Last week, special forces of NonPakistani army reportedly intruded 500 meters into Indian territory and ambushed a patrol of the Indian Army. Five Indian soldiers were killed in the well-planned ambush. Much of India has reacted with outrage and intense anger. But the current Indian Government has ignored both the public protest and the anger in the Army. The Indian Government does not want to damage the overall and broad relationship with the new and already impotent leadership of NonPakistan.
Back in May, 50 Chinese troops entered Indian territory and established a temporary post declaring it as Chinese territory. The Indian Government reacted in the same manner. They first dismissed it as insignificant and then they begged the Chinese to withdraw. The Indian Government did not want to damage the overall and broad relationship with the Chinese leadership.
None of this is new. This has been the pattern of Indian leaders for the past 1,000 years. But this Indian Government has gone to a new high of cowardice and pusillanimity. They act the same way with both stronger and weaker opponents.
- Indian leaders are deeply afraid of China because China is bigger, the Chinese economy is much bigger and China’s military is much more powerful than India’s.
- On the other hand, Indian leaders are just as afraid of NonPakistan because NPak is smaller, the NPak economy is much smaller and their military is much much weaker than India’s. Why? Because Indian leaders argue that, being weaker, the NPak leaders can gamble with more risky actions.
Indians have believed for over 1,000 years that their intentions are all that matter. If they proclaim their desire for peace and if they demonstrate it by weakening their own military capabilities, then the invaders would accept that and leave them alone. This may sound nuts but today’s Indian government expresses a fanatical belief in this approach. They are encouraged in this madness by the Obama Administration which constantly exhorts India to take steps that would “increase the confidence” of the NonPakistan military. And nothing matters more to this Indian Government than approbation from the West.
But there is a deeper issue at hand. The war inside NonPakistan between the military and some Taliban groups is beginning to escalate. The one issue these two warring factions agree on is attacking India and killing as many Indians as possible. So Indians kept being told that any action against NonPak military would actually unite these two warring factions against India. So, as this logic goes, it is better for India to absorb massacres of Indian troops & people than to retaliate against the NonPak military.
But will this approach actually deliver to the terrorists the big victory they desire? If you look at the many acts of terrorism committed in India by these terrorists, you notice that their main intention is to provoke violence between India’s majority and India’s Muslim minority. A protracted religious conflict within India is what these terrorists want and need.
So far, that has not happened. But there are increasing signs that the cowardly actions of the Indian Government might actually be helping the NonPakistani terrorists in their objective. Consider the American parallel.
- The attack on September 11, 2001 by Islamic terrorist group Al Qaeda was the most brutal and heinous attack on American homeland in history. We remember the intense wave of anti-Muslim anger that erupted in America in the immediate aftermath. But it subsided very quickly thanks to an immediate declaration of support for Muslim-Americans by President George W. Bush. President Bush did not stop with words. He followed up with a military attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. The American people knew and trusted President Bush to defend their country. Appeasement was not his style or approach. That comforted the American majority and increased their tolerance of America’s Muslim minority.
- Conversely, a much larger anti-Muslim wave went across many parts of America when a Muslim group decided to build a mosque across from the sacred World Trade Center site and when President Obama appeared to accept this idea. When the idea was dropped, the anti-Muslim sentiment evaporated.
The majority in every country wants to know that its interests, its culture and its way of life is being protected by its leaders. The best way to maintain peace and harmony at home is to attack the invaders on their own soil and take them out. Because when majority begins to lose confidence in its own government, the people begin to act. Since the civilian majority cannot attack outsiders, they begin attacking minorities inside their society.
This dynamic has an added danger in the special case that is India. The Muslim minority believes that they are descendants of conquerors of India and that the Indian majority is a vanquished, effeminate, subjugated race destined to be ruled by the masculine Muslims. This has been accepted by the Indian majority for the past so many decades and centuries. All Indian Governments have relied on this sense of acceptance in their pursuit of intensely pro-Muslim policies within India.
The attitudes of the Indian majority might be changing. The Indian majority is becoming more confident and with confidence comes anger, deep anger, against past abuses and current travails. This is being reflected in intense vitriol at the Indian Government’s cowardly acceptance of NonPak aggression. If the anger stays at that level, then it may be therapeutic.
But it may not and that is our increasing concern. If the Indian majority doesn’t get satisfaction, if the Indian Government refuses to retaliate against Non-Pakistan either militarily, economically or diplomatically, then the anger of the Indian majority could possibly turn inwards against India’s Muslim minority. That would be utterly unfortunate in every way and it would end up giving the NonPak terrorists the victory they really want.
Will today’s Indian Government even understand this? Would India’s Prime Minister learn even the slightest lesson from President Bush or even from President Obama? We doubt it because cowardice, pusillanimity and abject surrender run in the veins of India’s leaders.
And what do cowardly effeminate leaders do? They distrust their own military. And so they appoint weak commanders who will take political orders than defend the country. That seems to be the message of a reader who expressed the following sentiments this week:
- “The recent attacks
by the Pak Army and the intrusions by the PLA gets one to think that the Indian
Army under its current leadership is thoroughly incompetent, unprofessional and
worse, lacks guts and courage.” - “I am not sure
about the morale of the Army, but the morale of the veterans and civilians is definitely
at an all-time low. The never ending cycle of high net worth scams, falling value
of the rupee and now with the laissez-faire attitude of the million strong army, which
claims itself to be among the top five, suggests that the Army has forgotten its primary function”. - “I have some suggestions. Some are obvious.”
