An American political scientist Christine Fair has said that India’s record in Kashmir is not what one would expect from a democracy. She has been highly critical of Indian Governments policy on Jammu Kashmir. This lady even stated that “ Seeing Major Gogoi tie a Kashmiri to the front of his jeep was disturbing for well-wishers of India because we hold India in high regard as a democracy and democratic armies are not to do those things — especially to their own citizen.”.
Well Madam, we Indians too get highly disturbed, seeing what you people do on daily basis to the poor Mexicans trying to enter your Country. We are still scarred by your actions at AbuGhraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo base and in all the prisons inside your great democracy. And Major Gogoi by tying that separatist who with his blood thirsty group wanted to injure our policemen through stone pelting, to the jeep, not only saved the policemen and his military command but also the lives of those very blood thirsty separatists. This was in contrast to the great action ( and thousand such actions from ordering carpet bombing downwards ) done by your Captain Medina and Lt Calley at My Lai in Vietnam. Such actions are still being repeated by your peace loving democratic govt all over Middle East, Afghanistan and parts of South America.
The great American nation did a great drama on My Lai and only Lt Cally was the Scapegoat. All others starting with the President downwards went scot free. And this political Scientist or whatever she is has the temerity to say “Now, the American forces have done terrible things in Iraq but many have been prosecuted — perhaps not as many as should be and probably not the officers who oversaw enlisted malfeasance. Nobody really has been prosecuted here for what they have done. And democratic armies certainly don’t do these things and get awarded by their Army chief. If an American pulled that off in Iraq, he’d be in jail. His (or her) life would be ruined and they would be a national disgrace, adding that such incidents give clarity on why Kashmiris feel the way they do about India. It should have never gotten to a point where Major Gogoi felt the need to tie someone in front of his jeep. “
We Indians will be ready to consider the requests from Kashmiri separatists the day Texas is given full independence. Till then no one should try and give lectures to India.
This self appointed expert on South Asia has also been Urging India to look at police reforms. She said that India could take a cue from several European forces, the very Europeans who have been creating mayhem in the entire world since last three hundred years. The very police system which brutally killed lacs of Indians during the British rule in India. Simply Great.
She thus advices India as “European Police are prepared for massive crowds, they are not afraid of those crowds creating insecurity that needs to be handled lethally. Let’s face it, if you’re shooting someone because they throw stones at you, there is a problem. There is clear trouble with how you crowd manage. By the way, the United States has had problems with this too. So I think both of our countries should look to Europe. Both our countries face a similar structural problem that policing is a state’s subject and thus you need to bring states and municipal forces along the reform path. But India should consider policing in places like Kashmir to be strategic rather than tactical or operational because the consequences are strategic and accords Pakistan myriad opportunities for malfeasance. “
Dear Fair Ji, why didn’t you advice your govt and the American Security agencies in similar manner when they got paranoid after the 9/11 action in New York. You Americans went berserk after falling down of one building only and invaded Afghanistan, Syria etc. Though you want that we Indians should keep turning the other Cheek too to the terrorists who are trying to destroy our country !!
Fair Ji our Army and Police will surely be acquiring proper equipment so that the terrorists are not only shit scared but even those who think of even throwing a stone at our soldiers. We are not going to become “ goody goody “ for your or any one else’s sake. Think what you like about us, we assure you that we will reciprocate your sentiments 100%. Kashmir is ours and we dare any power on Earth to take it away from us.
We really do not know whether to laugh or cry when an American tells us to have a NO SHOOT POLICY. please first enforce it with your own police in every town of USA, where the trigger happy police does not hesitate for a second to shoot a black person. Please enforce it with your Armed Forces deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq and all over.
For a change you have rightly said that “Drawing from the US experience and extending it to Kashmir: the police dehumanise black Americans and it’s easier to kill them when they are the end of the barrel. And this especially happens when the police officers are afraid of the ‘others’. I see a lot of parallels to here the ways in which the American police force say they are afraid of the African Americans and that’s why they shoot them. This is bad for democracy, our society and it undermines the nature of our diverse social fabrics. “
Please first reform USA, then come to us.
The expert also said that when it came to peace between India and Pakistan, in the short term nothing can change. “Pakistan can’t win a war. India has chosen to more or less to ignore Pakistan and focus on its economic growth to modernise its weapon system. The observable Indian strategy is to make Pakistan obsolete by simply outpacing it. And Pakistan is self-marginalising. Pakistanis will continue to attack India. there will be terrorist attacks and they will focus not only on Kashmir but other 3rd tier cities like Gurdaspur. A large attack on Delhi or Mumbai can’t be ruled out but such attacks would be very provocative. Pakistan cultivates strategic instability which allows it to use militants under its nuclear umbrella with impunity.”
Fair is only partially right in this regard. India has a high tolerance level and the day it is breached, Pakistan will find out that the so called Nuclear Umbrella is just useless and a fiction of its imagination that it deters India.
Commenting on Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ambit, Fair rightly said he was irrelevant since he didn’t call the shots. “And if we look at the past, whenever there has been a civilian rapprochement, something bad has happened in India. That’s because the Pakistan Army doesn’t want peace or even public support for peace,” she said.
Fair further said, “The biggest example was the Lahore process. The army launched Kargil to wreck even the premise of good faith upon which Vajpayee and Sharif attempted the Lahore process. Even if you have a Pakistani civilian attempt at having a normalisation process, the army would undermine it and the reason is simple: the Pakistani Army can’t survive a rapprochement. If there were truly peace with India, how could the army justify its size, its share of the budget and its arrogated right to run the country marshalling the argument that it alone–not civilians–can protect Pakistan from threats from abroad and within.”
Further explaining, she said peace was not something that Khan was capable of offering because “it’s not his to offer.” The basic question, she added, was whether Pakistan Army can survive peace with India.
“Not at all. The reason why Pakistan justifies having such a large, conventional military is because of its security competition India. Now there is a degree to which this is a structural security dilemma. India has to have a large military, not because of Pakistan but because of China,” she said.
Fair further said, “Now, there will be a degree to which Pakistan will say that it does not look at India’s intentions but at the size of its force and what it can do with it. This will in considerable measure justify Pakistan’s force structure. India cannot retrench from its stand to modernize its force because it has to think of a Chinese threat. This will have impacts for Pakistan’s army in turn. However, if there were true peace how could the army justify running the country directly and indirectly? How could it justify undermining democracy at every turn?” she said.
However Fair Ji, India is not going to lose any sleep on nonsensical theories that if there were to be genuine peace between India and Pakistan, it would be harder for the Pakistan military to justify the usurping of all the resources and using violent force to suppress opposition to it as it is doing to the Baloch and Pashtuns. That if there is peace, it would be difficult for the army to justify all this predatory behaviour within Pakistan itself. And how would it justify using Islam and Islamist militants as tools of foreign and domestic policy?”
Let them try any thing funny and the Radcliffe Line itself will vanish forever, that is the new Indian Policy.
