What if a trilateral alliance of Islamabad-BeijingMoscow takes a formal shape in South Asia?
“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities”. -Voltaire
Kathmandu: We sincerely apologize for having missed last week's mention in our regular column about what the British Parliamentarians said about the non-ending India’s Manipur ethnic violence that, as per the British Guardian daily dated 09 July 2023 as follows:
“The spark for the unrest was a state court ruling on 27 March that gave the dominant Meitei Community “tribal status”, entitling them to the same economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education as the minority Kuki Community, as well as allowing Meiteis to purchase land, where the Kukis predominantly live. The decision was later stayed by the Supreme Court, which called it “factually wrong”.
Perhaps the Court’s decision too contributed to the flare-up of violence in Manipur since then. The climax was the, let’s agree, “darkest day in Manipur-India’s history," which was 04 May, 2023, when a few women were paraded naked in Manipur thoroughfares, thus challenging and dishonoring the entire “Nari-Shakti” which literally means “Women’s intrinsic power” resulting in the pouring in of worldwide condemnations on India and its shabby governance since the advent of highly uneducated Indian PM Modi.
Save Nepal, the ‘undeclared protectorate’, others spoke on Manipur violence.
The Manipur violence last but not least approached Britain wherein the MP like Fiona Bruce took to task the BBC world news service for not reporting adequately the shocking happenings in Manipur which borders China. BBC is India-biased. Fiona Bruce is Britain’s special ambassador for religious Freedom and MP.
The INVC News dated July 22, 2023, reports Fiona Bruce as saying, “The attacks seem to be premeditated, with religious motivations exacerbating the tensions and violence. It has created an environment of fear and uncertainty among the people of Manipur”. More than interesting and significant is that Fiona Bruce is said to be very close to sitting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak whom the Indians claim that he is the “lost brother in Kumbh Mela” and recently located in Britain as the country's Prime Minister.
Fiona’s close association with PM Sunak does tell that Fiona must have taken note of Manipur violence only when she was told to raise the issue in the House.
The ongoing violence is so terrific and dreadful that many Nepalispeaking Manipurians have begun sneaking into Nepal from the Eastern border that almost adjoins India’s troubled region of the North East and the Chicken Neck, reported the People’s Review on Sunday, July 29, 2023.
Similarly, Ms Christina Lamb for The Sunday Times (Britain) dated July 29, 2023, presents almost an eye-witness report of the bizarre scene wherein two Manipurian women were paraded naked. She writes: “The video is almost impossible to watch. Two terrified Indian women stripped by a marauding mob of men with sticks paraded and publicly groped before being dragged to a paddy field where they were allegedly gangraped”.
Leaving the country in political disorder, especially in North East Manipur burning and boiling PM Narendra Modi, as stated earlier landed in the city of perfumes - Paris, France. Fortunately, even in Paris a sizable section of the people and the media lashed out at PM Modi and accused host Macron that he had invited a bad and highly undemocratic character from India who had no democratic credentials.
Coinciding with Modi’s visit to France, a very influential French Daily, rightfully asserted that “the invitation to PM Modi is a slap in the face to the values of Human Rights and democracy that France claims to uphold”.
As if nothing had happened in India, PM Modi left for squeezing and embracing French President Emanuel Macron, who was himself in trouble up to the neck then with the violent riots across the country, and Modi brought back some highly sophisticated weaponry which surely awards edge over weak Pakistan and which in turn disturbs the regional peace and stability of South Asia. The South Asian region is already threatened by India’s accumulation of arms and weapons from various Western countries.
The symptoms that India is swelled with armouries and warlike materials got this week reflected the manner and the tone in which the sitting Defense Minister of India, July 26, 2023, Raj Nath Singh while addressing a tamed gathering of his military men in DRASS, Ladakh, sent an open warning to rival Pakistan that, if need be and if provoked, “Ghar Mey Ghus Key Marengey”.
In the course of his speech in Ladakh, the chatty minister further said, “We can go to any extreme to maintain the honor and dignity of the country -- if that includes crossing even the Line of Control (LoC)…we will cross the LoC…" A Pakistan ruptured by the internal hotchpotch, alienated society, media standing apart on political lines, bitty intellectuals and the citizenry divided on favorite political taste and above all the countrymen to a greater extent suspecting the very intent of the allpowerful military as having a deep and ingrained interest in national politics.
All put together, the military appears yet the most reliable institution that can daunt any threat emanating either from internal or external quarters like India obviously.
It is said that however a lion/tiger may appear outwardly weaker in its physique because of some temporary ailments, yet the ferocious animal (the King of the Jungles) will not chew grass.
Hardly had the Indian Minister Singh sent warning signals to Pakistan, the entire country came into action and the concerned ministry in Islamabad rebuked the Indian claim that if need be, LoC could be crossed.
The foreign office spokesman said, “Pakistan is fully capable of defending itself against any aggression”. What was worth noting in the Pakistani rebuttal to India was the use of the word “counsel”.
Look where and how the word counsel has been used: “We counsel India to exercise utmost caution as its belligerent rhetoric is a threat to regional peace and stability and contributes to destabilizing the strategic environment in South Asia”.
The Pakistani statement was issued the very day India threatened Pakistan that is on July 26, 2023.
This does speak that Pakistan is clearly not a sinking horse yet. International relations experts in Nepal term the Indian Minister’s threat to Pakistan as “election oriented”.
The threat to Pakistan surely comes from the fresh forte of the Weapons that India has accumulated from the Western countries as a prize for having entered into the QUAD security apparatus which is nothing, as is rumored, by a conglomerate of some four powerful countries that include, India, Japan, Australia and Japan.
Or else India is already a fractured State. Manipur is just an example. Recent news in the air in South Asia is that some five Indian States in the North-East e.g. Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland have exhibited their distaste in continuing with the Indian regime or say in other words, these NE States want their own independence and sovereignty to what they have had before the forced annexation in today’s India born 1947 August to be more specific.
Prior to 1947, the name India didn’t exist. It was the Britishers who at the time of their grand departure from the vast South Asian landmass coined the territory wherein they ruled for at least two centuries as India.
That India existed in ancient times is a misnomer.
India more or less rules South Asia and that too at a time when its rival and presumed equally political and nuclear preventive force is in disarray which are, we have been told, some of its own creations. Politics is in a disorder since the very unceremonious ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan some two years ago on “readymade and concocted” charges. Since then India's rival, once very logically taken as a recognized regional force that is competent enough to see eye to eye its rival India is inattentive in SA Politics.
However, the new set up though chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz appears doing all he can to bring the derailed politics and economy to its original track, but, informed sources, say that things are not moving as per the Prime Minister’s Himalayan efforts.
Politics took a nasty turn in Pakistani history when deposed Prime Minister Imran Khan’s supporters reportedly attacked some key military installations and some top army tophats have been timely purged for not being able to protect the key military infrastructure. The IMF deal that was signed recently by the Islamabad authorities must have given some breather to the cashstrapped nation and hope that the realm shall restore its former political and economic stamina and emerge as a refurbished State. Interestingly, much ahead of the mayhem of the much-publicized May 09, 2023 sad event that took Pakistan by surprise, the sitting Army Chief Syed Asim Munir had landed in Beijing as back as in April this year to bolster its ties defense with China in the changed context.
Anadolu Agency (AA) sources say, dated