India and US - III

[Guest]

[url="http://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/wharton-aerospace-defense-report/US-Ends-High-tech-Export-Restrictions-to-India-0211.cfm"]U.S. Ends High-tech Export Restrictions to India[/url]

[Guest]

India Today Conclave

VIDEO: http://www.palintv.com/2011/03/19/govern...-conclave/

[Capt M Kumar]

GANDHINAGAR: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi said here Tuesday that the central government should address the issue of US interference in the internal affairs of India.



Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event here, he said the "government of India should address the issue of American interference" in Indian affairs. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news...761941.cms



He also reacted to latest WikiLeaks disclosures, which quote Michael S. Owen, the US consul general in 2006, as saying that the chief minister was an efficient administrator.

[Meluhhan]

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says India is an "emerging threat" to the USA: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world...781790.cms.

[Arun_S]

[url="http://www.heritage.org/events/2011/11/us-india-engagement"]Bharat Karnad speech at the Heritage Foundation[/url]

[url="http://www.heritage.org/events/2011/11/us-india-engagement"]http://www.heritage.org/events/2011/11/us-india-engagement[/url]

[Husky]

Somewhat older news. Apologies in case it was posted already.



www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/05/us-google-india-maps-idUSBRE93409O20130405

Indian police investigating Google mapping contest



A security personnel answers a call at the reception counter of the Google office in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad February 6, 2012.



Credit: Reuters/Krishnendu Halder



By Devidutta Tripathy



NEW DELHI | Fri Apr 5, 2013 7:14am EDT



NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Police in India are investigating to determine whether U.S. Internet company Google Inc violated rules in a competition that asked users to add information about their local areas for its online map services after a government agency raised security concerns.



[color="#0000FF"]Google, which ran the "Mapathon" in India in February and March[/color], said its aim was to make more local information accessible to all and that it did not break any laws.



Police are acting on [color="#0000FF"]a complaint filed by Survey of India, the country's national survey and mapping agency[/color], which said the contest was illegal and may threaten national security.



"One complaint has been received and we are forwarding it to the cybercell for further action," said Chhaya Sharma, a deputy commissioner of police in New Delhi.



Google officials said the company had not yet received an official communication from the police.



Google invited users to help "create better maps for India" by adding knowledge of their neighborhoods and promised the top 1,000 mappers prizes of tablets, smartphones and gift vouchers.



[color="#0000FF"]Survey of India first wrote to Google saying its "Mapathon" was against rules and then filed a police complaint[/color], R.C. Padhi, a top official at the agency, told Reuters.



"We have to ensure that security is not compromised at any cost," Padhi said, adding that some information uploaded on Google Maps could be "sensitive".



Google is open to discussing specific concerns over the issue with public authorities in India, Paroma Roy Chowdhury, a company spokeswoman in India said in a statement.

[color="#800080"](Ooh, would ya look at that? A stooge. Hope Paroma's paycheck for playing high-placed muppet is worth it.

Mapping sensitive spots in India is like mapping the sensitive spots in Israel. India is a major target of christoislamic terrorists. If anything on the illegaly mapped areas blow up, people are morally at liberty to start breaking down Paroma's door. Oh and those of the Mapathon's entrants too - so it's imperative that the Mapathon collects the contact details of the everybody involved. After all, it's all Fun And Games until someone else loses an eye. Or their life, as is more often the case in India.)[/color]



"Google takes security and national regulations very seriously, and the Mapathon adhered to applicable laws," Roy Chowdhury said.

[color="#800080"](All I heard was blablabla. I'm just going to have to fast-forward to the Gawd Save The Queen bit, because that should mark the end of the excuses and PR. I hope)[/color]





LATEST IN SERIES OF DISPUTES



The investigation is the latest in a series of disputes between various governments and Google over privacy and security issues involving its popular mapping products.



In March, Google agreed to pay $7 million in the United States to settle an investigation into an incident in which its Street View mapping cars allegedly collected passwords and other personal data from home wireless networks between 2008 and 2010.



In 2011, city police in the southern Indian technology hub of Bangalore ordered Google to suspend a Street View service over security concerns, three weeks after the company started collecting images from the city.



Tarun Vijay, a lawmaker from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, last month complained to the government over the "Mapathon" contest.



"Will we allow any Indian organization to invite people for mapping their localities and have entire data stored in USA? Special to Google?," Vijay wrote on the Twitter social networking site on March 20.



"If there is a law, it has to be followed. I have asked whether Google followed the law," Vjay told Reuters on Friday, after meeting India's defense and interior ministers over the issue. "I have taken up that they should be acting urgently."



Separately, Google and other social media companies are also fighting a criminal case brought by an Indian journalist related to allegedly "offensive" content on their web sites.



(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by John Chalmers and Matt Driskill)

I doubt there's anything remotely innocent in this by Google.



Google's methods are very instructive (TSP take note):

If a government says No to mapping sensitive areas of the land (e.g. those that are of high security risk if exposed), then Google - "innocent" old Google - will start up a competition dangling free plastic/electronic goodies in front of 3rd worlders* stupid enough to leak national security data for their personal interests (and I suppose there's also the never ending supply of converts ready to do the bidding of anyone who asks, as long as it's guaranteed to put the heathen nation at risk).



And tablets and dumphones? Oh yeah. *Great* prizes arcasm: Who knew treason came so cheap? Then again, when other Indians will sell the native religion - and even the Vedam - to aliens for money (or else for free/for a following/for the recognition/for a hobby), what's a few smallfry traitors in the comparison, right? Nothing really, so Google can't be blamed for trying I guess. And it's not like they *made* people fall for it. Many Indians nowadays are admittedly so easy. So very easy. India's number of desperate wannabe-progressive 3rd worlders* - seen conversing in some scary attempt at English every chance they get, and growing quite illiterate in anything local in direct proportionality (who can blame the aliens for laughing at them) - keeps increasing.

*The label - as repugnant as it is - actually fits. They've actually turned *into* the caricature. That must be a first... <- Surely there must be a prize for that too? What no tablets and dumphones for this greater feat of self-transformation/mass regression? But I guess no one admires Losers. (They just cheer at your downfall.)





Oh and just as a contrast to India's Lemmings: in Germany it's the *population* that's even more unbending than their own already-demanding government when it comes to matters of privacy and security, and so the Germany citizenry regularly tell Google's - and more recently also Microsoft's - mapping "services" to get lost, and will take them to court over such matters, all so as to ensure that at least their neighbourhood and ideally their nation too is not compromised. (Actually, people might want to look at how up to date Google's maps of Germany are. Because when I last tried - some years back, admittedly - the neighbourhood I wanted to check up on wasn't even on there, all because the local council or was it govenment didn't want it. Now I'm wondering if any parts of the rest of Germany were on there at that time... Because it would be very German to boycott the entire thing. Not to forget that much of Germany got bombed to pieces at the end of WWII. <- Maybe the memory is still so fresh they're not all that ready to tell the Americans exactly how the land lies now in the 2010s...- or whoever else maybe be waiting to take a potshot, say the jihad?) One of the many reasons why Germany's still in the "1st world" clique: because they behave like citizens of the first world. Which is: working in their population's own interest, which then ends up serving their personal interests. (A.o.t. the rollover citizens/wannabes of the 3rd world, who unwittingly serve the interests of foreign nations by blindly chasing after Plastic for themselves.)

