“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident”.
-Arthur Schopenhauer.
N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal)
Kathmandu: Clearly, the US President Joe Biden has his own acute and geo-strategic compulsions so he is obliged to inch closer to an illiberal democrat and a political man who is highly Islamophobic to the extent that he is taken as a “terror machine” inside India by the 200 million plus minority Muslims.
The China factor has urgently necessitated President Joe Biden to keep the uneducated Indian Prime Minister Modi in good stead only to send signals to the already rising and competing world power China that close to the country there is India, born 1947, standing tall which has an equal and tentatively matching military strength.
Writes Ding Xiaoci for the Global Times dated June 29, 2023 that US has been ramping up efforts to rope in India to play a bigger role in its so-called Indo-Pacific Strategy clearly aiming to contain China, as proven in the latest move in which Washington’s top envoy to East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink proposed building a greater US-India partnership over issues concerning the South China Sea”.
This better explains as to why the US needs India-the South Asian menace.
Having said this, the fact is that India is yet to forget the 1962 humiliating defeat that it had in its share in China-India fatal border clashes.
However, China is much more than President Biden and PM Modi understand.
China is a gigantic force indeed.
China, say Nepali experts, must not irritate China by aligning with the US for a variety of politico-military reasons.
The US wants to threaten China by inviting India in and around the South China Sea issues.
It is this increasing Chinese pressure that forces Biden to close his eyes and in the process the US President has almost forgotten that the US used to stand for the preservation of Universal democratic values and human rights concerns worldwide.
Needless to say, the burning of, Imphal Manipur for two months or so is not of any concern to the recognized World Power which once was known for its championing of core democratic rights and well-being of the people across the globe.
Manipur was burning prior to PM Modi’s visit to the US and is still burning when Modi is back.
Writes Meenakshi Ganguly, the Deputy Asia Director of the Human Rights Watch that India’s Manipur state is on the boil, with social media flooded with visuals of people killed and injured in armed attacks. Violent protests broke out after an attack on June 29, while a church was looted and burned down, June 30, 2023.
PM Modi remains determined as if he prefers the killing of Indian Christians much the same way as the Minority Muslims are on occasions lynched by Hindu fundamentalists in India.
Lynching and terrifying Muslims in Bharat aka Hindustan aka India is a phenomenon now.
Is it that the US under Joe Biden has summarily abandoned the values for which the countries across the world lauded the US role?
Is it that Joe Biden now embraces even those leaders who are condemned in their own country, for example, PM Modi of India?
Hugging PM Modi on occasions in the US does tell that the US has since long concentrated its efforts in securing strategic alliances and benefits even if such a grouping drifts the US from its long-avowed goals for which the country of Abraham Lincoln stands and so is lauded across the globe?
The US President must be told in no uncertain terms that his excessive hobnob with the South Asian menace, as PM Modi is taken in Nepal and other South Asian countries including freshly the Maldives, bodes ill for USs bilateral ties with the smaller South Asian nations.
After the advent of President Joe Biden, sorry to say, PM Modi is behaving like an autocrat emperor of South Asia which gets reflected in PM Modi’s increasing coercive and erratic handling of India’s bilateral relations with smaller South Asian countries.
Neighborhood first policy of India has turned into “coerce and twist the neighbor’s arms first”.
The policy as such is a big fraud and misnomer which has failed even if Minister S Jay Shankar lauds the defunct policy.
In a way, Joe Biden has deputed Prime Minister Modi as an undeclared policeman of South Asia which ultimately bodes ill for the USA-the symptoms of which shall come to the knowledge of President Biden when Vladimir Putin comes out from the current Ukrainian quagmire.
It would be too late by then for Joe Biden.
Needless to say, ace fraudster PM Modi is attached to the US only because at the moment Russian Federation is comparatively weaker because of its heavy engagement with Ukraine.
Biden knows that India is not with the US on Russia-Ukraine war but yet his attachment to Modi is simply puzzling.
However, Biden’s choice of India in the current South Asian milieu when Pakistan is weaker is frightening.
One theory suggests that both US and India are cheating each other nd the ties are simply feeble and interim.
Nepali observers say that Biden is hoping against hope in that India even as of now takes Russian Federation as heir apparent to the now non-existent USSR-the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic.
