Posted on 09/25/2019 8:58:14 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I try to avoid writing about India, my country of birth. Even though I now live and research in the United Kingdom and work for a bunch of British and American publications, I find it prudent to avoid accusations of bias. That said, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Texas event with President Trump is an instance of geopolitical significance, only matched by the amount of deliberate vitriol from the left.
The Guardian (obviously) wrote, “The US and India are two of the most populous and powerful democracies in the world. And they are both represented by far-right leaders.” The term “far-right” has obviously lost all its original meaning and now means anything an inch to the right of Leon Trotsky.
The Guardian went on to peddle the same debunked myths about anti-Muslim riots in India and the “annexation” of Kashmir before stating, “The mainstreaming of Trump is now well-known, but no one personifies the mainstreaming and normalization of the far-right better than Modi, darling of the international business community, who sells India abroad as a modern, rising economic power, while implementing a radical Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) at home.”
Meanwhile, CNN found someone random to call Trump and Modi authoritarian. In the “expert” community, there was “troubling concern.”
I carry no brief for Modi, and there are troubling concerns with some of his policies at home. Modi’s government has elevated anti-science curricula in schools. Not everything is fine and jolly in India, either. The Indian press corps is essentially the worst in the entire English-speaking world, with all the sensationalism of British tabloids and the mind-numbing shouting matches of American news.
But to call Modi or Trump authoritarian, without any media pushback, after Modi won an election with the largest mandate in human history and Trump lost an entire branch of government after the midterm elections, is of course laughable. Authoritarians are not particularly known for their love of elections, much less repeated elections, even when they lose. Ask a resident of Hong Kong if she’d rather live in China or in India or the United States, and the CNN and Guardian op-eds look silly.
But read further, and the game is given away. The Independent, a newspaper which is the British version of Salon and Jezebel combined, said Modi and Trump are similar in their “border law enforcement” policies. The left despises Modi for the same reason it despises Trump, Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison, and Bibi Netanyahu — because these leaders believe in sovereignty, nationalism, and balance of power, instead of a global rule by technocratic institutionalists.
Indian Americans, like their British counterparts, are mostly a conservative crowd. They are pro-family, socially conservative, hardworking, and overall quite successful. They also, like Japanese and Koreans before them, made an effort to assimilate into the society that welcomed them instead of holding a grudge, hating their very existence, and keeping their own cocooned culture and language.
Bobby Jindal was the first minority politician in recent times who opposed identity politics and the divisive concept of “Hyphenated Americans,” as he said that one common identity is needed for a nation-state to exist — a position for which the left mocked him. As John Yoo and Avik Roy wrote recently in National Review, while the Democratic Party thinks it has a monopoly over African American and Hispanic votes, Asian Americans are the floating group, and should be naturally aligned with conservatives. Asians are the most discriminated against in higher education and society in favor of other minority groups, and for some inexplicable reasons, the party to which they naturally belong is not actively courting them.
But this is not about domestic politics. The Indian-American alliance is far bigger given the global geopolitical trends and the rise of China. Indian democracy isn’t perfect. But India is nevertheless a democracy and the only other natural great power in the Asia Pacific region that can, on its own, balance China due to the sheer size of its economy, navy, nuclear deterrence, space program, and most importantly a massive workforce focused on science and tech. It is also, needless to mention, one of the largest markets for U.S. trade and exports.
The history of Indian-American relations is mixed. The Indian Constitution immediately after independence from the British was heavily influenced by the American one. There’s a whole section of Fundamental Rights, for example, which is a contextualized version of the Bill of Rights.
India also was a U.S. ally up until the late ’60s, and during the 1962 Sino-Indian war, India got weapons and aid from Britain and the United States. Unfortunately, due to geopolitics and Afghanistan turning communist, Pakistan became far more important to Washington, which in turn pushed a broke India into the hands of the Soviets.
The next 30 years of socialism almost wrecked India’s economy and resulted in one of the largest one-sided brain drains in human history, with educated upper- and middle-class Indians leaving for Britain. The rot was reversed in the early ’90s with the overthrow of socialism’s command economy, but by then, the Indian administration had realized it needed to have strategic autonomy and could not rely on any superpower for its own security.
That is where we stand today. For the short-sighted, ahistoric liberals writing about Modi and Trump being authoritarian, nothing will suffice until India allows transgenders in the military, lets Pakistani-backed Islamists take control of the mountains, and until New Delhi voluntarily gives up control of Kashmir. But that is never going to happen, and to expect India to completely turn into California is a utopian dream. Liberals would wreck geopolitical alliances to promote shared values. But shared values don’t consolidate alliances, shared interests do.
Conservatives have probably finally correctly surmised that Indian Americans, much like most other Asian Americans, are a conservative bloc who are essentially politically homeless and despised by the left, as the left hates any successful and hard-working socially conservative minority group. Conservatives understand the value of a future British-Indian-American-Australian axis.