[Husky]

1. rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/my-rediff-piece-on-berkeley-leftists.html

my rediff piece on the berkeley leftists plotting to do damage to india

terrible headline, i know. but i have no control over the copy editor who decides on headlines. i had originally titled it 'chronicles of a conflict foretold', with apologies to gabriel garcia marquez



rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-the-time-will-come-when-america-can-dictate-to-india/20140303.htm

Posted by nizhal yoddha at 3/03/2014 08:53:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-the-time-will-come-when-america-can-dictate-to-india/20140303.htm

chronicles of a conflict foretold

[color="#800080"](Editor's Title at link[/color] The time will come when America can dictate to India, and expect to be obeyed



March 03, 2014 16:26 IST

'A plausible American tactic,' Rajeev Srinivasan suspects, 'would be to try and prevent the BJP and Modi from coming to power by splitting the anti-Congress vote using the AAP, and in case that fails, to follow up with a Plan B to make India ungovernable, to create mass conflict through their agents.'



If you scan the news these days the world seems to be a tinderbox, waiting for just a small spark to set off a conflagaration. The much-commented-on, eerie, similarities with 1914 that people have noticed concentrated on the rise of China as a revanchist power bent on changing the status quo, much as a rising Germany was a century ago. But there are other risks in a globalised world. I wonder what the catalytic action might be that actually sets off a cataclysm, just as the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary set off World War I.



In addition to the quasi-revolution in the Ukraine, here are several other countries embroiled in, or at risk of civil war, or caught up in covert or overt violence:



Syria, where an actual civil war is going on with horrific human rights violations on either side.



Thailand, where the government and the opposition seem to have fought each other to a stalemate.



Venezuela, on the verge of a civil war over discredited Chavismo and corruption.



South Sudan, the newly created country already heading towards State failure.



Afghanistan, the perennial problem child, on the precipice of partition.



Egypt, with simmering dissent and a polarised populace.



And I am only covering a subset of the world's problems. Interestingly, with the singular exception of the Ukraine, none of these problem States is in the West's heartlands; they are at best peripheral to the concerns of the rich world. This is not to say that there has been no violence in the heart of the West: The brutality in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, etc. took place not so long ago.



Nevertheless, these strife-torn countries are a perfect excuse for breast-beating and moralising by the West, as is being demonstrated by the hand-wringing over the so-called Arab Spring. Or, for that matter, as was shown in the Scandinavian efforts in Sri Lanka's civil war. Conveniently, the West can formulate an updated version of the 'White Man's Burden' and give full vent to their bleeding-heart, knee-jerk liberal impulses. All, handily, at someone else's cost.



As annoying as European interference may be, it is worse when the Americans jump in to solve the world's problems. Americans have a self-image (partially true) of being innocents abroad, trying merely to bring order and democracy and hygiene to various benighted parts of the world.



Unfortunately, they often end up, like big, awkward children, breaking the very countries they are trying to fix (oops!), as in the case of Vietnam. Americans rushed in to 'fix' this French colony which the French wisely retreated from. Or Cambodia, which was collateral damage due to the American obsession with the Domino Theory.



Thus, it is a matter of great concern when Americans want to fix India. Much of the time, India is peripheral to the US foreign policy establishment, except when they are annoyed with it (as in the Nixon-Kissinger days) or they are trying to sell some snake oil to it (as in the much-ballyhooed case of the 'nuclear deal', which was, to digress for a minute, a selling out of India's national security in exchange for virtually nothing).



In fact, India does much better when it is not on the radar of America's self-styled do-gooders.



[color="#0000FF"]Therefore, it is alarming that a group at the University of California, Berkeley's business school is toiling on a project to 'create a policy and protocol framework for protecting people's rights in situations of internal armed conflict and mass violence' in India.



Which is amazing, considering that there is less violence and conflict in India than in any of the countries mentioned above, and that, anyway, there has been low-level insurgencies in India for decades.



This leads me to wonder, does the Berkeley group know something that the rest of us don't?



The context, of course, is that there have been persistent rumours that the US has 'assets' high in the Indian government. The long-sustained (but just-lifted) boycott of Narendra Modi (allegedly because a group of leftists and Muslims in the US were upset) is another indication that the US does have an interest in the 2014 Indian election: They do have a dog in this fight.



There is also the surprising and widespread white noise in support of the Aam Aadmi Party by such establishment stalwarts as The New York Times and The Economist, among others. It is hard, prima facie, to believe the Americans would genuinely embrace a self-proclaimed anarchist group with far-Left views on almost everything. Nevertheless, there they are, with their front foundations merrily giving away all sorts of awards and money to the AAP.[/color]



This fits in with an observed tactic on the part of the West to encourage leftist, nihilist dissident groups in other countries. It is rather evident by now that a Narendra Modi-led government would not be particularly easy to bribe or manipulate -- it does appear that he neither forgives nor forgets -- and that it would be, as with Shinzo Abe's administration in Japan, prone to care about the national interest, not America's.



This, of course, is anathema to the American world view based on George Kennan's Cold War views on hegemony.



Thus, as a first approximation, a plausible American tactic would be to try and prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi from coming to power by splitting the anti-Congress vote using the AAP, and in case that fails, to follow up with a Plan B to make India ungovernable, to create mass conflict through their agents.



This is not theoretical: Almost exactly the same tactic was followed in Kerala in 1959. It is widely believed that the duly elected Communist government of E M S Namboodiripad was overthrown by the CIA and friends making the place essentially ungovernable.



Therefore, there is the fear that the Americans have every intent to meddle in a post-Congress scenario by creating chaos. Of course, if that too fails, they have a Plan C, which I doubt if I need to spell out. But we shall let that pass for the moment.



The concern about the Berkeley group is magnified if you look at their Web site. Grandly claiming that an aim of this 'Armed Conflict Resolution and People's Rights Project' is to 'engage with affected communities, and periodically engage with members of the Government of India,' it identifies J&K, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, and specifically Gujarat and Odisha as having been 'impacted by far-reaching violence on minority communities in recent history.'



[color="#0000FF"]In other words, the usual anti-Modi rhetoric about the Gujarat riots in 2002, with a few other topics thrown in for the sake of camouflage. Old wine in new bottles.



The impression that there is more to this group, attached to the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, than meets the eye, is strengthened by a perusal of the list of principals. One is a notable purveyor of anti-India ideas, who was implicated in the Faigate scandal as an unregistered lobbyist for Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence. Another is now out on bail on charges of embezzling funds from victims of violence. Another is attached to the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, which deals with nuclear weapons!



Many of the others are old war-horses from the FOIL (Forum of Indian Leftists which transmogrified one fine day into the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists), a group that is reflexively and viscerally opposed to many things in India, especially to right-leaning Hindus.



There are enough people with a known history of antipathy to Modi in this group to strengthen the impression that this whole thing is another exercise for Modi's benefit.



What is particularly sinister is that there is circumstantial evidence that seems to indicate that people like FOIL have, in the past, 'known' about certain events before they happened. Which, by Occam's Razor, would suggest that these events were not random, but were planned, and that the leftists were in the know.[/color]



Are they planning to just study conflict, or is there more?



Furthermore, if the objective is to study conflict, why does the focus lie entirely on India, with almost all the members of the working group being of Indian origin?



As I pointed out above, there is actual armed conflict in many other places right now, so why India alone?



[color="#0000FF"]The implication is that this group may well be witting or unwitting participants in a conspiracy to create violence in India.



There is an implicit American project going on regarding India anyway: Many American maps show the entire North-East detached from India, in addition to all of Jammu and Kashmir. There has been much pressure on India to give away the Siachen Glacier to Pakistan.



And given the fact that India has now become the biggest buyer of American arms, the time will come when America can dictate to an Indian government, and expect to be obeyed.



It looks as though the Berkeley group may be planning to add internal pressure as well to the mix to discomfit an Indian government. This is a matter of serious concern, and it is not too far-fetched to consider this a conspiracy to overthrow a future Indian government. In my book, that would be considered seditious, and it should be treated accordingly.[/color]



Image: US President Barack Obama with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Photograph: Press Information Bureau.



