OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

INDIA, I’M AFRAID, IS COMMITTING A MISTAKE

Valson Thampu

?

It is my ardent hope that India prove wiser than she pretends to be at the present time. Just in case she doesn’t, I need to say in syllables of deep-seated foreboding as follows-

One has to be wilfully blind to not realize that America’s newly-found admiration for India is devious. Put simply, the underlying motive is to use India as a tool to checkmate China. [Well, the American media is not silent about this.]

This may seem to gel well with our geopolitical interests, China being the neighbourly dragon breathing fire from our borders.

This freshly minted strategic partnership with China is based on the old, crude principle: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But, no ground can be flimsier than this for forging enduring friendship.

We have no excuse for being na?ve about the foreign policy of the US. Murderous self-interest is its essence. Show me a single country anywhere in the world that, having been co-opted into the American orbit, did not come to grief.

It will not be long before Taiwan’s turn comes.

America has no use for us other than the diabolic use to which Ukraine is being put in respect of Russia.

Let me state the general principle. A friendship situated in the paradigm of enmity –including enmity towards one’s enemy- is anything but friendship. It is, at best, an opportunistic alliance. Its outcome can only be the aggravation of enmity and conflict. Conflict can help you only to bleed. That is not achievement, even if, in the process, you manage to make your hostile neighbour also bleed.

I not against the US. Nor am I for China. I am, unapologetically, for self-respect. We can’t position ourselves as vishwa guru and be twitching to the tune of external players, no matter who they are. ?

Pakistan walked this way ahead of us with abject complicity. Never mind that we don’t want to learn anything else from Pakistan. But, this at least we must. Pakistan is a tragic parable on it means to play second fiddle to the US interests.

At the very least, getting carried away just for gaining the goodwill of someone else reflects poorly on us. What should make us rejoice is not that Uncle Sam now pretends to take us seriously. Our national pride can rest only our own internal strength. That strength depends on our development. Unity is the engine of that development. If India can tap into its enormous human resources, excluding none and exorcising ourselves of the demon of negativity, we will not have to pillion-ride with anyone.

There is no dignity like the innate strength of self-reliance. National oneness is the seed of that strength. A nation in a state of endemic internal strife can never attain that vitality and dignity. No one will take such a nation seriously. We can celebrate as if we have conquered the world. But behind our celebrations, the spectre of modern-day barbarity will loom, peering at us through its hollow eyes and grinning with gumless teeth. ?Jai Hind!

?

?

?