- “Fire the CO of
the Unit that loses men within own territory. An incursion of 500 m by the enemy, killing of
soldiers and going back 500 m is nothing but seriously sleeping on watch. - “All local
affairs such as these should be handled by
the responsible Corps Commander. “There is no need to run up the ladder like a
child wanting Papa’s approval. Such should be the fear in the enemy camp that
they should automatically expect retribution. The local Commander should be
responsible for all actions short of war. Nobody wants a full blown war,
including our neighbours. But if they are spoiling for a war, so be it.” - “Martial spirit demands that you should be in possession
of more enemy heads than the heads you have lost. This has nothing to do with civilized
behaviour.” - “The civil
government be damned. It has become a habit with the present government under
MMS to barter away Indian territory and interests by appointing pliable
officers at the helm. The chickens have now come home to roost and it is
clearly affecting the defence of India. The Indian Armed Forces are mandated by
the Constitution to protect and defend every inch of Indian territory. The sanction or
non-sanction from the political leadership is secondary.” - “The current Army
Chief has a habit of sprinting to a trouble spots to “review security”. This
drama makes it appear as though the Corps and Army Commanders are greenhorns
and require continuous guidance. The Army Chief should be blurting orders and
supporting his troops from Delhi rather than interfering with local operations.
My suspicion is that this Army Chief has gone to the trouble spot to warn our
own troops against escalation.”
But the above is about the future. How has the Indian Army handled such situations in the past? An answer was provided by Lt Gen Harwant Singh (retd) in his Hindustan Times article about firm handling of the NonPak military.
- “For
the Pakistan army to resort to unprovoked firing, cross the LoC to
attack Indian posts or ambush patrols, is not uncommon. … The best way to make the Pakistan army
desist from such activity is to severely punish every such act“. - “During the early ’90s, making the best of a wide gap in the Indian
posts, Pakistani troops crossed the LoC in the Poonch sector and
established a post in the upper part of an Indian village called Kirni. … A few days later, after
careful preparation and putting in place an appropriate deception plan,
we evicted Pakistani troops from the area. They left behind the bodies
of a soldier and an officer“ - “it was obvious that
the Pakistan army will not live with this ignominy and would certainly
retaliate in a big way. Therefore, it was essential to be fully prepared
for such a possibility. It was around 2am … the artillery observation
post officer could see a large body of Pakistani troops advancing on
this temporary post. I told the general to engage the enemy with all the
artillery we had deployed for such an eventuality. Predictably, the attacking troops were decimated much before they
could get anywhere near our post. The Pakistan commander thought that it
was perhaps a chance engagement of their attacking troops, so the next
night he tried to attack the post from another direction, not realising
that we had deployed the means to observe his activity at night. This
attack too met with the same fate. Intelligence sources put the Pakistani casualties at more than 200.
During the next year and a half of my tenure, total peace prevailed
along the LoC, in our corps zone“ - “The purpose of narrating this incident is to point out that the
Pakistan army needs firm handling and strong retribution for every act
of violation of peace on its part along the LoC. Commanders in the field
in Jammu and Kashmir must, without exception, act firmly with the
Pakistan army and let no mischief along the LoC go unpunished. Those of
us who have had experience of deployment along the LoC would bear with
this observation. Pakistan and its army are less likely to respond to
protests, pleadings and diplomatic niceties.”
The above two messages are clear as crystal.
This week’s action by the NonPak Special Forces is merely the first step we think. The NonPakistani generals will do everything they can to deflect the pressure on them by encouraging LeT and other terrorist groups to attack India both at the border and within India. The Indian Government may have forgotten that Mumbai attack of November 2008 but the AlQaeda-LeT combo surely celebrates it every year. Wouldn’t they want to attack Indian society even more spectacularly? We think so.
How long will the Indian majority keep tolerating these attacks and massacres of Indian people & Indian soldiers? At some point, they might take matters into their own hands and attacks inwards if the Indian Government doesn’t attack outwards at the NonPakistan military.
That would be a great victory for the NonPak terrorists and the Indian Government would have given it to them.
Editor’s Note: Regular
readers are aware that we don’t use the word Pak-i-Stan. We all
remember what happened when a regime called itself the Master Race. Soon
that led to the term Lebensraum. The rest is history. No one of
European descent calls that regime by its Third Reich name. The word
Pak-i-Stan is even more heinous than the Master Race word. Because it
means the land/regime of Pak or people pure enough for heaven. So by
definition that regime cannot allow itself to be stripped of its purity
by the presence of impure people. Hence their religious cleansing of
Buddhists, Hindus, Ahemadiya Muslims and now Shiya Muslims. Yet American
& Europeans keep using that given name Pak-i-Stan. We will not. So
we correct it by adding the neutral “non” and calling it NonPak-i-Stan or NPak for short. Note we do not use the insulting or negative term NaaPak.
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