Rajeev Srinivasan

(Meanwhile, "nationalist" NRIs parked in the US - or who were once parked in the US, doesn't wash off - will go to sleep with the same ease as every other day. Now is not the time to grow a conscience.)



Anyway, what RS says is rather very likely (when - post the power-change upon WWII - has the US NOT meddled, and with increasing frequency and violence?) If BJP comes to power and doesn't roll over, sooner or later, the US will stage another Godhra or other form of civil unrest or destabilisation but possibly far larger (Godhra was staged by TSP and at least stage-managed by KKKongress, christomedia and their US and Euro masters - to this day) and they may have it go as far as dragging Modi/BJP to the Hague trials as "war criminals". (A la Yugoslavia. Ya think this couldn't happen? What is the Hague tribunal for if not for show? This isn't Nuremberg. Though I note the Vatican was never tried in either Nuremberg or the Hague...) And then the US will usher in a govt more pliant to US instruction.



If they try anything, Indians really out to send all christoislamicommunists and aliens packing to TSP-E and TSP-W. India will instantly turn into a permanent peace zone. AmeriKKKa is a curse on the world. Can't they just be quiet and mind their own business instead of "converting" people in S America, E Europe, all over Asia etc to the cult of christianisms (including leftism) so that the subvertible sheep readily align with alien interests? Anyway, all empires will fall one day. The US will bite the dust too. Even Rome fell after centuries - something no one back then even knew was possible, not even the enemies and victim populations of Rome.





2. Archiving the following from IF's "Recent Status Update" before it disappears, since it is important concerning the ongoing manufactured fiasco in Ukraine where the US/Euro forces are trying to drag Ukraine to be more west-inclined, and the eastern part still remembers - as is in its own interests - that the nation is Slavic in identity (the Euro-west is only famous for genociding Slavic populations, but west-inclined new generations of Ukrainians seem to now have a short memory):

Kowshika Oleksandr Turchynov, the interim president of Ukraine, is a baptist, 2% of Ukraine

Yesterday, 11:44 PM

[G.Subramaniam]

http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/asia/nepal



National Endowment Democracy programs in Nepal

[G.Subramaniam]

http://crossmap.christianpost.com/news/r...thers-9294



Generally, Ukrainian Protestant leadership has toed the line of the country's pro-Western and pro-EU parties. On July 3, 2012, both Vyacheslav Nesteruk and Grigory Komendant, present and past president of the "All-Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists", signed a statement with the unsuccessful demand that then-president Viktor Yanukovich cancel plans for installing Russian as a secondary official language in certain parts of the country



--



and much much more

[Husky]

Archiving



indiafacts.co.in/indian-foreign-policy-a-wake-up-call/

Indian Foreign Policy: A Wake Up Call

02-07-2014, Gautam Sen



Indians and their policy makers share a belief that they are ineffably decent people, who embody worthy moral values. This was clearly the basis for Nehru’s much-reviled, pompous self-righteousness. It was in fact a distorted legacy of the Gandhian syndrome of self-harm that assured partition of the worst kind imaginable. By and large, the good Indian took this unprecedented calamity in his stride even while its victims languished indefinitely in the paradise Nehru sought to inflict on a hapless nation. But Indians and their deluded rulers earnestly expected the world at large to note the solemn conviction pertaining to their essential goodness and behave with appropriate diligence towards their interests.





The real world predictably intruded very promptly and Indian expectations had to adjust to the harsh realities of a world indifferent to righteousness and thoroughly unpredictable. Hard experience forced India to accord greater priority to realistic behaviour that required self-defence in the shape of expensive weaponry, counter-intelligence, etc. But somewhere in the recesses of their psyche Indians never quite overcame the delusion that they would wake up one day to find the world had understood them and begun to engage with due regard.



The paradox is that in reality India only invites ridicule, contempt and even hatred abroad rather than the respect and affection it craves. Every single Indian neighbour espouses an admixture of these sentiments and the one to which is supposedly closest culturally harbours the greatest animus. Unfortunately, the upright Indian, preoccupied with reaping a harvest of crass material gratification, having lots of fun and generally self-absorbed, has not bothered to introspect. Every now and then Indians experience a rude shock, whether in the shape of the Kandahar hijack, aided by their very own estranged neighbouring cousins or 26/11, administered by their sworn enemy. But self-indulgence presides and everything is quickly forgotten.



An evaluation of some specific critical issues in the backdrop of Indian self-delusion and cupidity might provide insights into the Indian political predicament. It may be inferred that India has espoused the goal of economic and social development as paramount. In addition, dealing with its two adversarial neighbours has been a constant preoccupation, which, in fact, militates against the first goal. Both China and Pakistan seek to cut India down to size. It is an aspiration that has not diverged unduly from the entrenched British impulse to punish an India ruled by what they have always regarded as wily Hindus that dared expel them. The US soon subscribed to this view since India refused to kowtow with the great white imperial ruler of the earth, which also found its alleged proximity to the communist USSR insufferable.



The Anglo-Americans immediately embraced Pakistan, which abandoned with alacrity the supposed political and religious rationale that had prompted partition. Instead, it eagerly seized the opportunity of becoming foot soldiers in the millennial struggle against ungodly communism. The outcome was the complete and enduring militarization of Pakistan and its transformation into an aggressive ghazi state, committed to warfare. The consequences of that fateful decision have since led to its veritable unfolding implosion. The pinnacle of Pakistan’s wholehearted commitment to the Anglo-American imperial cause, in the name of Islam of course, came in the 1980s and the US war to corner the USSR in Afghanistan. As a reward for its cooperation, investigations reveal the US discreetly helped Pakistan’s quest to best India by acquiring a nuclear arsenal. It was of course facilitated directly by unstinting help from its all-weather friend, China. The three cynical agents of godly moral purpose engaged in a crusade to undermine the ungodly USSR and its supposed friend, India.



The question that might be posed is what would be the rationale for the Anglo-Americans to now abandon Pakistan in favour of India. India has of course been arguing strenuously that Kashmir is a legitimate part of the Indian Union, while also tenaciously upholding legal provisions that simultaneously undermine that very claim! Its response to Pakistani terrorism has been wayward, at the very best, but it has also been warning plaintively that Pakistani terrorism against India will spill over and impact the West itself. It duly did so on 9/11 and elsewhere, from London to Madrid. There is now an earnest Indian hope that the West, namely the US, will use its enormous financial and military clout over Pakistan, as its principal supplier of weapons, to somehow restrain it. There is, as yet, no sign of such a gratifying finale for India.



However, the reason for this Indian disappointment is not far to seek. The Anglo-Americans, leave aside China, which is fully committed to the Pakistani goal of harming India, have little to gain from switching their support to India and effectively abandoning Pakistan. In turn, the West will have no value to Pakistan if it repudiates all support for its claim to Kashmir and suspends help to sustain its quest for some sort of military parity with India, which the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal has indeed substantially allowed. The West would then lose an ally that has shown little hesitation in doing its bidding, even though there has been a public display of various discords in the recent past. One suspects these were manufactured to shield Pakistan’s military dictators from domestic hostility for their supine conduct in allowing the US carte blanche in the region.



Yet, Pakistan remains the only Muslim country with a serious army, which earlier protected US allies like King Hussein of Jordan. A military contingent, led by none other than the late President Zia ul- Haq, crushed a Palestinian revolt in what came to be known as Black September during 1970. It was Pakistani commandos who also rescued the reviled US-backed Saudi monarchy when the Grand Mosque was seized by religious zealots in 1979. Most significantly of all, Pakistan contributed hugely to the Afghan campaign, effectively instigating the retreat of the USSR from Afghanistan. The Afghan victory culminated in the historic triumph of the West in the Cold War. However, unpalatable it may be for self-important Indian bureaucrats and deluded Indian politicians, Pakistan’s usefulness to the West can hardly be doubted.



