Reality Bytes:Pious or Pitiful?

15 March 2019

Games nations play are all in the realm of real politik. What many Indians realised last evening was how they had been caught up in this dystopian world, how their waves of idealism crashed when it met the great wall of Chinese pragmatism. Indians while they are so busy blaming Nehru never look to their own mythology to understand that they are Pandavas and the Pakistanis are Kauravas. That Chinese or USA or any other world power is not Krishna out to deliver justice to them, leave the fact that Krishna himself tried very industriously to prevent the war until finally he realised that war was the only recourse to justice and closure for the Pandavas.

So when Indians were driven out of their Indraprastha, dispossessed of their western and eastern wings at Independence in 1947, they still assume it was a failure of domestic politics alone, that it was a civilisational drift or rift, whereas there was a whole lot more going on in the background.

An Akhand Bharat as envisioned by many including foremost votary for it, Sage Aurobindo, was too big an entity, an entire subcontinental mass stretching from Iranian border on the west to South East Asia in the East, bounded by the oceans in the south and Himalayas in the North. If the British had left behind such a country, today it would have naturally been a counterweight to China, but then Western strategists were never bothered about Asia, were they? Yes in the UN conferences they had involved Republic of China, because by size she would be the largest in the world, in a world where demographics were severely stretched after the two world wars, and also because Japan was the loser and hence an Asian representative would be China not a colonial India. Few Britishers would today agree that their best case scenario for India was further dismemberment into fragments, some 600 republics and kingdoms, not in their wildest dreams would they have thought that their client state would first get divided within 25 years of its creation.

The Great Game was India and continues to this day. We woke up on the wrong time in History, and Nehru as much as we loathe him, did what he thought was best for his times, cocking a snook at great powers, while playing his Non Alignment Movement game, by his attempt to engage China while welcoming the Dalai Lama to India. If Pakistan had not quickly dissolved into a military cantonment after Independence, may be Indian bureaucracy would have had a different view of her own military, and the new game the British had perfected called Divide and Rule, was to be a handy mantra for her legacy in India within and without. Playing one against another, the babu, neta and fauji were to end up never being on the same page, perhaps only briefly in the summer of 1971, they managed, which was rewarded with a spectacular result that winter.

China is using Pakistan to keep India at bay, exactly how once the USA did in the early decades of our Independence. It was only when 9/11 happened that the USA woke up to terror, likewise, China too will wake up after an event. May be then the USA will take back its original client state? What Indians have not understood is Pakistan does not mind having any character other than utility to a great power. It does not mind any internal hurt, humiliation or harakiri. Remember Mr Bhutto famously said that they will eat grass…

So the only way India tackles her situation is through economic and technological advancements domestically, even as she continues to keep building her military in a chartered and time bound manner. Well, military morale got a great fillip with the new way of politics when foreign affairs and military advocacy acquired political colour, though now five years later, there are misgivings on both scores. There is an American adage that Indians must keep in mind-‘show me the money’. In a recent interview, Mr Jaitley has promised more loosened purse strings for the military in the next five years going forward, and Mr Rahul has called upon a former Army Commander to provide a strategic doctrine for the next five years. That is good for starters. While allies and international opinion are all welcome, Pandavas must not forget that they did all the key fighting at Kurukshetra, that without exception every Kaurava supremo was felled by a Pandava, including Drona through the lie of Yudhisthira! For starters, let us add Mahabharata as essential reading for our citizens, shall we? Let us no longer be pious or pitiful!

#ChinavetosmoveonMasoodAzhar