Posted on 03/04/2019 4:28:32 AM PST by C19fan
It was an inauspicious moment for a military the United States is banking on to help keep an expanding China in check. An Indian Air Force pilot found himself in a dogfight last week with a warplane from the Pakistani Air Force, and ended up a prisoner behind enemy lines for a brief time. The pilot made it home in one piece, however bruised and shaken, but the plane, an aging Soviet-era MiG-21, was less lucky. The aerial clash, the first by the South Asian rivals in nearly five decades, was a rare test for the Indian military — and it left observers a bit dumbfounded. While the challenges faced by the India’s armed forces are no secret, its loss of a plane last week to a country whose military is about half the size and receives a quarter of the funding was still telling.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yes, that could be the case.
Perhaps some re-arranging of senior personnel at those bases is also called for.
India may have a bigger defense budget than Pakistan, but all that matters is how much of it is actually used to get good equipment and training, versus being stolen by corrupt bureaucrats and wasted on stupid ego projects. The US has similar issues.
“the partition was very flawed”
how? and why?, as in whose fault.
I actually don’t believe in very many what-could-have-been situations. I usually find they really could not have been, because there were more reasons against them happening or succeeding, than the outcomes that actually did happen.
A lot of things are not perfect, but nothing really is.
I don’t blame anyone; the fact is that it didn’t create a viable Hindu state and a viable Muslim state - and that caused many problems. Not just my opinion; I’ll let the subsequent history speak for itself.
The Paks used to be our ally but after the Bin Laden issue that seems to not be the case. GWB seemed to be courting the Indians during his tenure and Obama, well I don’t know what that damned fool was doing aside from weakening us across the board.
A couple of things, I would be ready to send in a military team to seize the Paks nukes if they appear to be going full islamofacsist. I would but their aid off as they have been supporting the Taliban since the war started in 2001 and I would be courting the Indians as a huge buffer against the Chicoms. They are the only country that comes close to offsetting the numerical superiority of the Chicoms.
Getting themselves embarrassed by this shoot down might get some US arms sales to the Indians and more influence. Flying the Mig-21 against an F16 would be like racing a high performance 2019 Chevy Camaro against a 1974 Ford Pinto.
The Mig-21 could outmaneuver the F-4 because the F-4 was built for speed and little else. Both had cannons, because, why not? Every new technology brings its own evolutions. Missiles effected fighter plane designs like torpedoes effected naval ship designs.
The problems with India and/or Pakistan are not that the resulting partition did not “make” them viable. The problems are within Pakistan and India and not a creation of the partition.
As far as politically stable and nominally viable, India has been better than Pakistan, which has never had a stable democracy uninterrupted by repeated military coups.
In regard to the military aspect itself, the Indian military has been much more under the control of the civilian leadership than can be said of Pakistan. Those negatives on Pakistan’s side were not “inevitable” due to any manner of the Partition. They are due 100% to choices made - choices that did not HAVE TO BE made by the political class and military class of Pakistan.
The economic circumstances of either nation are not the “result” of the partition. They come from political, business, financial and economic choices made in India and Pakistan; choices the partition forced on neither one.
The political goals of India have never been to make it, politically a “Hindu” state. The Muslim minority is too large and there are too many minorities in India. The political goal in India has always been for a secular state with full separation of church and state, so that all Indians will identify with it as their state.
Only very recently has the present leader of India, Modi, begun to use the weight of the Hindu majority to any expressed advantage of that majority in government. I think the corruption that has been obtained under his administration, by how he has done that, will be the undoing of his government, and lead to a return to less “Hindu nationalism”.
The thing westerns fail to recognize about Hinduism and India is that Hindus are not a single ETHNIC caste, ethnic castes in India are as culturally and socially meaningful as religion, and Hinduism itself is more a collection of beliefs, many not totally consistent with each other, and those differences are often manifest geographically.