It should also be noted that the West does not actually hold the Pakistani government and establishment responsible for 9/11. In private, there is acknowledgment the catastrophe was partially due to forces unleashed by the historic Afghan campaign to dislodge the USSR from the country. In addition, Pakistan is cooperating exhaustively with the West to interdict further attacks on Western targets, if not others. In recent months, the usefulness of Jihadis from Pakistan has been rediscovered by the US, with a contingent, perhaps led by the Pakistani army itself, making its way to Syria to help overthrow Bashar Al Assad.



Pakistan, along with Turkey, has been the key third world allies of the West during the Cold War. Pakistan’s usefulness to Anglo-Americans political machination, especially in the Middle West, can hardly be denied. As a result, Pakistan has powerful allies in the US, whether it is the State Department, the CIA or the Pentagon, ready to argue its case. To quote the pithy raison d’être offered by one US President in another context: ‘they may be bastards, but they are our bastards’!



By contrast, if the US somehow compelled Pakistani authorities to cease terrorist activities against India the result can well be surmised. From the point of the view of the US, it would entail the loss of a substantial source of leverage over India if such an unlikely goal was attained. At present, fear of conflagration on its western border is a key facet in India’s calculus of feasible policy options. In the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, India views with trepidation open hostilities with Pakistan since Chinese intervention may be in prospect, without the likelihood of a Russian response to deter the latter. Should this constraint on policy options disappear, India would have less need of US goodwill, for example, even in the climactic situation of a nuclear standoff with Pakistan, when US intervention would be invaluable.



The end of Indo-Pak hostility, which the cessation of terror against India would effectively imply, would transform Indian defence options. It would free anything up to 600,000 troops as well as other critical defence assets, for use on its northern border. It would, in other words, be a transformative moment for India. India would gain a degree of policy autonomy it has not possessed since independence. Its dependence on others, who may have helped achieved this highly advantageous outcome, would, paradoxically, also be far less. It should be noted that the legion of ignorant amateurs in India, pronouncing endlessly on peace with Pakistan and settlement with China, have understood little. These two conflicts are inseparably interlinked for India. Neither adversary is likely to jeopardise the core interests of their declared ‘all-weather’ ally by negotiating a separate settlement with India that would leave the other completely exposed!



India has two urgent goals with respect to China and their achievement through the intercession of the West, namely the US, is also problematic. The first is to maintain the northern LAC status quo and second, to curb China outsourcing nuclear deterrence to Pakistan. However, it should be noted that China regards India as one of the two countries with which it will need to settle accounts to emerge as the major player in Asia and attempt equalling the US in the global arena eventually. It is unclear what India’s now obdurate conviction that the US needs it, because of changing geopolitical conditions, means for its modest goals of security on the Indo-Chinese LAC and a restraining influence over Pakistan’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal.



The US calculus of how India might be useful, in the event of tensions with China and as a source of Chinese restraint, is not necessarily co-terminus with the two Indian goals identified above. In fact, there is little evidence that Chinese incursions into the Indian side of the LAC have been influenced by US grand strategy in Asia. However, it might be contended there would be major diplomatic fallout over serious Chinese adventurism along the border with India. Of course the US is seeking a measure of economic and military collaboration to reinforce India’s defence capability and its value should be acknowledged. But they do not decisively assist India’s immediate twin concerns, with Sino-Pak nuclear collaboration only continuing to deepen.



Perhaps India needs to consider the unsentimental reality of the Asian predicament that has emerged with the rise of a China determined to achieve its goals, by force if necessary. Countries in South East, like Vietnam, as well as the Philippines and indeed Japan, are not in a position to help India in the immediate future in the event of a dramatic denouement. Japan’s interests have converged with India’s and it has a strong incentive to become a stakeholder in India’s economic advance. However, that will require a decade or more and a serious Indian economic policy framework that its political class has hitherto proved incapable of implementing. Much more alarming is the highly plausible self-interested outcome of a Sino-US condominium in Asia than direct military encounter in Asia, which will suit neither. In negotiating such an overall settlement, the US will likely accede to two non-negotiable Chinese goals, the first pertaining to Taiwan and the second, securing unassailable control over Tibet, which may require border adjustments disfavouring India.



The sheer cynicism of US foreign policy cannot escape cursory observation of its shocking activities in the contemporary Middle East. It is prepared to destroy entire countries, indeed civilisations, to achieve shifting targets. Knowledge of the full history of the 1962 Indo-China border war and the international context continues to elude. Nehru’s dislike of the armed forces and inept interference, despite zero knowledge of military affairs and frequent threats by Defence Minister, Krishna Menon to court martial officers who dissented from him, may have instigated disloyalty within it.



It may be hazarded that some of India’s most senior army officers and the IB chief were also suspicious of Nehru’s perceived attachment to communist hyperbole and were secretly in touch with Anglo-American governments. These Indian officers had achieved career successes during the British era, serving the colonial power faithfully and had not defected to the INA! They also evidently espoused sympathy for the Cold War Western response against the Soviet Union. The US had been meeting Chinese representatives in Warsaw since the mid-50s and was aware of Sino-Soviet differences and could have also known in advance of China’s intention to attack India. It may have been anticipated by parties to the possible conspiracy, including disloyal senior Indian military officers, that a military encounter with China would bounce India out of the Soviet camp and into the arms of the West. The US had already concluded that Indian behaviour indicated fealty to the despised Soviet camp.



On the issue of India’s unfulfilled aspirations of economic advance and social transformation, the idea that these goals will be actively aided by the outside world is another chimera of the ideological detritus of empire. Nothing could be further from the truth, Ricardo, Hecksher-Ohlin, Samuelson, et. al. notwithstanding. The real-world agents of the international economy, mostly operating from New York and London, are pitiless marauders. Their rapacious, scorched earth misconduct worldwide has apparently been missed by India’s comprador class. Admittedly, these insatiable agents, wallowing in Pharaonic wealth, do not today dispatch armed levies to seize, in an older tradition, though that too happens more often than understood. They will do nothing for India that does not entail gargantuan returns for themselves. They will also subvert India, much as the international retail giants, being welcomed by their paid local Indian agents, are poised to do.



India will surely need foreign capital, but only a strong and ruthless Indian state can bend them to India’s national purposes. The competence to do so has been singularly lacking in an India in the thrall of a third-rate media, a second rate bureaucracy and an essentially self-seeking political class. Rascals abound in every Indian nook and cranny, especially in the benighted city that is its capital. They are the overweening presence in the shape of the elephant in the living room, which needs to have its tusks, embedded in Indian body politic, extracted unceremoniously. The performance of the exceptional recent political dispensation, which came to power in May this year and assured the nation of its determination defend India’s people, is still to unfold.



(Dr. Gautam Sen taught international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science)

One of the comments recommended that India actively work on breaking up Pukestan (everyone always recommends this, but I guess India never had that power, else surely this would have been done a long time ago?) To which suggestion, a couple of other comments responded as follows:

Sam says:

July 3, 2014 at 11:36 am

Pakistan is well down the path of no return and India would be wise to do nothing to stand in the way of its self-destruction. A muscular response a la the Americans or the Israelis will only unite the different groups within Pakistan and set back the disintegration of this artificial state, which is the last thing that India needs to happen. For all the US’s machinations things are not going too well in Afghanistan or the Middle East, is it? Sometimes doing less results in more.