The Anglosphere is still the largest free-market group in the world, a prominent, highly educated research pool for education cooperation, and quite possibly the strongest (and most willing) military axis to balance the rise of China, bound by a shared threat perception. Nothing is currently more important than consolidating that by any means.
America’s best bet is to stop propping up the middle east and let them slaughter one another.
Make China and the European Union fight over the same fuels all on their own money.
Somehow the author forgot to mention Japan. The Japan Self-Defense Forces ranked as the world’s fourth most-powerful military in conventional capabilities in a Credit Suisse report in 2015.
As a long-term engineer from Berkeley here in California I’ve worked with many Indians and Chinese and I can say both groups are very hard-working and America loving and family loving
I don’t see either as a threat to the good old United States of America
now if we get to the leadership of both nations and historical nature of course since Mao China has been ruled by a communist evil totalitarian thugs bent on world domination suppressing your own people murdering and slaving and stealing your organs from people who they slightly disagree with
India has a free-flowing democracy and does their best to try to quell and contain the large sea 150 million Muslim population that they have
Just like we used China to balance the USSR. What did it get us?
Disagree on Indians. They are not so hard working,they just appear as such. It’s a culture\religion where personal and professional integrity are not valued. Indians are disproportionately dishonest and lack ethics when it comes to business matters. They have what 17% of the worlds population and like 2% of the fortune 1000. India is unqualified sh*thole, I’ve been there and worked with dozens of them. They would sell their Mother for an Oracle DBA contract. Sure they are polite, but let’s not confuse them with Quakers. Like saying urban Blacks in this country value integrity, honesty and are family oriented. Some cultures are just rotten.
I’m not going to read this but, yep...
1 billion to 1 billion and more advanced logistics, experience and coalition partners...
Not in my experience.
India’s government is so corrupt and incompentent that we should not rely on it for anything. Any technology we sell or transfer to India is a gift to China.
RE: India has a free-flowing democracy and does their best to try to quell and contain the large sea 150 million Muslim population that they have
Well, China has a huge Muslim population in their Western Provinces as well. It’s only about 1.5% of their population, which amounts to a mere 21 million of them.
1. Withdraw from NATO.
2. Form an alliance with Russia based on both sides stopping support for Islamic nations. US to stop supporting Saudi Arabia and Russia to stop supporting Iran.
3. Pull Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the PI, India and other stable Asian nations into the pact.
4. Pull European nations that are not intent on cultural suicide into the pact such as Hungry, Poland etc. Yes this would be an initial hard sell given Soviet history in the area. I say Soviet not Russian and I consider recent Russian actions in Georgia, Crimea etc. to be justified.
5. Isolate China. Bring in western Europe nations as they continue their slow drift to the right.
Your five-point plan would take at least ten years, maybe twenty to fully implement. That would require something that is unfortunately highly unlikely: no Democrats in power until at least 2032 or if we’re lucky 2036. Once a Democrat occupies the WH, the whole plan collapses, because the Democrats need Chin, Iran, and a socialist united Europe to fulfill their destruction of America as it was founded to be.
FWIW
The Indians I met and knew in the eighties were great people. Loved America and wanted their children to assimilate. The ones I have met in past five or so years were angry.
India, under Mr. Modi’s party, the BJP, had a heavy-water deal with Saddam Hussein. It has oil deals with Iran. It exports cross-border terrorism in Baluchistan and Sindh. It formed the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. It shot down its own airliner, killing 329 innocent people, just for propaganda. It votes against America’s position at the UN more often than any country except Cuba. it had a 100-year friendship treaty with the Soviet Union.
India is a major human rights abuser. It has murdered tens of thousands of Christians, Sikhs, Assamese, Bodos, Dalits, Tamils, Manipuris, and others. It has 17 freedom movements within its borders.
Actually the first Rafale is already flying in Indian colours and is expected within a couple of weeks in India. The endless discussions were in the time of the corrupt UPA who wanted a cut.
The average IQ in India is in the 80s. The early H1Bs were their best but that supply has run out. The average we see now is probably around 90 and dropping.
Nice job of spreading propaganda. The RSS must be proud.
The FACT is that the Indian regime shot down its own airliner. Two Canadian reporters investigated the case and wrote a very detailed book proving it. their case is solid and strong. You might try reading it.
There is a reason that the Sikhs in Punjab, Khalsitan, the Kashmiris, the Nagas, the Assamese, Bodos, Tamils, and so many others are struggling for freedom from India. They hve no rights under Hindutva in Hindustan.
Pakistan also claims Kashmir, so you might have a case for Pakistan financing and supporting some parts of the freedom movement there. But most (and I know some Kashmiris) just want to be independent of both Pakistan and India.
I note that you had no rebuttal for the facts of India’s deals with terrorist regimes nor it support of cross-border terrorism. I’ll assume that your silence implies that you accept those facts — in which case, we have no argument, India is not our friend.
” is probably around 90 and dropping. “
Right up there with Sub Saharan Africa, huh ?
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