Those things are NOT the “result” of the partition. They were NEVER going to be “fixed” by any form of the partition. They are derived from the culture of India and the mode and manner of the way the government of India was formed, and the partition was done, were mostly accepted BECAUSE they satisfied that culture more than a lot of “perfect” ideas that were not offered or agreed to.
The one good thing about British Colonialism is that it gave Indians a common language, in English, in which to communicate. They should thank their lucky stars for British Colonialism for that reason alone.
Worth repeating! Let's hope the upgraded F16s they propose to purchase will help correct this.
I thought they had Sukhoi Su-35s, which they have used in drills with the US!
The war in which East Pakistan became Bangladesh was very much related to the partition - just by putting those people under the jurisdiction of the western portion (to whom they aren’t related ethnically). The conflict with the Sikhs, which cost Indira Ghandi her life, resulted from those people being ruled by Hindus. Mahatma Ghandi himself was killed by a Hindu nationalist who saw no reason to concede any power to others.
I don’t have answers or blame; those are facts. Our own history hasn’t been so smooth, either; India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are much younger countries with time to develop.
But, the history - the partition - was, as I said, the outcome that was, because it most likely comported all around with the approved moral and cultural sentiments some majorities of the people.
Partition did not begin in and was not done in a historical vacuum, with a single idea proposed, laid out and handed to the peoples of the Indian subcontinent. It developed, over time - more than a decade of political activity, and it was itself - the idea - a factor in stimulating hot feelings in favor of separations of Hindus and Muslims; even though there were areas where Muslims and Hindus were quite mixed and would be very perplexed at formal political separation between the two. That last part resulted in the ending of and the majority of the violence, as masses of people, Hindus and Muslims were in simple terms forced to stay in an area that would be political dominated by the other side (Muslim or Hindu) and where some were not given a choice and were forced out by the other majority around them.
Here is what happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India#Two_nation_theory
Thank you for the link; I couldn’t imagine the complexities involved. As young countries go, both India and Pakistan have fared better than their young counterparts in Africa; they have potential, and are learning as they go.
“A couple of things, I would be ready to send in a military team to seize the Paks nukes if they appear to be going full islamofacsist.”
ROFWL
It would not take a “military team” to do that. It would take a full scale WWII style official war U.S.-against Pakistan. THAT ain’t going to happen.
“The one good thing about British Colonialism is that it gave Indians a common language, in English, in which to communicate. They should thank their lucky stars for British Colonialism for that reason alone.”
Actually that idea has been openly discussed in published discourse in India, and not always, or totally negatively.
The one recognized negative is that English is more prolific among the government & professional elites, and masses working with & for them. The spread of English began in government and higher education because by being common to all involved - in terms of being able to speak it - government and the education elites did not have to master hundreds of languages to communicate well with each other. Mastering English meant each only had to learn one additional language, a one other language its professional peers learned as well. THAT gave English its big start in India.
Also, with all the 100s of languages in India, English is the one “other” language that is not the 1st language of the ETHNIC majorities - such as Hindi (about 40% of India). So, while not someone’s 1st-language, by speaking English they are not deferring to one of the dominant language groups - like Hindi (40% of India). Folks speaking one of the hundreds of smaller languages is going to feel better mastering English instead of Hindi - less of a caste deference since English is not “native” to either one.
It would not surprise me if English becomes the top language in China someday. For similar reasons. Mandarin and Cantonese are not intelligible to each other. Also, there are four primary languages in China Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghainese), Minbei (Fuzhou), and between the last three and all the other non-Mandarin speakers there are about 400 million that cannot or do not speak Mandarin. China education ministry even admits that among all who can or do speak Mandarin, 70% of them do not speak it as well as they should. But meanwhile, for business and travel reasons, everyone is learning English.
Here is a list of the nations with some % of English speakers. Just adding them up in Asia and even Africa (Nigeria, the largest African country speaks English), I think English could be on a course where 500 years from now it will be the most common language in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
One of the interesting things that is happening in Europe because of the mass influx of refugees, is that they demand the host countries, like Germany and Sweden use English, and not force them to have to learn the host language.
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