Observer says:

(Fortunately, this commenter does not appear to be the same as that islamaniac paki troll on Vijayvaani that calls itself "observer" too)



July 3, 2014 at 5:09 pm

I agree with the opinion above that Pakistan may well disintegrate. India’s interests would be served by that. An Azad Baluchistan, a Sindhudesh, or a viable Baluchistan-Sindh-Karachi Federation would mean that the Punjab is landlocked and impotent. The North West Frontier Province, now known as Pakhtunkhwa should be part of Afghanistan as the Durrand line is but a colonial juxtaposition while the Afghans/Pathans are one people anyway.



That said, China is the real threat. China claims vast swathes of Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. It does not recognize Indian suzerainty over Kashmir. It continues to oppose India’s entry in to the Nuclear Suppliers Club.



Narendra Modi and Sushma Swaraj need to understand the China threat. The BJP administration should not have rushed to ratify the Additional Protocol with the IAEA placing all India’s civilian nuclear reactors under IAEA supervision merely with a view to join the Nuclear Suppliers Club. China will veto any such development. It was foolhardy of India to have ratified that Additional Protocol.



Narendra is at times a bit naive when he emphasizes relations with SAARC and China. India’s real allies are Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan and Afghanistan – following the Kautilyan precept of my neighbor’s neighbor is my friend.** Nepal and Bhutan have special links with India. India has no real friends otherwise in SAARC. India should not acknowledge Chinese suzerainty over Tibet unless China reciprocates on Kashmir. The BJP needs a lesson in realpolitik.



(** I'm guessing Observer meant Kautilya's phrase "My enemy's enemy is my friend".

Sun Tzu's phrase was: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer still". Sorry, just revising.)

On this mentioned in the 2nd indiafacts comment pasted above:

China claims vast swathes of Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. It does not recognize Indian suzerainty over Kashmir.

I've seen maps of "China" in the possession of everyday Chinese persons, where large tracts of what is still Indian Kashmir is labelled as "China".



And just this week I think it was, the US issued statements of concern when China revealed maps to the international public where it laid claims on the South China Sea territories as all being part of China. IIRC encroaching on Philippines, Japan of course, etc in there.



news.xin.msn.com/en/regional/beijings-south-china-sea-claim-problematic-us-official-2

(MSN Singapore I think)

Updated: 07/08/2014 17:26 | By Agence France-Presse

Beijing's South China Sea claim 'problematic': US official

Beijing's claim to almost the whole of the South China Sea is "problematic" and the Asian giant's actions have raised tensions, a senior US official said Tuesday on the eve of high-stakes talks.

ft.com/cms/s/0/83c0b88e-0732-11e4-81c6-00144feab7de.html

Last updated: July 10, 2014 2:18 am

Pentagon plans new tactics to deter China in South China Sea

By Geoff Dyer and Richard McGregor in Washington and Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

haindavakeralam.com/HkPage.aspx?PAGEID=18822

Resist China’s Cartographic Aggression against India

29/06/2014 14:18:37 Praveen Shanker Pillai





China has roiled the diplomatic waters in the region by publishing a new map that lays claim to swaths of the South China Sea that encompass almost all of Southeast Asia. The new Chinese map also shows Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory.



Professor Lee Yunglung at the South China Sea Institute of Xiamen University said that the map raises the South China Sea issue to a level of prominence equal to China's decades-long disputes with Japan over the East China Sea and the Senkaku Island.



He said the publication of the map serves a two-layered purpose. Domestically, the map "enhances Chinese citizens' understanding of China's sovereignty" over the South China Sea. On the international stage, the map gives a "more comprehensive narrative of the historical justification for China's claims of sovereignty" over the disputed area.



See the Chinese cartographic aggression at:

7online.com/news/chinas-new-map-roils-diplomatic-waters-in-region-/144803/



Chinese cartographic aggression has always preceded their actual military aggression. This has happened first with Tibet in 1950 and with Arunachal Pradesh, then, North East Frontier Province, and also with Aksai Chin in 1962.

Of course, the Chinese plans to usurp say Arunachal Pradesh has been knowledge available to the international public much longer, but the US doesn't care: it hates India and Indians (Hindus) far more. Kissinger and Nixon weren't the only AmriKKKan officials to harbour Churchill-like genocidal opinions on India/ns, though they were more forthcoming with their private views.



But the US *is* clearly concerned about encroachment on areas under its uh ..."benign supervision" in Asian waters, including the South China Sea. Because US already has its own interest in hogging these regions (as gateways, etc). Plus Philippines and Japan etc are not so offensive to the US and hence the US will pretend to step in on behalf of their territorial interests, when really AmriKKKa has bases in these regions to contain I mean monitor I mean "protect" all of Asia, and US certainly wants to keep China contained now.



Chinese attempts at "expansion" (theft of land + genocide) is predictable. Chinese people are well aware and have explained that China doesn't have enough agricultural land to sustain their population. The Chinese government - owing to a series of moronic decisions, especially early on in launching its communist career, though Chinese people say the imbecilic short-sightedness of their govt towards the Chinese population continues in many things to the present - has destroyed much agriculture and agricultural land. Hence the Chinese govt is looking for "lebensraum" - as the nazis liked to call it. I.e. China doesn't want territory AND people, they want territory. Prime real estate land. Any prior inhabitants are of course unwanted, and are likely to be genocided - like China genocided 2 million or so Tibetans under Mao and replaced them with an even larger number of imported Chinese - while the remainder will be indoctrinated into becoming "Chinese": learn Mandarin, and Chinese history and political theory, etc, as is being forced onto Tibetans now. And I suspect Tibetans may still have got a "better" deal than say people in Kashmir will be getting: Tibetans are supposed to be related to the Chinese, whereas the islamics infesting Kashmir are not. In any case, one part of the Bon population always spilled outside of Tibet and hence always had lived in the part of China that bordered Tibet. It's one of the few places where Bon survives, actually. Probably one of the few good things that the Chinese govt accidentally did, or rather didn't do: Chinese govt overlooked the Bon presence within China's actual borders and didn't wipe Bonpo out. The modern Chinese govt is further trying to 'preserve' its ethnic minorities, but more with the attitude of preserving them as a "living-museum" (you know, like humans do with zoos). Everyday Chinese people, however, seem to express some happiness that their country's ethnic diversity is being preserved to whatever extent for whatever reason rather than not at all, as could very easily have happened. Even though of course the various Chinese ethnic groups *never* intermarry - not until maybe the last few decades, and even then intermarriage between their own ethnic groups is less likely than the sudden rate of intermarriage with westerners. Note that Chinese ethnic groups are very strictly endogamous.



Anyway, I really think the facts that 1. China has plans to swallow Kashmir one day and 2. the whole Uighur islamaniacs vs Chinese

are both issues that can break the swell relationship presently existing btw Pukestan and China. Of course, China isn't stupid when it comes to foreign policy and will squeeze all usefulness out of Useful Idiot Pukestan before it will let their working relationship fall apart.





indiafacts.co.in/indian-foreign-policy-a-wake-up-call/

Indian Foreign Policy: A Wake Up Call

02 July 2014, Gautam Sen

[chetak]

Swarajya Mag - Religious Crusades of CIA

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...&ct=clnk&gl=in



The CIA has constantly attempted to interfere in foreign policy decisions of third world countries with the aid of religious groups. CIA not only receives inputs from religious gurus but also from “academicians”, who work in third world countries.



Among the murkier chapters in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the attempt to destabilise societies around the world using religion warrants attention. Allen Dulles, who headed the CIA in its early years, was responsible for using religious groups as cover for intelligence activities. He had used them for spying even when he was part of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s predecessor.



