National/Regional/International Affairs
“Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins”.
-John Locke.
By N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal)
Kathmandu: When India is around, one doesn’t need an enemy. It is so believed across the country of Nepal and by the same token this South Asian popular maxim applies apparently to the entire smaller countries in South Asia that border India born in 1947.
A close look at India’s bilateral relations, at a given time, with individual countries gives a feeling that India is an enemy to these smaller nations.
All countries in this part of the world, the South Asian landmass, have at one time or regularly have experienced Indian expansionist and coercive behavior.
Why Bangladesh was fractured or say calculatedly split is not a guarded secret now. And why the last popular agitation erupted in Sri Lanka and the turmoil in the Maldives needs no sharp brain to understand.
Bangladesh though has economically developed in a miraculous manner must be appreciated. Even a subjugated country can achieve such incredible economic success is certainly a matter of pride for others in South Asia.
By this time, perhaps it is B’desh alone in the entire South Asia that is on the path of becoming a sizable regional economic power after India.
However, if the Bangladeshi economy is at the top then, unfortunately, its core politics in Dhaka is being presumably controlled by New Delhi.
Yes! On some occasions, Bangladesh appears close to Beijing, however, as and when coerced by New Delhi, Dhaka fears proximity with Beijing.
Yet Beijing has not lost its hope and, let’s presume, cares less of New Delhi’s obstruction, it has already made considerable inroads inside Bangladesh through different development projects. Dhaka’s fear is surficial and Dhaka prefers Beijing over New Delhi.
The Chinese envoy in Dhaka is comparatively active and smart.
The Sri Lankan bloody tumult ended up with Indian Prime Minister Modi pressurizing the India bend (it is so believed in Nepal) newly appointed Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe to award power projects to his Gujarati entrepreneur Gautam Adani — the most repulsive businessman of India whose intimate ties with Gujarati Prime Minister Modi has already become a curse, as laymen in India openly claim, to the entire countrymen.
Highly placed sources in South Asia claim that PM Modi while meeting with the Sri Lankan President Ranil threatened him and instructed him to look into the problems of the so-called “ignored” Sri Lankan Tamils or else the country may again see the previous political turbulence which summarily deposed the Gotabaya Brothers.
For India, creating problems in the countries in the neighborhood is its habit.
Nepal knows how India creates issues and problems and as a quack enters into the mayhem as an arbitrator and exploits the country for its political and security benefits.
The 12-point agreement signed in Delhi by Nepali leaders around 2006 is the root cause of Nepal’s perennial political glitches.
The 12-point agreement skillfully allowed India to overwhelm Nepali politics to be governed by India’s ‘trusted and tested’ men since the ouster of the Nepali King.
Back to Sri Lanka:
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, to recall, had with the tacit support of China and Pakistan “eliminated” the three decades-long India-sponsored Tamil Tigers’s demand for a separate Tamil land.
The LTTE leader Prabhakaran was, informed sources say, the brainchild of Rajiv Gandhi who was entrusted with the job of keeping Sri Lanka in perpetual instability.
The three decades-long LTTE terror in Sri Lanka ended in 2009 when China and Pakistan assisted President Mahinda.
Talking with this scribe some decades back in Kathmandu’s Annapurna Hotel, the former Foreign Secretary of India Jyotindra Nath Dixit (late J. N. Dixit) had admitted that “sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) by New Delhi to Colombo was a historical blunder of India.
India has committed many such blunders after gaining independence that have disturbed the political stability of the countries that unfortunately border with India.
What PM Modi is in the eyes of senior congress leader Mani Shankar Iyer was best made known to the entire world when he talking to a media man in Delhi said brusquely that “PM Modi is nothing but a fool of the highest Order”.
A small visual strip is making several rounds in social media including Twitter, both in Nepal and India, which has the insulting statement of Mani Aiyer on PM Modi.
PM Modi may be of high importance to the countries in the Quad plus France but the dream of Modi or for that matter of India to become a regional/world power will eventually be a distant dream as long as India is taken as a rogue regional power whose collective or even bilateral ties with individual countries in South Asia is as bad as could be registered.