It was with the USSR, India had inked a twenty years security deal in the early seventies which helped India to bifurcate Pakistan and facilitated the emergence of a new nation in South Asia-Bangladesh.
That time Pakistan was one of the strongest allies of the US in South Asia, however, when Pakistan needed the US most, the US frustrated Pakistan.
Even as of now, the former ally of the US, Pakistan is left high and dry for some mysterious reasons.
Though, Pakistan as of these days and months is not in a good shape, as some international media outlets confirm, as some of its internal problems are as acute as anything.
Rumors say that the Pakistani Army’s grip on Pakistan’s contemporary politics is increasing more so after the mayhem of May 09, 2023, in Pakistan which saw the first ever attack on Army installations presumably by Imran Khan’s supporters.
“Some leaked audio tapes appear to suggest that the attack on the Lahore Corps commander’s official residence was led by local PTI (IK’s party) leaders. The organized manner in which a fortified building in a top security zone was completely gutted indicated that it was not just a mob action but instead a pre-planned act”, writes Pakistani media veterans.
It was this vandalism that the Pak Army concluded that Imran Khan’s party crossed the “red line” and then the Army came into needed action.
Better late than never, Nepali observers say, that the Pakistani military had supported and nurtured Imran Khan but later the Army came to its senses that it was a failed experiment.
But was Imran Khan the choice and preference of Army Chief Qamar Bajwa? The debate is open now.
Is it that Khan was dismissed only when Bajwa realized that Khan intends to cross the RED LINE as defined by the all-powerful Army?
Having said all these, let’s admit that Imran Khan while in power gave a new international dimension to Pakistan whose one-on-one talks with world leaders surely enhanced the prestige of Pakistan.
However, once the darling of the Pakistani military turned a subversive element given the May 09, 2023 bedlam which is what appears to have irked the Army Chief General Asim Munir.
Let’s not talk of Pakistan’s internal matters as we in Nepal do not have something special to celebrate given the fake Bhutanese scam and the fresh Lalita Nivas scandal that involves two past Prime Ministers e.g. Madhav Kumar Nepal and Dr. Babu Ram Bhattarai.
Both Nepal and Bhattarai are taken by informed sources as India’s yes men equivalent a la to informers inserted by India to Sikkimise Nepal.
Dr. Bhattarai when hibernating in Delhi under Delhi’s mission was reportedly recruited by the RAW agency.
The deteriorating situation inside Pakistan is a matter of concern for entire South Asians as Pakistan used to be, and still is, the single hope for SA population which could act like a fitting and matching political as well nuclear deterrent to the South Asian menace-that India has proved itself to be even if Joe Biden prefers PM Modi for his strategic interests.
But will Pakistan regain, any time soon, its lost political and economic stability?
As close neighbors, Nepal wishes all the best for Pakistan and its people.
The undeniable fact is that Pakistan will begin falling apart if and when the Pakistan Army becomes weaker.
However, this should not mean that the Army should dictate day to day politics in Pakistan.
A good rapprochement in between the political paraphernalia and the all-powerful armed forces in Pakistan could save the country from the continued onslaughts of the enemies within and without.
The tragedy in Nepal is that despite the presence of sovereign Pakistan’s embassy here, media men like me and others interested in knowing Pakistan’s ongoing politics, have to necessarily search the India’s Godi media to keep abreast with the Pakistani politics.
However, it is not of our concern altogether. Their silence albeit is benefitting, for sure, Indian propaganda machine.
Now back to PM Modi:
The Indian PM Modi has returned India after witnessing intense street humiliations and demonstrations against him in the host country, but yet he is back equipped with heavy and sophisticated weapons for its use. Indeed, the weapons that India is to acquire from the US shortly is 31 MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) apart from other equally highly sensitive and effective weaponry which in all likelihood is sure to threaten rival China.
The Hindustan Times dated July 02, states that the “US has offered the 31 drones to India for $3.07 billion. This, however, is subject to negotiations. The estimated cost includes weapons, sensors, ground control stations, ground data terminals, ground handling equipment, spares and logistics support”.
In all, PM Modi has returned India enriching his country with highly sophisticated and precise weapons that is sure to elevate India to high position in the South Asian region militarily and that too at a time when its nearest and competing rival Pakistan being not in a good shape politically and economically.
