Adversity and poverty are harsh schools, and those who come out of such tests, including several hundred million people in India, are ready to face up to the challenges coming their way.
An amazing coincidence. Just when Apple and other top US brands announce that they are downsizing operations in China and ramping up production in India, comes the Pahalgam terror attack. GHQ Rawalpindi has become nothing more than a pliant instrument of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, so it obligingly launches the Pahalgam terror attack. The intent was to cause communal unrest not just in Kashmir but throughout the country, so that India would not be perceived as a safe destination. It is so because successive governments in India resisted pressure from the US in particular, which, especially during the stint in the White House of Bill Clinton, worked hard at forcing India to denuclearize. The country did not, and the consequence is that it has built up a nuclear deterrent that is sufficient to ensure Mutual Assured Destruction should any hostile country launch a nuclear war against India. Where conventional forces are concerned, the people of India are as ready to face the exigencies of combat as the PLA was during the time of Mao Zedong.
The PLA today is a very different force. It may have a large number of weapons, but where the soldier, sailor or airperson is concerned, they lack combat experience.
Given the reality that Cold War 2.0 principally between the US and China has become, it would be logical to expect Washington, especially during the Trump administration, of providing a seamless logistics supply chain of munitions both to be stockpiled as well as for use when kinetic operations are on in whichever front is active, that against terror to the west and against authoritarian expansionists to the north. Both are the common foes of both New Delhi and Washington. Why this does not seem to have happened is the unique chemistry of President Trump. Predicting the spin of a roulette wheel is easier than predicting his response to a situation. Vice-President JD Vance is the next in line to President Trump, and it would have been with a conversational exchange between them that he came out with the astonishing remark that the conflict now ongoing between India and Pakistan is none of the business of the US. Helping a partner to fight terrorism in a major front on the Global War on Terror is very much in the US interest, as much so as it is India’s.
When much of the weaponry hurled against India has been manufactured in China and supplied by that country, it ought to be of still greater interest to the White House. In External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, India has among the most capable Foreign Ministers in the world. He and his team, led by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, has been explicit in their statements on the current conflict between India and Pakistan being a conflict pitting a terror state against its victim. Given that Vice-President Vance is the individual most suited to be the successor to President Trump, it may be advisable for him to read up on the sorry situation that India has been facing at the hands of GHQ Rawalpindi. Concession after concession over the decades since 1947 have been replied to by still greater acts of terror perpetrated against India. Finally, under PM Modi India has had enough, and has acted in a manner that has taken GHQ Rawalpindi by surprise. At the same time, the country is speaking in a unified manner very different from the expectations of Chief of Army Staff Munir of Pakistan. The reality is that India is on the front line of countries battling terror. The country also has a hardened pool of manpower to draw on, should the military need to expand in size, not to forget the technological skills of the people, skillsets in plenty that the US is well aware of.
Adversity and poverty are harsh schools, and those who come out of such tests, including several hundred million people in India, are ready to face up to the challenges coming their way. Hum anek, hum ek. We are diverse but united. Such is the way the people of India are, steeled through such experiences. Where Pakistan is concerned, the central authority is breaking up as a consequence of linguistic differences, and as a consequence, the grip of the military even over its own ranks is getting attenuated. Besides, unlike in the past, the Taliban in Afghanistan have opened up a new front, diverting some of the attention away from the neighbour to the east. Also, internal security has now become another front, with the Pashtun territories getting increasingly restive as a consequence of the step motherly treatment of them and other non-Pakistani Punjabi provinces. Even within Pakistan Punjab, regions apart from Potohar are upset at their relatively lower representation within the Pakistan army. Should GHQ Rawalpindi escalate the kinetic showdown with India, the response from the Indian side would further accelerate the process of disintegration already taking place in Pakistan. On the contrary, the people of India united on the issue of terror from Pakistan, irrespective of faith. The ridiculous “Two Nation” theory most recently expounded by the Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan, Asim Munir, is what had made GHQ Rawalpindi believe that the minorities in India were getting restive. By looking at India through the prism of delusions they have, an incorrect picture gets drawn of vulnerabilities on the Indian side. The fierce but proportional response to the Pahalgam terror attack by the armed forces of the Republic of India was unexpected, when seen through the prism of hatred that is commonly used by GHQ Rawalpindi.
Markers abound of India being on the way to becoming the third superpower, after the US and China. Among the latest is the signing of the India-UK Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The founding fathers of the US adopted English as the national language of the new country, and it needs to be borne in mind that India has the largest number of citizens who speak English, after arguably the US. It may be mentioned that Prime Minister Modi is fluent in English, and uses the language on occasion in his exposition of what India is, or will, do. With their Sanskrit roots, languages in India are in a way cousins of the languages originating in Europe that have Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, as their common root. This includes languages such as French and German. Overall, there are several reasons besides the common threat they face that are creating a strong partnership between India and the West. Besides of course, the common threats both face of authoritarian expansionism and extremist violence. It is long past time for such a partnership to not just form but emerge as a strong, combined force.