In many more ways than one thus, India’s fake “neighborhood first policy” will be a misnomer and nothing more than that.
Take, for example, the Maldives wherein India rules through reportedly its High Commissioner who accuses the Maldivians that the Indian High Commissioner as a person prevails over the key political decisions of the Archipelago.
Abdullah Yameen, the former Maldivian President knows better what India means to the common Maldivians.
To recall, some two years ago, the sensitive Maldivian nationals came out to the streets and chanted slogans like, “Indian Military Out” and the like.
This explains the Maldivian(s) wrath/hatred against India.
A Gujarati businessman Gautam Adani is so close to PM Modi that prompted even personality like George Soros, an American billionaire investor, to openly make a derisive statement stating that “Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani’s recent troubles in the stock market would spur ‘democratic revival in India’ and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will ‘have to answer questions'”.
Soros, in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, held February 7-19, 2023, said Modi would “have to answer questions” from foreign investors and Parliament on allegations the Adani group is facing”.
Taking a jibe at PM Modi-Adani nexus, a Pakistan Observer wrote, February 22, 2023, that prominent financial investor George Soros while addressing the Munich Security Conference took up the issue of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s secret relationship with his close ally and business tycoon Gautam Adani who was accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards”.
For the record, billionaire Soros, who has Jewish roots is a Hungarian-American national who recently accused that PM Modi and Adani were close allies and that PM Modi has been silent ever since Adani Enterprises was accused of financial irregularities”.
India’s Godi media have been pouncing upon this Old US national since then.
Several international agencies reported then that George Soros talked at the Munich Security Conference that the Modi-Adani nexus eventually will “significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government” and open the door to push for much-needed institutional reforms. “I may be naive, but I expect a democratic revival in India,” said Soros.
In plain words, Soros, the founder of Open Society, hints that India is not even a democracy worth the name.
If Soros is to be believed then the Modi-Adani tie-up shall prove advantageous to Modi’s immediate rival-Rahul Gandhi-the Indian Congress leader at the time of the approaching parliamentary elections in India.
So much so that, over these months and with Rahul Gandhi’s solo campaign of “Unite India”, Rahul’s popularity across India has gone up as much as PM Modi’s prestige has gone down.
Rahul is also popular in Nepal though the Nepali population still recall how Pilot turned India’s Prime Minister has had damaged Nepal had imposed Economic Blockade on Nepal on March 23, 1989 ostensibly to teach a befitting lesson to sit Nepal King Birendra who had summarily rejected the idea of Gandhi in Islamabad for the formation of a mini SAARC within the seven-member SAARC itself.
PM Rajiv Gandhi was also annoyed with King Birendra for not allowing the Italy-born Mrs. Sonia Gandhi to enter the Lord Pashupatinath Temple.
The Temple of Lord Shiva is restricted to the entrance of men of other faiths and beliefs other than the Hindus.
However, save for a few tilted and bent political personalities for whom India is the source of their inspiration and a model to copy in their lives, India is simply great for these traitors.
Yet, some believe that barring a few remarkable achievements, such as the economy, over these decades after the “conditional independence”, there is hardly a notable thing that one would feel excited and tempted to copy from neighboring India.
The men who love and honor India from the core of their hearts and more often than not hate Nepal comparatively forget the fact that entire worldly evils are being exported to Nepal through deliberately kept open international borders.
It is this open border phenomenon which has over these recent decades swelled Nepal with illegal Indian immigrants who upon bribing some Chief District Officers in Nepal. Mostly the corrupt belong to the Brahminic tribe, who against a few thousand Nepali rupees award the “birth Citizenship Certificates” to the immigrants who later within a short span of some years overwhelm the population thereby scaling down the number of Nepali population.
This way, beginning in 1950 and with the borders kept open, a great demographic disaster has already approached Nepal which if not checked on time, would enhance or say speed up the Sikkimisation bid of India in no time.
