India’s talk of Asian Century and the joint exercise with US; Pakistan’s sliding diplomatic acumen
Love one another and help others to rise to the higher levels, simply by pouring out love. Love is infectious and the greatest healing energy
- SATYA SAI
Kathmandu: On August 17, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar almost “appealed” India’s rival China to shun the bilateral differences in the larger interest of giving a formal shape to what he called the "Asian Century" for which, he says, cordial ties in between the two rival nations, India and China, must exist.
The split personality that Shankar is, as he is being taken in Nepal for himself being an Indian, having a Japanese wife and an American son, made such an appealing observation while making a lecture on 'India's Vision of the Indo-Pacific' at the prestigious Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He says, “The Asian Century would not happen if the two neighbours do not join hands”.
Having said that, the Indian minister also admitted that the two countries, China and India, were currently going through an “extremely difficult phase”.
In an implied manner the Indian minister accepted that they both have tense relations due to the recurring skirmishes on the borders of late or say in recent years.
During the lecture in Thailand, Shankar however, hinted that if China and India want to come closer then they have abundant good reasons to do so. Observers in Nepal, through their own “terrible and horrifying” experience with next-door enemy India would wish to suggest China (though it is also not a reliable and trusted friend of Nepal) not get lured by this split personality’s soothing lecture made in Thailand. Hopefully, the Thai students at the university may have taken FM Shankar as a knowledgeable and modest Indian diplomat, however, Nepal knows well and experienced Shankar’s coercive, hegemonic and expansionist attitude towards the smaller neighbours of India who have been repenting on why on earth their neighbour India is, the former British slave. Shankar is out and out a negative man, as far as Nepal’s experience is about him.
How much India is coercive or has kept its smaller neighbours in a terrified state gets testified when the sitting foreign minister of Bangladesh, Dr A K Momen who has just “appealed to the Indian authorities to do everything to ensure that Sheikh Hasina’s government, here in Bangladesh, remains in office” after the elections that are due this year-end. This means “Delhi will shape B’desh politics but not the Bangladeshis, the people of Bangladesh? This in itself is a great puzzle.
Writes our colleague Syed Badrul Ahsan for Dhaka Tribune, August 20, that “the foreign minister’s comments throw up a disturbing set of circumstances. In the first place, they inform the world that Bangladesh’s diplomatic establishment is incapable of formulating and carrying out the country’s foreign policy objectives. In the second, they let the world know, to our intense shame, that the political party now in power in Dhaka will remain in office on the strength of Indian support for it. Our votes do not and will not matter”.
Our professional colleagues in Dhaka suspect the very credentials of the minister and by extension PM Hasina as well. A Twitterati from Bangladesh, Nznn Ahmed (a Muslim woman interested in geopolitics) has it: “How can the foreign minister of an independent sovereign country say such things who, Minister Momen, had “requested India to ensure PM Hasina’s government at any cost”. Or in other words, she says, “Requested India to do whatever it takes to sustain Sheikh Hasina’s government”.
Enters Zaianal Abedin: This B’deshi scholar while attending an International webinar held in Islamabad in 2020, appealed to his participating scholars from a host of Muslim countries to form what he called a “coalition” to fight and dispel the Indian spy agency RAW menace which, Abedin guarantees, has been eating Bangladeshi government and the country’s politics like a moth and that the RAW peril was so rampant in his country that making and breaking of governments were a common phenomenon. He says, most of the ministers in the upper rung of the government structure were all close to “RAW”.
Tentatively, Nepal too is plagued with the RAW menace perhaps more than Bangladesh to the extent that Nepal is soon to become an Indian protectorate if and when the citizenship bill awaiting final approval from the President takes to the authority of law. Thus, in a way, Bangladesh and Nepal are vying voluntarily to serve the “mad elephant” in the South Asian room which has so far damaged more or less the entire smaller South Asian nations. Classic examples are obviously Nepal and Bangladesh.
Then comes Sri Lanka: A recent event in Sri Lanka saw a political disturbance in the Himalayan dimension which forced the ruling elites (the Gotabaya brothers) to flee the country to save their lives.
Interesting here is the hard fact that the political unrest or say the upheaval in Sri Lanka was, as is presumed, the exclusive creation of the Indian regime which had, expectedly, designed the unrest in the island nation to chase China from Sri Lanka and also from the entire sensitive belt for India and the US-led QUAD.
Under this scheme, the Gotabaya brothers with their grand escapade eased India to install the prime minister and later the president of its choice in Colombo.
When the design took a positive shape for India, Sri Lankan nationals who were “presumed” to be excessively close to the Indian regime and the South Block were reportedly ‘installed’ as prime minister and president of Sri Lanka. Could be a hypothetical assumption, however, events that have taken shape in recent days and weeks do tell that India is overwhelmed in the search for a new prime minister and the president for Sri Lanka. Thus Dinesh Gunawardena, on July 22, and Ranil Wickremesinghe were declared President and the Prime Minister of the Island nation.
As far as Ranil is concerned, the entire SA region recognizes him as a Sri Lankan with an excessive India-tilted political man. He was a “one-man army” in the Parliament.
In a Tweet, writes the Swedish Professor of Indian origin Ashok Swain, August 18, that “Sri Lanka allowed a Chinese ship to dock at Hambantota despite the Indian regimes’ repeated objection? To keep the Indian regime happy, Sri Lanka (today) gave two wind power projects to Adani. They know what keeps India’s Dear Leader happy”.