After the creation of the CIA, Christian missionaries played a very important role in destabilising various countries and in carrying out espionage activities on behalf of the CIA. The most recent high profile example of the US using religious missionaries as Trojan horses to cause disturbances in India was in the case of the agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant.



This agitation came after a cable to the CIA from the US Consulate in Mumbai informed the agency that “we feel that the USG must move forward to enable our companies to compete in the next stage of India’s nuclear future. Otherwise we may have to watch bitterly as third countries become the first to benefit commercially from the environment that our diplomacy has created.”



The CIA-Church connection had been one of the topics of an investigation conducted by the US Senate in 1975. Headed by Frank Church, it came to be known as the Church Committee, and according to the report of this Committee, the CIA had informed them of at least “a total of 14 covert arrangements, which involved direct operational use of 21 individuals” who were American clergy or missionaries. The report went on to state that a few of them “were current in August 1975, and according to the CIA, they were used only for intelligence collection, or, in one case, for a minor role in preserving the cover of another asset.”



The following excerpt from the Church Committee report speaks for itself and highlights the dangers of allowing foreign missionaries into India.



“[T]he CIA paid salaries, bonuses, or expenses to the religious personnel, or helped to fund projects run by them. Most of the individuals were used for covert action purposes. Several were involved in large covert action projects of the mid-sixties, which were directed at “competing” with communism in the Third World.



…



Of the recent relationships, the most damaging would appear to be that of a U.S. priest serving the CIA as an informant on student and religious dissidence.



Of the earlier cases, one exemplifies the extent to which the CIA used confidential pastoral relationships. The CIA used the pastor of a church in a Third World country as a “principal agent” to carry out covert action projects, and as a spotter, assessor, asset developer, and recruiter. He collected information on political developments and on personalities. He passed CIA propaganda to the local press.



According to the CIA’s description of the case, the pastor’s analyses were based on his long-term friendships with the personalities, and the agents under him were “well known to him in his professional life.” At first the CIA provided only occasional gifts to the pastor in return for his services; later, for over ten years, the CIA paid him a salary that reached $11,414 annually.”

The figure of $11,414 in this excerpt gives us a clue that the country in question is most likely India as this amount translates to a nice round figure of one lakh rupees using the currency exchange rate of the day.



The CIA used opposition to communism in the Third World as the excuse to fund churches in Kerala and this interference in Indian politics came to light in 1978 when the former ambassador to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published the information his book – A Dangerous Place.



Apart from interfering in Kerala, American churches have provided extensive support to the terrorists in Nagaland whose stated aim is “Nagalim for Christ.” These terrorists receive overt help from the American establishment in the form of so-called human rights reports and public statements of support from high profile politicians such as Jimmy Carter.



In the 1950s and 1960s, the US establishment keenly pushed Western values as the standard for the entire world. Apart from religion, feminism and sex were also used as weapons against countries where the bond of family was strong and stood as a line of defense against the actions of those who wanted to create instability in society.



In a speech before the Fund for Peace Conference in 1974, CIA head William E. Colby admitted that the CIA had funded several groups around the world to propagate their point of view and named the famous feminist Gloria Steinem as a recipient of such funds.



According to Colby, “The record is clear that the assistance given to these institutions by the CIA was to enable them to participate in foreign activities; there was no attempt to interfere in internal American domestic activities. CIA aid helped such groups as the National Students Association to articulate the views of American students abroad and meet the Communist-subsidised effort to develop a panoply of international front organisations. I might quote Ms. Gloria Steinem, one of those assisted, who commented that the CIA “wanted to do what we wanted to do – present a healthy, diverse view of the United States” — I never felt I was being dictated to at all.”



Another women’s group named Redstockings had uncovered Gloria Steinem’s CIA connections and included the information in their book Feminist Revolution but the publishing firm Random House removed the chapter before publication and called it an “abridged edition” as they faced immense pressure to suppress this information from several quarters including the president of Ford Foundation. The news about this suppression became public when it was published in Village Voice in May 1979.



In 1957, Gloria Steinem visited Kerala and worked with an American Protestant missionary and helped his group reach out to women. While in India, she gathered information about plantations in Kerala, and a few Wikileaks cables show that the American establishment was eager to present her in later years as a thought leader, who had to be emulated and included meetings with her as part of programs organised for visiting foreign dignitaries.



Gloria Steinem’s visit to India had been funded by what was called the Chester Bowles scholarship which was named after the ambassador to India. But this scholarship, which had been created in the year of Gloria Steinem’s visit to India, was curiously discontinued immediately after she and another student were funded for their trips to India.



One religious organisation that has received money from USAID and has been outed as a front for the CIA is the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) which was set up to translate the bible into various languages and distribute them around the world. Together with its sister organisation, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and its subsidiary, the Jungle Aviation and Radio Services (JAARS) which operates several aircraft and radio stations, SIL became a very powerful and destructive force in the world.



In the 1970s, several Latin American countries including Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Peru held SIL responsible for advancing the interests of the American intelligence agencies and Brazil expelled SIL’s missionaries from the country for acting as cover for geologists searching for mineral deposits in the Amazon basin. SIL’s clout in the American establishment was such that they were able to bypass the diplomats and directly seek helicopters from the military to carry out their mission in Papua New Guinea.



SIL has been accused of drug trafficking, smuggling emeralds and uranium, and even waging germ warfare that destroyed many native tribes. In their book – THY WILL BE DONE, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, the authors Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett document the extensive connections of Wycliffe Bible Translators with Nelson and John D. Rockefeller and their takeover of the resources in the Amazon basin countries. SIL’s partner in India is the Indian Institute of Cross Cultural Communication based in Nashik.



Things take a bizarre turn in the context of SIL and its connection to drugs. When LSD was first synthesised by the Swiss drug firm Sandoz, it was clear that there was no medicinal use for it, but the CIA was interested in it as part of its mind control program and its aim of controlling of societies in general. The CIA even set up a project named MKULTRA to research “behavioral modification.” According to a Senate hearing in 1977, CIA used many unwitting persons for experimentation as part of this project.



Over the years, they infiltrated many groups and distributed narcotic and psychedelic drugs with the twin aims of observing their effects and weakening the groups they were targeting. Among the Hindu groups that were suspected of being infiltrated by CIA agents were Rajneesh’s ashram, ISKCON and the Ananda Marg.



Unlike Christian churches, Hindu outfits did not centralise power and were not conducive to being taken over, and hence the only option available to their opponents was to destroy such groups. Rajneesh’s followers had also gone one step further and built up a self-sustaining commune that did not depend on the government.



This was sure to attract the hostility of the American establishment which has repeatedly demonstrated intolerance for independent communities and individuals regardless of their race or religion. In contrast, the centralised nature of Christianity was helpful to the American government. According to Colby and Dennet, the Summer Institute of Linguistics not only converted the local people in Latin America from their indigenous faiths to Christianity, but also ‘used the Bible to teach indigenous people to “obey the government, for all authority comes from God.” The idea that all authority comes from God is part of the biblical verse Romans 13:1.



It is in CIA’s use of drugs to control others that R. Gordon Wasson and SIL come into the picture. Wasson was the author of an article titled Seeking the Magic Mushroom in Life magazine in 1957 and the article is considered a path breaking one in the ‘psychedelic movement.’ He was close to CIA’s Director Allen Dulles and had gone on an expedition to Mexico in search of the “Magic Mushroom” with funds from the CIA.



Wasson has acknowledged at the end of his article that he collaborated with missionaries belonging to the Summer School of Linguistics. Wasson’s involvement with the CIA is presented in detail in the book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate by former State Department official John Marks.