Indian target is gulping Nepal when Nepal is being run by India’s elevated rulers.
Our own prediction, stated many times in our previous issues, is that Nepal shall be declared a province of India by the early 2030s.
It may appear ridiculous and exaggerated, however, if one looks into the streets of Nepal across the country, hordes of Indian beggars/kawadi wallas/poverty-stricken families from Indian cities have almost taken over Nepali cities.
Visit the Temple of Lord Shiva in the morning, and look at how the Indian beggars terrorize Nepali nationals.
And now Pakistan:
Needless to say, Pakistan, beginning the second day of the grand partition of the South Asian landmass, has been enduring the continued Indian onslaughts and yet standing tall.
Let’s forget the past and concentrate on Pakistan as it stands today.
Braving the persisting political instability for several months after the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistan apparently has taken in recent days a bold step towards sorting out the internal political problems duly by announcing a caretaker Prime Minister who would hold Parliamentary elections.
A less-heard Baloch political personality, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar is the new Prime Minister whose cabinet includes former Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, Jalil Abbas Jilani as the interim foreign minister and a former Central Bank Chief Shamshad Akhtar as the country’s finance minister.
Jilani has been appointed as Foreign Minister apparently keeping an eye on the derailed Pakistan-US relations though the powerful military continues to maintain high-level contacts with the US administration.
Says Vedanta Patel, the US State Spokesman, and August 17, 2023, that the US has a shared interest with Pakistan, quite candidly, in combating threats to regional stability and remains ready to work with Pakistan to combat militant and terrorist groups”. This does mean that the US in no way can ignore Pakistan for various political and strategic reasons.
FM Jilani is expected to bring the deteriorated US-Pak ties to its original track and similarly, the former Banker Shamshad has reportedly picked up to give the plummeting Pakistani economy.
His political acumen will be tested as to how Jilani handles Pakistan-India ties.
The dwindling Pakistani economy got breathing space when the country signed a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently.
Observers in Nepal opine that Pakistan’s real challenge remains in bringing the dipping economy and restoring political stability.
The overall challenge of this caretaker government is apart from conducting elections on time and restoring political stability in the country that got a severe jolt on May 9, 2023, when Imran Khan’s supporters (?) or an unknown mob went on the rampage which damaged a few military installations.
The new interim set up shall also have the task to defuse the political crisis and skyrocketing prices of consumer goods in Pakistan.
Indian observers claim that, as is their habit of passing negative comments on Pakistan, what is the guarantee that the persisting political crisis and instability shall cease to exist the day a new political set-up assumes the command of the next elected government?
The friends of Pakistan in Nepal hope that the yet-to-be-elected government shall take care of all the differing faiths inside Pakistan and shall not allow a repeat of the sad event that rocked entire South Asia and the entire Christian World.
Al Jazeera reported, 17 August, 2023, that the Muslims in eastern Pakistan went on a rampage over the allegations that a Christian man had desecrated the Quran, demolishing the man’s house before attacking the other properties.
Al Jazeera further recalls that “in one of the country’s worst cases of religious violence, a mob as far back as in the year 2009 burned an estimated 60 homes and killed six Christians in the district of Gojra in Punjab, after accusing them of insulting Islam.
Let’s hope that things will settle down after the newly elected government takes a formal shape in Islamabad.
Now John Bolton:
The former National Security Advisor John Bolton talking with the VOA has said that the US Congress should look at the allegedly leaked cipher about former prime minister Imran Khan’s ousting when it returns from summer recess”.
In an interview with VOA broadcasting service, recorded this week, Bolton said he “worries about” the Biden administration’s foreign policy about South Asia because “it’s not clearly defined”.
Bolton made these observations upon listening to the INTERCEPT revelation made recently on how PM Imran Khan was ousted from power.
Obviously, Bolton’s interview will once again disturb the politics of US and Pakistan in its own way.
However, the new caretaker plus the Military set-up shall sort out the issue, let’s hope so.
By and large, a testing time for Pakistan and its nationals. That’s all.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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