— Theodore Roosevelt, American adventurer and 26th president (1858-1919)
Manmohan Singh's recent statement has generated lot of debate on PM's weakness and India's response to terror and Pakistan in general. Most of what has been published and spoken at different forums have not addressed the core of the issue and have largely remained confined to spine of an individual and his diplomatic and political acumen, which we all know does not amount to much.
What has been largely ignored is the fact that statement itself does not count for much, you can make most pacifist statement and still aggressively pursue your interest and you may give most daring and outrageous statement and bend over when faced with a challenge.
I believe that any Indian politician or leader would essentially tow a predictable line when it comes to taking any challenge to India's security head on - they will seek a safe and soft escape route and try to save face with some strong words and actions lacking conviction and certitude to carry them out to the end and feverishly hope that people forget the outrage till other one happens, hopefully when they are not in the hot seat - for some other bugger to face the devil.
Weather it is BJP or Congress or any other national and regional party we can actually predict what will happen when our people are taken hostage, our cities are bombed and our neighbor violates our security. If we look at the cronology of events in last 60 years we see a pattern of weakness, leaders and people want to be happy putting outrage behind them and moving on..
India as a nation does not have spine - we have lacked national character since 300 BC when Greeks invaded us and ruled a large part of the nation, since then we made our rear available for the pleasure of invaders, marauders and aggressors.
Since then India's character (mainly Hindu character) has been defined by defeatism, delusion, pettiness and narrow mindedness. Nothing much has changed from 3 century BC till now! We lack the courage to overcome our own prejudices and weaknesses so we lack courage to face adversity and give in to the weakest of adversaries. Bangladesh killed and maimed and dragged our security forces all the way to the border and dumped them right on our face and we caved in - if we do not have the balls to defend ourselves and seek vengeance against Bangladesh we send out a strong signal to the world that we are same vulnerable and soft state that we have been for last 5000 years and nothing much has changed
Unless there is transformation in national character there is not much hope that we will prevent another 26/11 or collapse of Indian (Hindu) civilization in the long run. If we have to take some lessons we can look at Jews and how they transformed from a defeatist community to a small but strong and assertive force in the world, but the price they paid to realize their folly was holocaust - annihilation of 6 million of their brethren in Europe (50% of their community). We will be foolish to pay that kind of price to learn a simple but critical lesson - national character is the only defense against extinction as a community and country!
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