Its ironic that a few days ago, while discussing the India-Pakistan situation, I told my American friend Kaipo, “If that nuclear missile button were under my hand, I wouldn’t think twice before depressing it and completely annihilating the country!” Verbatim. I told him that
Now, after
The Gandhian way of non-violence has lost all of its premises except for the name. It is more of inertia, a reluctance to precipitate any face off. The politicians to consolidate their political standings, the commoner to just keep going as they are as long as the effects of terrorism do not start intervening their lives. But what is happening in
So, these terrorists, engaged in jihad for whatever ideals, how do they convince themselves that taking these many lives is going to help? I would say that this decision making is made simpler because they are taken as a part of a “MOVEMENT”! A collective conscience that somehow assuages the guilt that would otherwise have racked the person if taken single handedly. Even attacks are planned with groups and back-up groups. If any one person develops weakness the movement is quoted as an argument to make him/her swallow personal feelings and carry out the destruction. So when it comes to a question of killing this said group, should we be bothered with the fact that they actually did it for the movement and hence do not bear any responsibility? Aren’t these the people that form the movement and hence to dismantle the movement the individuals HAVE to be killed. True that some innocent lives will be lost in the process but in terms made famous by the
An eye for an eye makes the nation blind, true! But better blind and vindicated than sighted and wronged.
Comments
1. The State of Pakistan is here to stay. With a population of over a 160 million, a common ideology to bind its disparate and highly temperamental sectarian groupings, and a common enemy to connive against and plot the destruction of, Pakistan possesses the most important ingredients to exist and survive as a nation. Wishful and speculative thinking and time-traveling can not alter the fact that our western neighbor is not going to oblige us with a disappearing act anytime soon.
2. The State of Pakistan is a militant Islamic Republic. Whatever may his intentions have been, it is a fact that Jinnah’s creation, as it stands today, has degenerated to become a nation of, by and for ideological extremists. No amount of regime change, political freedom or economic prosperity will ever bring Islamic Pakistan into the mainstream of acceptable human behavior simply because the ideology that defines its existence has successfully sowed, cultivated and reaped the crops of toxic extremism in its populace for centuries on end. A “secular” and “democratic” Pakistan was, and will be, hardly any different from an extremist and repressive Pakistan.
3. Islamic Pakistan is committed to perpetual enmity towards India. Take India out of the equation and Pakistan loses one of only three of its primary existential justifications. The political class in Pakistan realizes this, and has therefore ensured that hatred of India becomes endemic and entrenched among its already highly toxically indoctrinated populace. To the religiously initiated, India will remain Dar-ul-Harb in perpetuity for it was, is, and will always be a land of “infidels”. To those who are not (of whom there are but a few left), religion serves as a convenient whipping boy to serve political interests. The candle holders at Wagah and the apologists parroting the Hindi-Paki bhai-bhai line will continue to live, and eventually perish, in fools’ paradise if they fail to realize this fundamental existential definition of Pakistan.
Options: Open, at least in my opinion.
1. Overt war: Conventional military conflict culminating in mutual nuclear annihilation. To expect extremists with a proven track record of crass irrationality to behave rationally when confronted with an imminent existential threat to the ideology they have hitherto fed off of is nothing short of supreme naiveté. To think of it, nuclear war is not all that undesirable given that it will make the task of post-war governance and reconstruction infinitely easier. However, I seriously doubt if our pusillanimous political class would ever have the guts to digest the exaggerated casualties such a conflict would inevitably result in.
2. Covert war. It is high time the powers-that-be in India made a sincere effort to acknowledge all that our “friendly” next-door neighbor has given us, shed their diffidence and pulled up the magnanimity to reciprocate in kind. To roll off what’s off the top of my head we could fund and equip the Balochs, plant a few concoctions of nitrotoluene in certain places of repute, have a few Mohajirs lynched in Karachi for whatever reasons, arrange for drive-by’s at Shia and Sunni Friday afternoon revelry joints in alternation, and spruce up the Paki underworld and of them extract periodic favors such as gunrunning and narcotics shipping. Oh, and of course we could always offer “moral” and “diplomatic” support to anyone who has a bone to pick with anyone else next-door.
3. Financial deprivation. Can you imagine what the $700 million-a-year-in-transit-fees pipeline would have meant for Pakistan? More to the point, what would it have meant for India? The easiest and least painful way to subjugate an adversary is to financially deprive him to the limits of poverty. Having had enough of tireless running to Islamabad with a bowl begging for the MFN, we must completely ban all imports from Pakistan and see it wither away into the abyss of penury. An economically prosperous Pakistan was, and will be, just as venomous as an emaciated and dilapidated Pakistan. Only, it would then have even more sting to its bite.
I don’t want to spam your blog so will stop here, but personally I’ve had enough of this “peace” nonsense. A country with a fourth of our spread, a sixth our population, a tenth our economic output and no legitimate historical claim to exist as a nation in the first place is draining us, bleeding us, killing us, slowly but surely, and not only do we exhibit disastrous inaction in the face of grave provocation, but actually provide it with financial and diplomatic resources to humiliate us even further. What is wrong with us as a nation? Are we fools? Or, are we cowards?
Forgive & Forget
Live & Let Live
some of the powerful words from our Moral Science classes...But who cares, those apply only for kids fight, rite?
Why this hatred...Is it coz you are witnessing so many atrocities and yet you are helpless(you couldn't do anything abt it)
Tolerance ..Virtue of India
Well, I am tempted to go on like this...
Geez, Pls bug me if you have anything to say..I will buzz off, rite now.
BTW gud blog though provocative ;)
I agree with your views. I was reminded of a recent email that somebody had forwarded.. "India has never invaded any country in its history". I was proud to read it, but now I begin to think may be it was our biggest mistake.
Whether they quote "Movement or "Religion" or "Freedom" or "Principle"... I cannot reason out taking innocent lives.
"An eye for an eye".. I guess we have lost more than an eye.. yet continue to be a pushover.