistani Schoolgirls Can Teach The Rest of Us

This is a very touching video (also available with better resolution on YouTube) that starts on a misleading note but has a twist halfway through. I'd encourage everyone to watch it till the end. The part where the young girl says "Hum maafi chaahte hain" (We ask for forgiveness) is particularly touching.

Little snippets like this are what lead me to believe that when Official India and Official Pakistan finally sign a peace agreement, the artificially built-up animosity of over six decades will disappear in an instant, like a bubble.

On a side note, it was amusing to see the stacks of Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew books on the shelves. Pakistan and India are more alike than we imagine...

Kashmir and the Indian Conscience

Here’s a brutally frank write-up on Kashmir in the UK’s Guardian that should give liberal, educated Indians pause. The author is not a Kashmiri Muslim. Nor is he a biased Pakistani or ignorant Westerner, as our convenient stereotypes go. From his name (Pankaj Mishra), he is Hindu and of Indian origin.

I suffer great moral pangs on the issue of Kashmir, and articles like this only reinforce them. My only quibble with this otherwise powerful article is its complete silence on the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus (the Pundits). The author should have followed his own advice and dealt with that additional “messy reality concealed by stirring abstractions”, as he put it. But that omission should not cause us to sweep the larger issue under the carpet.

Indians have a certain healthy wariness towards men in uniform (the police more than the army, which is generally invisible in daily life). How many Indians would enter a police station with a jaunty step? One of the luxuries of being part of the middle or upper classes is the relative ability to lead one's life without ever coming into contact with the police. But there is no escaping the constant stream of stories (in the Indian press, not the "biased" Western media) of “death in police custody” and “encounter killings”. There is probably more than a grain of truth to what is being said about the behaviour of India's men in uniform in Kashmir. False notions of patriotism should not prevent Indians from speaking up about it. We are humans first and our national identity comes second. Indians shouldn’t go on the defensive and refuse to look seriously at the issue just because Pakistan raises the Kashmir issue for its own opportunistic reasons.

It would be good if Indians themselves could bring pressure on the Indian government to dramatically improve the situation in Kashmir. Even if we believe that a plebiscite or independence for part of the region (the Kashmir Valley) is a bridge too far, we can at least insist on greater press access and more honest reporting on Kashmir. That may shame the authorities into providing a lighter touch and better administration.

It’s the least we can do.

India Must Not Withhold Flood Help To Pakistan

It would be very sad if politics came in the way of humanitarian feeling. The floods in Pakistan have not only taken a toll of lives and displaced millions of people, but have also wiped out agricultural crops, threatening the country with a massive food shortage.

Boston.com has some stunning pictures that capture some of the enormity of the damage. BBC has reported on it as well, and this map is from there:


In some ways, this is a golden opportunity for India and Pakistan to mend fences. The cycle of mutual suspicion and hate needs to be decisively broken, and a massive Indian aid effort in the current crisis could go a long way.

It shouldn't be purely government-to-government aid. The Indian government should mobilise contributions from the public and NGOs, so that ordinary people on the Indian side can be seen to be helping their counterparts across the border. That is the only thing that can change mindsets.

India's protestations that it has no evil designs on Pakistan continue to be ignored by Pakistani policymakers in the military, because (rightly from their point of view), they focus on capability rather than intent. A massive popular groundswell of aid may help them see that India has both the capability and the intent to do enormous good.

It's time to set petty quarrels aside and do the statesmanlike thing. Future generations will thank us.

Update 14/08/2010:

India finally broke its silence and offered $5 million in aid to Pakistan. The report comes from a Pakistani news site. The most heartening aspect is the positive response from Pakistani readers (at least the first 7 that have appeared so far).