Pakistan Centricity!

13 June 19

Hate can consume us is something that our epics, our elders and our psychologists can always tell us. What we are now witnessing is how despite being a failed economy and a country in strife, as a neighbour Pakistan occupies disproportionate weight in Indian mindset, purely out of this angst and hatred that it has bred in Indians by its psychological campaign aided by terror networks.
From the beginning, Pakistan was a India centric country, always trying to deny her Indian origins, so much that now most Western Scholars call Indic civilisation as South Asian civilisation, especially when they now refer to Vedic civilisation, by promoting Himalayan expeditions around K2 and the Glacier watersheds of PoK, by her export of Mangoes and Basmati, Pakistan has to some extent succeeded in refashioning the gullible. India in contrast appeared immune and chugging away growing in leaps and bounds, until our version of identity politics took a leap of faith from caste to religion.
Now many Indians are out there daily venting their spite doing Whataboutery about Pakistan, her treatment of minorities, the Army in her power centres and even odious comparisons with her women politicians, actually using it as a tool to denigrate our women leaders, because they happen to be right now in the wrong camp?
Yesterday one spotted how the Right Wing trollers suddenly sent one of their own literally and figuratively to Pakistan. Here was a video of a person head to toe in tricolour costume, sitting in a stadium someplace, who filmed his despicable act of relieving himself in the open, surrounded by unaware spectators, defiant and in fact triumphant in his act of defilement! If one knows how hate crimes in India are graded, you know the extent of the identity edge from this act of urinating over an object to discharge contempt of the highest order. This aspect is poignant captured in the new classic film Pariyerum Perumal, when the hero is showered by the antagonist and his acolytes for attending a wedding of a higher caste to which his college mate had innocently invited him over! So may be the act of defilement was for the game? Or for the opposite team in the ground playing that day against India? Now that Deep Web has exposed this person and his antecedents, can you imagine what was the response? The RW trolls made out that he was in fact a Pakistani, creating for him an identity which was quickly countered by Fact Checking sites. Now why was he Hero one day made into a Pakistani next? Because deep down we associate Pakistan with all that is despicable, disapproved by our collectives, condemned by our conscience!
So it was interesting whether the PMO filed a flight path avoiding Pakistani airspace after first requesting for a waiver, due to puritanical considerations or because of this RW response, which now made Pakistan an untouchable? Mind you, the proud badge for most RW trolls is how they are followed by the PM in his personal and official handles on Twitter, how many likes they have acquired and so on.
Now if one compares with USA, since most of our RW is based there or influenced by American view, the USA has been largely obsessed with itself. Even Fareed Zakaria has written not about how Hong Kong is aflame with citizen protests over a new law that could extradite folks to mainland China, but about how US hegemony is fast depleting world over, with a shrinking foot print of US military assets and worse vanishing American influence in popular culture. Trump only seems to be prodding this turn faster than the US think tanks would like, with his missteps with North Korea, his new insight is a ‘beautiful letter he has received from Kim’, with Iran which now Japanese are trying to straighten out with their PM flying in to Teheran, with Mexico where he claims a secret agreement gives him what he promised to his core base, even as in the open domain, with some sympathetic noises, a new trade deal has simply replaced the old one with changed set of dates! While Trump may be a disaster for America, unlike India, he is focused on America only. So the 5G tech war he has sided with American industry, or the Apple effort to kickstart production in the US at Wisconsin through Foxconn, does extend the shelf life of a critical aspect of the American Way. Now his obtuse reading to India to abandon the S400 ‘Triumpf’ system for a TMD for Delhi and offer of F35s is also seen as an earthy attempt to keep American military industrial complex at play! If Fareed says that US is diminished, it is because it waged the wrong wars. Instead of Iraq, it should have waged one in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead of the Afghan war, it should have made a international maritime coalition and contained China’s ambitious plans to occupy the reefs of Paracel Islands(Spratlys), and thwarted the Chinese build up that today has many islands in the role of fixed unsinkable aircraft carriers!
So if India wants to grow out from the hyphenation with Pakistan forever, it needs to abandon its pique with that neighbour. Pretend that Pakistan does not exist. Wall up on the Western Border. Shut that Wagah circus, shut all the border transits and trade points. Prohibit/censor the use of the word, context or reference to the Western Neighbour. Not even a ‘One Who Is Not To Be Named’! Offer scholarships to BIMSTEC, SAARC less Pakistan,ASEAN to make them study Indic culture and subjects, trade eastward, divert all oceanic trade either through Chabahar or the 10 degree channel, to lessen the strategic importance of Hormuz. What ever Pakistan can make India can, our art and culture can survive without exchanges with her. Pakistani folk wishing treatment in India, tourism in India, with families in India, scholarship in India on case to case basis, but below the radar, strictly off media. Like how the USA has made it a point to not have presidential visits to Pakistan, India needs to just shut its embassy there and pull out from any bilateralism for ten years which can be reviewed thereafter for further extensions if need be.

The Pakistani military survives because of India’s peace overtures, our peaceniks and politicians survive by alternating postures on Pakistan. Imagine many voters actually said that only Modiji can save them from Pakistan! At the ground level a perception was created that our IAF was worse off in the exchange after Balakot, with self shooting down of a helicopter and loss of an MiG 21 aircraft with its pilot, who was handed back to us in a ‘humanitarian gesture’ as if Geneva conventions could go for a toss! See how the video now trending of Wing Commander Abhinandan in the Cricketer garb! Our reaction to this ‘below the belt’, asinine attempt at pun and provocation proves how this exchange has become our Achilles Heel. Nations need to break out of such self inflicted shackles! Our leaders need to ponder the long term impact this obsession about Pakistan is having on our population!