IN DEFENCE OF MY EARLIER THESIS AS TO THE INADVISABILITY OF A FULL-SCALE WAR AT A SEMINAL MOMENT IN INDIA'S PROGRESS AS AN ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE, ESPECIALLY WHEN I SUSPECTED IT TO BE A CAREFULLY CRAFTED SINO-PAK DESIGN TO HALT IT AND WEAKEN INDIA---NOW THAT THE CONFLICT IS ON, SUCH DELIBERATIONS WILL HAVE TO BE CAST ASIDE AND VICTORY SEALED ON THE BATTLEFIELD WHICH AS AN UNCOMPROMISING PATRIOT I WHOLEHEARTEDLY SUPPORT AND WILL IT
Wars are always counter-productive in the long run and ought to be at all costs avoided but if the enemy forces it on one, then it must be fought to defend oneself and to deter future aggression. Pakistan, backed by China, most certainly has led India into a catch-22 situation where proportionate military response from India to ensure deterrence has become an imperative. That, however, does not nullify the said thesis that many an analyst has rightly forwarded.
After war will come peace and then peace will be followed by war. This cycle can be stopped only if India hugely builds up the arms differential with respect to Pakistan for which positive steps in regard to economics, academics, high level research, national health, standard of living, a proper population policy, absolute separation of religion and divisive casteism from statecraft and election campaigning along with the building up of a highly modernised offence and defence system, and a powerfully manned sophisticated huge armed force must be brought into being. Jingoism is not effective warfare. The defence budget has to scaled up, corruption in politics rooted out and children brought up valorous and virtuous for nationalistic and humanistic attributes to develop in them adequately.
Mere warfare with a rogue nation whose roguery has been supported and fuelled by the West, beginning with the Anglo-American partitioning of India to thwart Soviet expansionism via its eastern border with Afghanistan, and post Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the creation of jihādi networks across Pakistan and Afghanistan which later developed into the notorious organisations that have wreaked havoc across the world, and China feeding the rogue state now to check India's growing might, not to forget the madrassas legion within India preaching and teaching jihād against the kafir---all these must be duly considered, contemplated, comprehended and countered before India hopes to achieve lasting peace with Pakistan and now the malevolent minnow, Bangladesh. Jihādi ideology has to be rooted out. Had such an ideology never existed, Pakistan and Bangladesh would have remained peaceful integrated provinces of undivided India. These are the real issues, complex indeed, with demography turning dangerous and threatening to go fissile within or overwhelm India wholesale in the coming decades to turn it into an Islamic state.
Theory, Marx said, was a material force and must grip the masses before revolution may be rife. The Islamic ideology of jihād is one such theory that easily grips the indoctrinated Muslim, a fact which historically has been utilised by the western powers to their advantage. If these things of momentous geopolitical significance are not understood and jingoism replaces wise moves in defence and offence, chances are that the subcontinent will be reduced to cinders. Therefore, discretion is the better of valour, as the old adage goes, and due defence in measured degree may only be resorted to and not all-out war which will destabilise the entire region.
Pakistan has always been the initial aggressor and has been so this time as well with the dastardly Pahalgam terror attack. Thereafter, India put into abeyance the Indus Water Treaty to dry up and flood Pakistan in quick succession alternately which will hit its agriculture hard. Pakistan responded as always by cross-border heavy firing ever since. India was forced into retaliation by the launch of #OperationSindoor which hit nine terror targets in the POJK and in Pakistan proper. Pakistan responded with drone and missile attacks, targeting civilians and militarily installations in India. India made a proportionate response to it yesterday hitting multiple targets in Pakistan. The conflict is escalating. It will ruin Pakistan which fate its militarily establishment is yet again thrusting upon it. India also bleeds as any war has its inevitable damages to pay.
Where does this all lead to? Certainly not a nuclear holocaust which looms at the end of the escalation ladder. Much before it ceasefire will be forced upon the conflicting nations by the international community. Then? Will terrorism stop? Have 9/11, 7/7, 26/11, the Danish cartoons' case, Charlie Hebdo, Dhaka Cafe, October 7, to name only a handful out of the 44,000 plus attacks since 11 September, 2001, not happened despite western intervention, invasion, bombing and sanctioning Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, to name only a few rogue Islamic states? Unless the West and China stop propping up terrorist states, empowering them with money and munition to serve their own geopolitical and economic interests, will these terrorist states ever stop creating fresh incidents of terror?
What steps are we going to take to tackle Islamic indoctrination in India which produces internal agents of national disruption and allies in terrorist activity with alien agencies whose heart is in Pakistan but whose head is in Deoband, India? What about the hundreds of sleeper cells within our country that aid and abet terrorism exported into India from Pakistan?
As a nationalist I stand firmly in war and in peace with my motherland. But as a discerning man of fair judgement, I am deeply worried about the implications of war with Pakistan alone as the means to resolving this phenomenon of Islamic terrorism that is scripturally decreed on the momin against the mushrik which the Hindu is. The Pahalgam attack conducted in the month following the sacred one of Ramzān was more or less in accordance with the Sword Verse of Surāh At-Tawbā (Qur'an, 9.5). The same forest cover, the same ambush, the same offer to recite the kalimāh, the separation of the mushrik from the momin and the shooting in the head as the modern variant of the severing of the head---all these have been duly enacted following scriptural injunction. How does one tackle it ultimately with war alone with Pakistan?