India’s military strength has gone up in the region thanks the US tricky benevolence.
However, is it US benevolence or selling of weapons as against commercial benefits could be a matter of debate indeed.
In arming India, the US wants to hint China that the US shall do all it can to cut the size of China in the years ahead.
However, the USs arming India has come close on the heels of US Secretary Antony Blinken assuring President Xi Jinping recently that both the US and China need to work together for global peace.
How China responds to the USs arming India in the given and changed context shall have to be watched.
Though China is able to compete with India round the clock, however, China’s iron friend Pakistan is weaker at the moment so China’s hands in South Asia are hopefully tied to challenge an India that has just received the US blessings.
The South Asian regional peace and political stability has suddenly taken a new but a dangerous swing with India swelling with arms at a time when Pakistan is struggling for restoring minimum normalcy.
Needless to say, the balance is in India’s favor which means the increment in India’s highhandedness and coercive actions in India’s neighborhood plus China will attain a new height.
India out slogan in Maldives:
Writes Swedish Professor Ashok Swain that anger against PM Modi has led to “Out India” movement in the Maldives. Modi’s insensitive foreign policy is making India unpopular among SA countries. It started with Nepal, and is it now everywhere”.
A fresh news from Telegraph (Online India) dated July 3, 2023, reports, “Wearing Modi masks, supporters of former President Abdulla Yameen have been staging protests with #IndiaOut banners demanding his early release for some days now. On Thursday, they went around Male greeting people with Modi masks. A video circulated widely on social media showed some of them dressed up in what looked like tattered white kurta pajamas and one had been garlanded with sandals.
However, the men in the streets as alleged by the online portal may be misleading and incorrect as the reports, we have collected from our own South Asian source suggests that the men in the streets of Male were genuine Maldivian nationals who when felt that the Indian interference and intervention in the Maldivian internal affairs continued increasing then only, they came to the streets chanting PM Modi Out slogans.
What is guaranteed is that save baby Bhutan, none of the South Asian countries possess even a jot of love and respect for India-the menace.
Though Nepal has the highest concentration of Indian moles equivalent to traitors yet the people here possess deep hatred for India for a variety of political reasons.
The Maldivians have come to the streets in Male chanting slogans against PM Modi alleging the latter to have interfered in the internal affairs of the Archipelago.
Some two years back, the people in Male came to the streets demanding “Indian military out” slogans.
And yet, Foreign Minister Shankar claims that India has developed connectivity in the region.
The fact is that India itself a threat of South Asia which the US needs to understand as quickly as possible.
Or else it would be too late.
Now Sabrina Siddiqui-the WSJ Reporter:
Sabrina who had stolen the show at time when PM Modi was in the US for her asking a very pertinent question on Modi’s hatred on Indian Muslims.
It was this question of Sabrina for which she was online-trolled by PM Modi’s stooges from the ruling party.
US officially hits back on India:
Some even took Sabrina’s question to Modi as a “motivated one”.
When enough had been enough, the US government spokesman John Kirby US John Kirby came to the rescue of Sabrina Siddiqui.
John Kirby said, “the reported harassment was completely unacceptable and antithetical to the very principles of democracy that were on display last week during PM Modi’s state visit.
Back in Hindutva India, Pro-BJP websites such as OpIndia went even farther, reporting that she is (Sabrina) the daughter of “Pakistani parents” and is “echoing the claims of Islamists.”
Having said this, the Wall Street Journal reporter Sabrina Siddiqui bagged immense support from respected and veteran Nepali journalists who lauded her for posing the tough question to PM Modi.
The Telegraph Nepal online portal congratulates Sabrina for asking tricky question to PM Modi that apparently unnerved the entire BJP paraphernalia in India.
All in all, Joe Biden’s intense love for undeserving PM Modi will necessarily encourage Beijing to increase its influence in South Asia through Nepal or B’desh and most likely from baby Bhutan.
To recall, China and Bhutan in the recent days and weeks have had several rounds of secret diplomatic talks in Chinese city-Kunming.
Clearly, Bhutan prefers now to come out from the grips of expansionist and coercive Indian regime.
Will Joe Biden reconcile with China in the larger interests of the smaller South Asian nations? He should or else China will for sure flex its muscle to thwart India’s increased superiority. That’s all.