WHY THE WEST IS ANGRY OVER OP SINDOOR

 The new Indian doctrine calls the Western world’s bluff; Pak N-bomb is not an Islamic bomb aimed at Western world but leg irons to keep India down

 

The India-Pakistan conflict ended with bare minimum trouble to everyday civilian life but with a dramatic disruption in the region’s geopolitics. India has unveiled its new doctrine to call Pakistan’s nuclear bluff --- rather the sham should be rephrased as the Western World’s Pakistan Nuclear Bluff. It all started with the euphoria in the Western media over the shooting down of a Rafale jet. Of course, aircraft get shot down during combat routinely and that is called war wastage (Britain lost 8325 aircraft during WWII). What matters is the precision bombing of the targets, which was carried out with elan.

A news report that got circulated in journalistic WhatsApp groups in the initial hours of the conflict, purportedly published by a British newspaper, had a celebratory outburst about Pak-Chinese air defence mechanisms supported by a network of satellites not allowing a single Indian Air Force aircraft to even take off.

The malicious glee lent itself to high-strung hype: “India now knows that any venture into Pakistani airspace invites death trap orchestrated by J-10Cs, PL-15s, and Pakistani resolve…” Then comes the doggerel: “So, they stay back. Grounded by fear. Blinded by radar. And humiliated by silence… At that speed the Indian pilot had 9 seconds. Not enough to react. Not enough to survive. You don’t see the Indian Air Force over Kashmir anymore.  Because every time a fighter lifts off, Pakistani radars pick it up… India’s Pain, Pakistan’s Message.”

Predictably, 'pain' and 'message' had P and M in capital letters. It ought to have been published in a Pakistani newspaper because it was Pakistani propaganda at its worst. Well, when Elizabeth Windsor took her coronation oath in 1953 she had counted Pakistan as her territory; however, this time, her son Charles skipped mentioning the favourite colony. Why else would any newspaper not see the damage inflicted on the terror training facilities in Muridke and Bahawalpur? How could these two have been bombed deep inside Pakistan territory without Indian aircraft or missiles targeting them? Or do western war poets believe that only Rafale would get “blinded” by the radar while all the other Indian projectiles would hit the Pak targets precisely? Soon, there was a newer version of the same story with a disclaimer that the earlier effort was fabricated.

This was worse than Indian TV journalists’ monkey tricks. They are used to embarrassing themselves, and keep doing them for Television Rating Points. But there is no TRP war to be won by writing bad poetry for Pakistanis. Or was the “fabricator” trying to make Churchill proud? It was as if Churchillian hatred for India as British foreign policy was written, exhibited and hung on a brilliantly-lit billboard on the London bridge for all to see. Not just the British, other Western media too peddled Pakistani lies.

That brings us to the question: did India lose out as the Western media would want us to believe? Not one bit. Donald Trump has zero credibility at home and abroad. Nobody, least of all himself, takes Trump seriously. If at all Trump has achieved anything, he has only blown up the possibility of QUAD ever becoming operational in the Indo-Pacific. After US’s attempt to play the Pakistani nuclear bluff, re-hyphenate India and Pakistan, inviting the two to a neutral territory, and talking cheap trade, Trump has no friends left atop Raisina Hill. India categorically rejected all his claims. In an emphatic assertion of India’s independent foreign policy, the Prime Minister called the Western bluff --- the nuclear threat won’t work any longer.

It is indeed a Western bluff because the West never exhibited any nervousness about Pakistan’s nuclear programme as it has about the Iranian and Iraqi programmes. For Iran, a N-bomb is a guarantor of its sovereignty, but for Pakistan it is only a deterrent against India’s prosperity. Without Western “sanction”, Pakistan would never have built its nuclear arsenal and without the Western patronage Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme would never have become a blackmail facilitator for terror attacks against India.

Yes, that is exactly what it is. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are only meant to guarantee continued covert operations against India without counter action.

If Israel can bomb the Parchin nuclear research facility 30 kms east of Teheran (and about 40 years ago the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq), why didn’t the West ever get the Pakistani bomb dismantled? Why isn’t Isreal threatened by the Pak N-bomb? The aerial distance between New Gwadar International Airport and Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is only 2800 kms and that is roughly the range of Pakistan’s Shaheen – III missile. If the Pak army launches the missile from Taftan on the Iranian border, the distance will only be about 2500 km. But the Israelis have never sweated over Pakistani bombs or missiles. For, the Pakistani bomb is not an Islamic Bomb aimed at the Western world, but mere leg irons to keep India down.

Modi has scripted a doctrine to break these Western-made Pakistani nuclear shackles and this may get counted as his greatest achievement. Whether India hit the Kirana Hills nuclear storage facility or not is too sensitive for loose talk, but India did exhibit that it won’t shy away from responding to grave provocation simply because Pakistan has nuclear weapons. This time the escalation was so effective that 11 Pak airfields were rendered useless. There are Indians who doubt the efficacy of this doctrine wondering whether India can afford to kinetically respond every time a few terrorists open fire at innocent civilians. Unfortunately, the answer ought to be yes.