I am one, absolutely one, with the armed forces and our government but I wonder how with passing time, Pakistan growing stronger in war-technology and with Bangladesh on the eastern border also developing likewise into a malevolent Islamic nation, we will be able to tackle this terror menace unless we obliterate the jihādi ideology from our own soil with a strong hand once and for all. Else, Pakistan, Bangladesh and rising Islamisation within our motherland pandered to by political parties to secure electoral advantage will consume India despite a prospective victory in the current conflict should the escalation go on to the level of an overwhelming Indian dominance.
My earlier observation had not been made by way of a passing comment, compromising and cowardly, but had deep implications which failed the attention of my critics perchance. Nevertheless, elucidation has now been made and clarity perhaps rendered as to my stated stance. Vande Mataram! Jai Hind! 🕉
How brave the Sikhs are! They just don't sing and dance but fight as well. This martial spirit induced in them by the great Guru Gobind Singhji runs in their blood, a constant current of fearless patriotism that inspires manhood in them to protect the sovereignty of India.
The sacrifice of the Sikhs is to be saluted. From reducing Mughal power at a terrible cost of martyrdom led by the family of the tenth Sikh Guru whose father Guru Tegh Bahadurji, mother, wife and four sons, all died followed by Guru Gobind Singhji himself, to Banda Bahadur avenging the deaths and overpowering the Mughals in the Sikh terrain, to establishing the vast Sikh kingdom in the northwest by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, to forming a fifth of the Indian Armed Forces where a legion have lost their lives to defend India against her enemies, the Sikhs are temperamentally ever ready to fight for the motherland. Guru Gobind Singhji's leonine legacy in his immediate family was lost to the barbarism of Aurangzeb but lives on in his larger family in the Khālsā who have from generation to generation carried on this martial tradition to this day.
Punjab stands on the border of Pakistan and faces the treachery of the terrorist state day in and day out. Their resolve to repulse the enemy never weakens for it is in their DNA to live leonine and die game, if need be, ever inspired to sacrifice it all like their ten Gurus, with the last six beginning with Guru Arjan Devji having suffered Islamic brutality at its worst at the hands of the Mughal oppressors.
The Siks fight like lions. So do the Marathas inspired by Chhattrapati Shivaji Maharaj. When will we Bengalis once more be inspired by our great revolutionaries, who drove the British out and helped secure the country independence, learn to reduce our song and dance sensate culture and take up the valorous route of living and dying for the nation?
By blasting the soft target of Gandhi-Nehru today nothing great can be achieved. When they needed solid opposition, people could not show solidarity enough to do so. So, they ruled and imposed their ideology on our forebears. Now that they cannot counter our caustic criticisms from the other world, we are exhibiting copious cowardice in abusive criticism of their persons, making memes of them by way of vilification, posting pictures online which are their impersonation and not they themselves, making uninformed allegations and arriving at unhistorical flawed inferences on their life and works based on misinformation posted online. This is serving us no good save exciting our emotions negatively along lines of arrant ignorance. What we need instead is scholarship, mass education of concentrated quality. Knowledge is power and being better informed will make us see the flaws in Gandhian and Nehruvian arguments better, and will allow us to view their ideas and opinions, acts and ideals, ideologies and applications in proper perspective.
There are enemies galore within and without who have reduced our civilisation to where it right now stands. To combat these internal and external foes along democratic lines---for dictatorship cannot be a viable option or alternative in terms of governance---we must arm ourselves in data, rationality to interpret and infer from it, and must develop the will to develop our nation into a progressive modern state as we once were before decadence set in. Let it from now on be 'all positive and no negative' as Tagore averred about Vivekananda in his commendation of the patriot prophet to the French savant, Romain Rolland. In it lies national good.
Democracy is the rule of the majority. But if demography changes towards a toxic end, democracy is endangered. So is the case with India and much of Europe. Will democracy survive in all its glory despite rapid Islamisation? Dar-ul-lslam is ruled by Allah through His earthly representatives wielding the Sharia. Then?
Zakir Naik is intelligent enough to know that what he preaches about Islam is scripturally true for sure but is utterly false in real terms. He is on the payroll of Islamic states and has amassed a fortune on earth while promising Muslims paradise hereafter. Clever fellow following crafty heads of state running their Islamic agenda to fool billions while advancing their earthly ambitions. These Naiks, born and brought up in India, have learnt but little of the civilised way of living that the Sanatan Dharma teaches and have merely acted as instruments in the hands of their earthly masters wielding oil wealth, all the while pretending though that they are doing the will of their God. The preceptor (ustad) of this paragon of preachers was Ahmed Deedat and we all know how he conducted his life and to what eventual consequence. His end was pitiable. One sees a like decline in Zakir Naik's bearings and one only hopes that he stays healthy enough physically to recover from this malady of malafide preaching that has come to characterise him.
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