Sometime in 1962, Gordon Wasson recruited a young lady named Wendy Gudwin to dig out information about the source of soma from Sanskrit texts. Wendy Gudwin was the daughter of Lester Doniger, a wealthy scam artist who deceived ordinary people into parting with money by threatening them that their credit rating would be affected if they did not pay him money.



Among the many false representations Lester Doniger made to his victims, he created and used the fictitious name of Mail Order Credit Reporting Association along with a letterhead for this fake organisation on which he sent out his threats (see p. 785 of Federal Trade Commission rulings for April-June 1964).



Lester Doniger was also a fervent believer in converting people to Christianity and actively helped evangelical churches achieve this goal. Together with his brother Simon Doniger, he published two journals – Pulpit Digest and Pastoral Psychology – in order to help the Christian churches become more powerful and efficient in their operations.



The New York Times dated 26 February 1949 reported that Pulpit Digest honored an evangelist radio series and that Lester Doniger, before presenting the award, pointed out that “the program had 6 million listeners weekly and there were approximately 70 million without church affiliations toward whom the program was directed.”



Lester Doniger was also involved with the activities of the American establishment on other fronts. Closely tied to the feminist movement was the issue of sex education, and in 1964, the US got UNESCO to focus on disseminating information related to sex around the world. A new organisation named Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) was soon set up and Lester Doniger became the president of SIECUS within a few years.



Under his stewardship, SIECUS was funded by Steven Rockefeller and James Warburg of the influential banking family, two key people who have helped shape the US foreign policy and bankrolled several overt and covert American government programs. The US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara also supported SIECUS and another source of funds for the organisation was the Ford Foundation.



The “research” of Mrs. Wendy Gudwin nee Doniger who is now a professor at the University of Chicago must be viewed in the light of this background combined with her work with Gordon Wasson. None of her so-called research is original, and as a pliant assistant, she has merely propagated the views of those whom she has worked for. Even the idea of mixing up sex and religion did not originate with her.



Her uncle Simon Doniger had published a book titled Sex and Religion Today. After helping Gordon Wasson buttress his claims on soma, Wendy Doniger continued where Simon Doniger had left off and her work was aligned with the message of Christian missionaries and SIECUS packaged in academic verbiage and style.



Christian missionaries routinely attack Hindu beliefs by attacking Krishna and this behavior is accurately depicted in RK Narayan’s novel Swami and Friends in which the teacher of the scripture class attempts to foist Christianity on the students by preaching,”Oh, wretched idiots! …Did our Jesus go gadding about with dancing girls like your Krishna? Did our Jesus go about stealing butter like that arch-scoundrel Krishna? Did our Jesus practise dark tricks on those around him?”



In the works of Lester Doniger’s daughter and other American professors, the same kind of attack on Hindus can be found in a more sophisticated form complete with footnotes and citations in order to appear pedantic. After working for Gordon Wasson, Lester Doniger’s daughter was placed at Harvard University where her guide, Daniel Ingalls, was a known intelligence agent, who had spied against Indian freedom fighters.



She then spent time in Oxford, and strangely, her adviser RC Zaehner too was an intelligence agent. Zaehner, who was also a racist, had headed the failed British attempt in 1951 to overthrow the Mossadegh government in Iran and put the Iranian oilfields in the control of the British.



Earlier, in 1963-64, Wendy Doniger had also been sent to India for a year on a $6000 fellowship (this was thirty percent more than the median annual income in the US) to the American Institute of Indian Studies which would eventually come to be known as a CIA front. The US had set up many front organisations in the academia as part of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and AIIS was one such institution.



The links of AIIS to the intelligence community was very strong during the days of Wendy Doniger’s association with the organisation. Its Director in 1964 was Richard D. Lambert, who had been stationed in India as part of the counterintelligence department during the second world war.



He was succeeded by Thomas Simons who was also part of the intelligence community, who had headed the South Asian branch of the Office of Intelligence Research in the US Department of State. A key member of the founding group of AIIS was Richard Park who went on to become the India scholar at AIIS. Park was also part of the infamous Asia Foundation.



Despite earlier denials, it was revealed in 1967 that the Asia Foundation had received funds from the CIA and it had in turn funnelled money to Indian groups in the guise of funding cultural and educational programs. This revelation led to an outcry in the Indian parliament on the role of AIIS and other groups. Indira Gandhi’s government asked Asia Foundation to cease its operations and leave India.



Even the journal Seminar which was published by the brother of the Marxist professor, Romila Thapar devoted an entire issue to the topic of “Academic Colonialism,” but that was before Romila Thapar received money and titles from the American establishment and started supporting them.



By 1972, the situation had become so severe that Indira Gandhi had to keep out foreign scholars from India. The New York Times dated 5 August 1972 carried an editorial headlined ‘India Closes its Doors’ in which it stated, “India no doubt has been victimised by some sloppy and even malicious scholarship. On that basis alone New Delhi has some justification for seeking a measure of control over the hordes of scholars and would-be scholars who descend on the subcontinent annually, attracted by India’s rich cultural diversity and historic fascination.”



Even before the National Defence Education Act, the first program that focused on India had been set up at the University of Pennsylvania to serve the military during the second world war. In the following years, similar centers were set up at other universities with the faculty members carefully chosen so that they believed in the superiority of Western Christianity.



The fact that most American programs related to studying India grew out of the intelligence and military departments which sought to shape public opinion in other countries through the media and academia explains the strange phenomenon of American faculty members hating their own area of research and expressing hostility towards the culture they claim to study. This behavior is at complete odds with that of of real researchers, who pursue an academic field, not out of hate, but out of love for the chosen subject.



India has been the main target of Americans ever since they started their evangelical activities. The first evangelical missionaries from USA went to India and it was to India that one of America’s earliest missionaries Adoniram Judson led a group of evangelists in 1812.



When Jimmy Carter wanted to open his charity group Habitat for Humanity in India, his intentions were clearly to proselytise Hindus. That is why Rajiv Gandhi forced him to sign an agreement not to indulge in religious conversions. That kind of vigilance is required at all levels of government and society. After all, in the words of the Church Committee, “Agency-funded foundations serve as conduits of funds for a variety of purposes, including clandestine activities and contributions to scholars conducting research which supports United States foreign policy positions.”



Another angle covered by the Church Committee was the use of journalists and media organisations by the CIA. According to their report, “approximately 50 U.S. journalists” and “more than a dozen United States news organisations and commercial publishing houses” worked for the CIA.



In one case, according to the report, the New York Times carried a book review written by a CIA writer for a book brought out by the CIA. With the debate on religious conversions in India picking up steam, certain journalists and media outlets are now outing themselves as messengers of the American establishment.



In a display of truly bizarre behavior indicating that their ideas were not original but had been handed down to them, at least three Western media outlets had nothing to say on the topic of religious conversions for three weeks after several Muslims embraced Hinduism at Agra in early December, but they have now suddenly made the same point at the same time. They have demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi not remain silent on the issue of religious conversions even though the topic is under the jurisdiction of the state governments.



While Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times made the demand in his editorial, an identical demand appeared in an article written by a reporter for Bloomberg. A similar criticism of Modi also appeared in a piece by Amy Kazmin of the Financial Times whose former Washington bureau chief worked for a senior Clinton administration official.



The crudest of the three demands was by Amy Kazmin, who has described conversions by Christians as “freedom of conscience” and conversions by Hindus as “ugly.” Her position is consistent with the long standing tradition of many American journalists who have supported fellow white Americans like Billy Graham who have been actively proselytising in India.



It should also be noted that some of the language used in the American press against India constitutes verbatim repetition of language used by the US State Department. For example, the dishonest phrase “1,000 people, mostly Muslims” that is used to describe the victims of the riots in Gujarat in 2002 was coined and first used by the US State Department in their Human Rights report of 1998 to describe the victims of riots that occurred after the events at Ayodhya in 1992.



