All of India’s media attention is currently focused on the on-going conflict between India and Pakistan. It began on April 22nd when terrorists backed by the Pakistani government murdered 26 male tourists visiting Pahalgam in Kashmir. The terrorists told their Kashmiri tourist victims to recite the Arabic kalma (the Islamic declaration of faith) and to drop their pants to show that they were circumcised to prove that they were Muslims. When they failed that test, they were shot at point-blank range, murdered in front of their families.
The message was clear: you must die because you are not Muslim.
You die not because of some harm you’ve caused anyone. No. Your unforgivable crime was that you were not a servant of Allah. Allah has commanded that each and every of his faithful has a religious duty to kill you, the non-believer. By killing you the filthy infidel, the obedient Muslim serves Allah’s will, and Allah’s reward for his jihad against you awaits him in heaven: a penis that never bends, 72 perpetual virgins, 18 pretty nubile boys, and rivers of wine. Not much is said about the rewards that female jihadists receive who kill infidels.
The mainstream media doesn’t have any interest in the ultimate cause of this conflict. Their focus is understandably solely on matters such as what the Pakistani and Indian armed forces are doing in their attacks and counter-attacks. Makes for good sensational television news and social media engagement. Should they look into the ultimate cause(s) of this perennial problem? Perish the thought. It’s too hard and boring.
I blame neither the social nor the mainstream media for that. You gets what you pays for. The media apparently is made of imbeciles, for imbeciles, and by imbeciles. People are imbeciles. That’s the harsh and unadorned truth.
What should have been India’s response to the Pakistani terrorists at Pahalgam? The same as it should have been to the dozens of major terrorist attacks by Pakistan: eliminate the den of vipers. India has consistently refused to do that for reasons only known to its benighted leaders and intellectuals.
Let’s rewind a bit. In 1947, the British left and carved Pakistan and India out of British India. Various bits of the land joined India or the newly formed homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims. Though somewhat tardy, eventually Maharaja Hari Singh’s kingdom of Kashmir acceded to India. It’s hard to decide whether he or Nehru was the greater retard.
Almost immediately after the partition of India, Pakistan invaded Indian Kashmir. India could have pushed the Pakistanis out of Kashmir. But Nehru’s idiocy (the man was a certified moron) led to the division of the state into what Indians call POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) and Kashmir (which the Pakistanis call Indian Occupied Kashmir.) Pretty though the state is, in the final analysis, it does not amount to a hill of beans. It depends on handouts from Indians and some tourism dollars, and that too not that many.
Oh, the other thing that Kashmir produces is Islamic terrorism (though the adjective is clearly superfluous.)
Pakistan is a failed state and has been since its inception. Its main export is terrorism. That’s not surprising since it could never have been otherwise. Why? Because of the ideology that gave birth to it: Islam. Islam and lack of development are conjoined twins. Not a single Islamic state has developed ever — except when it had hydrocarbon mineral deposits. The rest depend on handouts from the non-Islamic countries.
Pakistan has initiated every major war with India, and has been soundly defeated every time. They declare 1000-year jihad against the infidels. India fights defensive wars and instead of making Pakistan pay, the deluded idiot Indian leaders magnanimously let Pakistan off.
India has paid dearly in terms of blood and treasure in each of the wars that Pakistan started. In 1971, when the West Pakistanis went on a genocidal mission to teach the East Pakistanis a lesson, India was forced to intervene. The Pakistani army preferentially killed a few million Hindus in East Pakistan. The Indian army suffered immense losses but liberated Bangladesh. About 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered, and India had to shelter and feed them for months. Eventually, prime minister Indira Gandhi returned them to Pakistan without any concessions from Pakistan.
Indian leaders are idiots.
Ever since Pakistan has acquired nuclear bombs, it has a new strategy. It knows that it cannot win a conventional war against India. Its trump card is that it threatens to use nukes if India were on the verge of winning. They are not coy about it. Pakistan’s defence minister went on TV a few days ago to say that if Pakistan is on the brink of losing, it will not only use nukes against India but would take the rest of the world with it.
I think India should remind Pakistan that they are not facing a Nehruvian India. Nehru had declared that India had no use for an army because India’s position was non-violence. He was rudely awakened when the Chinese roundly defeated India in the war of 1962.
Talking of the Chinese, here’s an interesting bit. India and China had fairly cordial relations in the 1950s. During Nehru’s visit to China in 1954, Mao Zedong told Nehru that China would not be intimidated by nuclear weapons, and that even if millions of Chinese died, the Chinese nation would endure. Mao was a realist, not a dreamy-eyed pacifist like Nehru. Aside from everything else, Nehru’s non-aligned policy pushed the US to embrace Pakistan.
Islamic suicide bombers are not deterred by their own death. For them, dying while killing infidels guarantees them a place in their Islamic paradise. Pakistan is a suicide-bomber writ large.
India is a large country. Even if it loses tens of millions of Indians, India will survive. That cannot be said about Israel. It cannot afford to be passive or magnanimous in face of the constant terrorism it is subject to. Terrorism is an existential threat. It has to do whatever it takes.
Having endured Islamic terrorism for a millennia, Hindus can relate to what the Jews have been facing. I am certain that if the need arose, hundreds of thousands of Hindus will volunteer to fight for Israel. I am not the bravest person for sure but I will fight alongside Jews.
(A personal note: all my three PhD advisors at UC Berkeley were Jewish. Two of them served in the IDF.)
The Jews are survivors. They must be because otherwise we’d only read about them in the history books. Not just survive, they are successful in the arts and sciences. One statistic should suffice. Although they are only 0.2 percent of the world’s population, they have 20 percent of the Nobel prizes.
I have the greatest admiration for Golda Meir (1898 – 1978.) I love her attitude. Here’s my favorite Golda Meir quote:
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
I am reminded of the line from Sting’s song Russians, “I hope the Russians love their children too.”
The title of this post — The Dollar Auction Continues — refers to a piece I had written 26 years ago. Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games.
India and Pakistan are engaged in a dollar auction game, with Kashmir as the dollar. Whenever Pakistan is about to collapse and end the game, Western nations come to its rescues. It goes to the IMF with a begging bowl to avoid starvation. These days it has China as its big brother. Now China is its arms supplier. China has an interest in using Pakistan to keep India bleeding.
I don’t fault China. I think the basic problem is Pakistan’s beggar thy neighbor policy. Pakistan is hostage to two forces that are out of its control. One is the blind hatred of Hindus; the other is its armed forces.
I think fate is likely to catch up with Pakistan finally. It could end up breaking once again, this time into three or four pieces. It could happen suddenly. Balochistan could go first and then Sindhustan after that. The USSR collapsed suddenly.
Let me stop here wishing India and Israel vanquish their enemies. Let Golda Meir have the last word. “It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them.”
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 