Adani is an Indian businessman from Gujarat from where PM Modi has his origin.
What is thus evident is that PM Modi was with the unfortunate Gotabaya brothers while they both were in power, and now PM Modi is with the present-day “installed” leaders as well.
Lauren Frayer writing for the NPR, August 19, says that “Beijing critics have long offered up Hambantota as the classic example of what they call a Chinese debt trap. Now with Sri Lanka bankrupt and politically unstable, they are flagging it as a worrying example of how China might use that infrastructure for military purposes”.
She claims that both China and Sri Lanka claim that the Chinese ship was in Hambantota just for “scientific research” which was to stay till August 22 for resupply. Expectedly, the ship has already left Hambantota port. “Foreign security experts called it a Chinese naval ship that’s been used in the past to track satellites and missiles”.
Indian PM Modi extracted benefits even from the docking of the Chinese ship, Yuan Wang 5 and forced Colombo to award the wind power projects to his Gujrati friend Adani.
As is the habit, an Indian media woman Seshadri Chari for the Print, 19 August, claims that the Chinese ship is “equipped to snoop on defence and strategic assets in its periphery -750 kms. radius which includes six Indian ports, and Koodankulam and Kalpakkam nuclear facilities”.
Whatever may have been the case with the Chinese ship docked in Hambantota port, the fact is that China too is in the same race to increase its influence in and around South Asia and the Indian Ocean as much as India itself.
However, of the two rivals, India’s devilish and expansionist acts terrify the smaller neighbours wherein India has installed its “stooges” to run the satellites of India itself.
Bangladesh and Nepal now follow baby Bhutan which has voluntarily submitted the entire nation to the mercy of the regional scoundrel India. Pakistan’s weak diplomacy:
The equal, perfect and appropriate competitor or say the match is the Pakistani state but its present-day diplomacy in Islamabad appears to be in a terribly weakened state as the Pakistani diplomats posted abroad more so in South Asia prefer to relax during their entire tenure.
The fact is that Nepal is a challenging posting for its strategic location, so have told the European diplomats to this scribe. Obviously, Nepal’s sandwiched position in between India and China makes it important and challenging both.
In the 1990s, Pakistani envoys like Kamran Niaz and Naseer Mian for example were not only highly “skilled” but competent as well whose comments were listened to with more attention in the diplomatic community than in Kathmandu.
However, some diplomats from South Asia prefer to isolate themselves and possess a clear and visible distaste to interact with qualified intellectuals, academia, writers and media men for some mysterious and unexplainable reasons. Thus the slide begins right from here. Their incompetence is exploited by India.
Sri Lankan Ambassadors posted in Nepal were daring and highly competent which my own personal experience is. Nepal has a practice of sending incompetent diplomats abroad. Strong and smart diplomacy is needed only to balance and counter the increasing hegemony of the Indian regime.
Nepal wishes for regional stability and peace and this is only possible when Pakistan is strong and competes with India. For regional stability, a strong Pakistan is needed. Observers wish to draw the attention of the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan to look into the
matter seriously.
At least knowledgeable diplomats must be posted in South Asia to compete with the shrewd and tactful Indian diplomats who work round the clock.
For Nepali people, the presumption is that since Pakistan is a perfect match, they expect that Pakistan will not allow the regional peace to get disturbed by India. Pakistan’s diplomacy is touching a new low in South Asia as compared to Indian diplomacy, but why? In addition, it is Pakistan’s visible reluctance that the regional body - the SAARC -has died a premature death. Expectedly, Pakistan should have pressed Nepal to give a new life to the India-killed SAARC body.
To recall, Nepal in the longago used to have a great say in the world’s burning issues and countries across the globe used to listen to Nepal’s views. However, with the political changes of the recent decades, Nepal is limited now to remain as the satellite of the regional rogue regime, India.
Isn’t it a classic case for political scientists across the world to take note of the naked coercive manoeuvring acts of the Indian regime, the policeman of South Asia installed by none less than US President Joe Biden?
India needless to say is a strong partner of the US in the US-formulated Quad which is in existence, as is perceived and then believed, to contain increasing Chinese influence across the world more so in South Asia.
President Biden with high democratic credentials has made a Himalayan blunder in having awarded India the role of the policeman of South Asia. Time permitting, Biden is awaiting a great cheat and deceit from the Indian regime. Sooner the better.
India has already been duping the US by aligning with the Russians and may any time soon even join hands with China whom the US takes as a rival which is close to an enemy.
That India could swing into the Chinese fold has come to the fore when the Indian Foreign Minister made a lecture in Thailand wherein he stated that “it is time that India and China unite” and give a proper shape to the existence of what he called the “Asian Century”. Asian century and the upcoming US-India drill: While on the one hand, the Indian foreign minister seeks China’s attention for giving shape to an imagery Asian century, his country has already announced the US-India joint military exercise to be held in October this year. Interestingly, the military exercise is being carried out close to the Chinese borders. Needless to say, the Chinese are not fools to understand the Indian tricks to lure it into an Asian century when India is up against China with the military exercise close to its borders.
As explained in our last issue, Nepali observers see that China shortly will teach an appropriate “lesson” to India. However, a full-fledged war must not happen. That’s all.