For, these are not stray terrorists opening fire at their free will, but Pakistani military-intelligence establishment’s foot soldiers. They are unleashed for tactical reasons by the Pakistan Army. That realisation, as enunciated by the PM in his address on May 12, is the bedrock of the new doctrine. Pakistanis cannot launch mini, micro or major operations using its semi-state actors with the generals hiding behind them. Pakistan Army, unlike most other armies, exists only for itself. So, India cannot continue to bleed from a thousand cuts simply because a Quran-spouting Mullah in battle fatigues wants a promotion and a baton.

Truth and reconciliation

nous indica 

The Tribune, August 31, 2018

Khalistan agenda is not a freedom of speech issue as UK tried to make out


Rajesh Ramachandran


Last year, around this time, a convicted rapist and a murderer, Gurmeet Ram Rahim, managed to get about 36 of his own followers killed to prove his clout. Recently, a bishop brought in busloads of his flock of faithful sheep to show his strength when he was getting questioned in a rape case. We, as a society, are so blind, ignorant and greedy that any felon could get a few truckloads of supporters to defend him. Religious and social organisations have copied the depraved politicians so well that the charlatans have all become one indistinguishable vile whole. What fuels these tricksters is money. The pro-Khalistan sloganeers among the Punjabi diaspora are no different. When a poor Punjabi is offered asylum in the name of religious persecution, he is forever obliged to shout the slogans of those who made him a citizen of the first world. The logic is so simple and compelling that the Khalistan 2020 rally in London was merely a rerun of many things past.

Why just blame the asylum-seeker? Even a well-heeled columnist while seeking foreign hospitality recently snarled at The Tribune for this very same reason. The Tribune has been taking on foreign governments in its editorials and news pages for supporting, sponsoring and sheltering religious secessionists. So, like one of those faithful in the bus (business class for sure), this columnist too shouted slogans against The Tribune. Ideally, such people ought to be writing for The Civil and Military Gazette (the pro-British newspaper which was The Tribune’s competitor in Lahore) or its contemporary Internet versions. The Khalistan agenda is not an issue of freedom of speech as the UK government recently tried to make out. The Khalistan religious secessionist movement has claimed the lives of a Prime Minister, a Chief Minister and thousands of innocent Punjabis, mostly Sikhs. So, a Khalistani flag symbolises two decades of terror, deprivation and death. And that was unfurled early this month at Trafalgar Square because the UK government seems to be completely unaware of all those years of murder and mayhem in Punjab and thought it was the secessionists’ right to “gather together and demonstrate their views, provided that they do so within the law”.

Whose law? The imperial law obviously, which did not apply to the colonies. The religious secessionist militancy is truly dead and buried in Punjab. All the attempts to revive it are only being made abroad, primarily in Canada and the UK. In fact, the religious fanatics seeking a separate Islamic state of Kashmir, too, made common cause with the Khalistanis in London. Well, the British policy on J&K was explicit from the days of the initial trouble in October 1947. “It would have been natural for Kashmir to eventually accede to Pakistan on agreed terms,” Narendra Singh Sarila quotes the then British secretary of state for Commonwealth relations in his brilliantly researched book, The Shadow of the Great Game.

The creation of Pakistan, this former ADC to the last Viceroy Mountbatten argues quoting chiefs of staff, was a British strategic requirement. General Leslie Hollis even predicted an India-Pak war as early as May 1947: “Our link with Pakistan might have a stabilising effect on India as a whole, since an attack by Hindustan on Pakistan would involve Hindustan in war, not with Pakistan alone, but also with the British Commonwealth.” The Partition was done not out of love for Jinnah but for strategic facilities like the Karachi port and the north western air bases. The Muslim League was routed in the 1937 elections, winning just 108 out of the 408 seats reserved for Muslims. Even the North West Frontier Province, with 95 per cent Muslims, had overwhelmingly voted for the Congress, thus proving beyond doubt that the separate electorates did not automatically endorse the two-nation theory. Yet, the British nourished and nurtured Jinnah to the eventual strategic objective of India’s Partition. General Hollis had explained it plainly: “Quite apart from the positive arguments in favour of this course we would draw your attention to the sorry result of refusing an application by Mr Jinnah — which would, in effect, amount to ejecting a numerous and loyal people from the British Commonwealth. We should probably have lost all chances of ever getting strategic facilities anywhere in India (the subcontinent); we should have shattered our reputation in the rest of the Muslim world and could not look for the continued cooperation of Middle Eastern countries. From the military point of view such results would be extremely bad.”

It was the British military goal of containing a rising Soviet Union and manipulating the oil-rich Muslim world that led to the holocaust and the forced migration of millions of people. But why should the UK host the Khalistan 2020 meet now, particularly when the Indian agencies are shouting from the rooftop that they have proof of ISI involvement in the entire enterprise? Now that Pakistan and China are staunch allies and Russia is supplying hardware and training the Pakistanis, does it really serve the Anglo-Saxon purpose to keep mutilating the Indian soul? The assault on the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee head in the US and the heckling of Congress president Rahul Gandhi in the UK by Khalistanis are proof of the hospitality offered to them.

No people have loved their old colonisers as much as Indians. Our national movement was a strange combination of admiration for colonial institutions like the judiciary and hatred for foreign rule. Shakespeare is more important for us than Bhasa. But as a society we need to rethink whether it is a good idea to invest in countries that promote religious secessionism in India. You can always get a few people in your bus to call us names, but that only underscores our integrity.