It is extremely important that the American media, academia, think-tanks and foundations be viewed in the light of the Church Committee report. Instead of giving them a free run and permitting American agitprop to be created with Indian money and support, India should curb their activities.



Whether Narendra Modi is capable of the strong action taken by Indira Gandhi remains to be seen, but what is clear is that any attempt by foreign forces to either shape public opinion in India or change the demographics of the country must be resisted. If India follows the example of South America where the Summer Institute of Linguistics was successful in its efforts, India too will become a Christian nation with the people taught to obey a government that is permanently subservient to foreign powers.

[ravish]

The visit by the U S President to India ( a second by any US President during his term ) and that also as Chief Guest at the Repubic Day Parade was indeed a very significant development as far as US – India relations is concerned. Apart from the photo opportunities, the visit has resulted in substantive results. The last hurdle on the Civil Nuclear Deal has finally been crossed, with President Obama using his executive powers. The other significant agreement is in the co production of high tech defence equipment. Lastly, a strong message has gone in the neighbourhood that India and USA has now become strategic partners. I would like to clarify at this point that India as a nation is peace loving and strongly believes is peaceful co existence. However. Given the ground realities a certain balance of power and regional equilibrium has to be maintained. In this regard the agreements reached between India and USA is a very positive development for both the countries.

[ramana]

Ravishji,

The last hurdle on the Civil Nuclear Deal has finally been crossed, with President Obama using his executive powers.

What are the implications of this point?

Thanks, ramana

[ravish]

Ramanaji,



Under the U S Regulations they are required to track the spent fuel of any U S supplied reactor.In India's case this would have been in addtion to the IAEA inspection and monitoring. This clause was not acceptable to the Indian side. Preesident Obama has waiveed this condition through his executive prerogative. Now it is for the U S companies to sell reactors to India or not , on commercial terms.Since France and Russia are eager to sell their product, the U S companies may also undertake aggressive marketing of their product in the Indian market, as its size is quite big. Any order for reactor from USA will obviously generate more employment in that country. We have to wait and see the full implecation of the waiver by the U S Government as the actual sale has to be done by the private companies and not by the Government.

[ravish]

India US Defence cooperation



The recent visit of the US Defence Secretary Mr. Aston Carter to India, his third in the last one year reflects the increased interaction between India and the United States on Defence related issues. In the last one decade there has been a gradual increase in interaction between the defence forces of the two countries in the form of joint military exercise involving all the three Services of both the countries

It now seems that we have come a long way since the days of US opposition to provide any military assistance to India. Except for a brief period immediately after the Sino Indian conflict of 1962, U S has not shown any interest in strengthening India’s defence capabilities. On the contrary, it had always sided with Pakistan and has provided massive military aid to that country since the early 1950s. Pakistan made good use of these equipment against India during both the 1965 and 1971 wars. At that time, with the Cold war doctrine still very much alive, the U S policy makers felt that Pakistan is much more useful and important to it as an allied nation rather than non aligned India.

It may be recalled that in the early 1960s India wanted to purchase the BAC Lightning interceptor aircraft from UK. The deal was stalled by the United States as it refused the sale of US made GE engines fitted in the aircraft. India was compelled to go the USSR and procured the MIG 21, as an alternative. Gradually, India drifted from the West and started depending upon USSR for procurement of modern defence equipment. The main reason for this was the reluctance of the Western Powers particularly USA to provide modern equipment to India.

However, we should acknowledge with gratitude that in 1962 when the Sino Indian conflict broke out, both UK and USA rushed in military aid by airlifting modern arms and ammunitions .The US stationed C-130 aircrafts in India for two years and these were used to airlift heavy equipment to our northern borders. This friendly gesture soon evaporated and when India proposed the purchase of C-130 aircrafts, it was refused by the United States as that would have perhaps upset their friends in Pakistan.Instead, India was provided about 48 C-119 packet aircrafts discarded by the US Air Force.









In the post cold war period, there has been a gradual shift in U S policy on India. This shift has not only been due to the change in the world geo political situation, but also due to the enormous growth of India’s economy.Today no nation can overlook the vast business opportunity that India provides and all developed nations are today ready to interact with India and sell both their technology and equipment to India.

For the United States, apart from the growing importance of the Indian market another major factor has been the rise and assertiveness of China in the post cold war period. China has in the recent past considerably expanded its naval presence both in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. The United States now feels that it needs increased security ties with India, so that the growing Chinese influence in the region of South Asia and the Indian Ocean can be kept on check. Keeping this in mind the US policy makers in the last one decade has started to gradually increase its interaction with India. At the same time, it is trying to maintain a delicate balance in its relation with old time friend Pakistan.

In the last one decade, apart from encouraging participation of India in many joint exercises, the United States has supplied India with a number of modern defence equipment systems. These include the sale of C-17 Galaxy heavy transport aircraft, the C-130J Super Hercules aircrafts for conducting special operations, light artillery guns and weapon ranging radars besides the P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft for the Indian Navy. Each of these systems is state of art equipment having cutting edge technology. According to media reports, helicopter gunships and heavy lift helicopters from the United States are soon to join our fleets.

Today the United States is so eager to forge and strengthen its defence ties with India that it is making repeated attempts with offers of setting up factory in India for the manufacture of F-16 aircrafts as well as F-18 aircrafts in India. Initially, India was reluctant to get involved in any such deals as it always felt that the US in times of need may fail to back up as it has been an unreliable partner in the past particularly in defence matters.













India still remembers that despite U S assurance that arms aid given by it to Pakistan will not be used against India; there was violation of the same by Pakistan during the 1965 India-Pakistan conflict. In 1971, during the Bangladesh liberation war the attitude of the than U S Government was downright hostile towards India.



So India had serious doubt as to the reliability of the United States as a supplier of defence equipment to India particularly its likely reaction at the time of any real threat on India’s security particularly from Pakistan. Therefore, the Indian approach has been a very cautious one. The signing of the Civil Nuclear deal and the gradual increase in interaction between USA and India on strategic issues and intelligence sharing has slowly given some proof of the reliability of the United States as a reliable source of supplier of defence equipment.

The United States has been making repeated attempts to enter into a number of defence related agreements with India, but so far they have not made any major headway. The US has been insisting that India should sign the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), as it feels these are essential to further enhance the bilateral defence and strategic relationship between the two countries.

After the recent visit of the US Defence Secretary it has been announced that some headway has been made towards signing the Logistic Support Agreement (LSA). In fact, this agreement is only expected to facilitate the various facilities that are already being extended by the two countries to each other for providing logistic support to the defence services in terms of refueling of aircrafts and Naval ships and providing supplies etc, which presently is being done on a case to case basis. India has so far not shown any interest to sign the other two agreements, as they may have serious implications for India in the future.













This has not prevented the two countries from intensifying the interaction between them in defence related matters, particularly in the procurement of modern helicopter gunships and other such equipment. The latest policy of the Government of India in allowing Private Sector participation in the manufacturing of defence equipment is likely to provide opportunities to US defence equipment manufacturers to collaborate with Indian companies and start new joint ventures. Already offers for the manufacture of F-16 and F-18 aircrafts in India have been made by the respective US companies. Many more such offers are expected in the near future as India goes ahead with its defence equipment modernization program.

The United States has been trying to rope in India in its effort to contain the growing influence of China in the South Asian region, particularly in matters relating to the South China Sea. So far India has resisted US attempts to influence its policy towards China and in the future it is expected that India will continue to engage China bilaterally as per its own understanding and own terms.