Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Next Door to Al Qaeda

 
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently toured our end of the Anglosphere, meeting with President Bush to discuss issues of mutual interest to India and the United States. Before that he visited Britain, stopping off at Oxford.

The university awarded Dr. Singh an honorary degree, and his acceptance speech was charming and gracious. At times he seemed to be reading from the Gates of Vienna talking points:
    Indian Prime Minister Manmohan SinghToday, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India's experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilisation met the dominant Empire of the day.
These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served the country well.
The idea of India as enshrined in our Constitution, with its emphasis on the principles of secularism, democracy, the rule of law and, above all, the equality of all human beings irrespective of caste, community, language or ethnicity, has deep roots in India's ancient civilisation.
However, it is undeniable that the founding fathers of our republic were also greatly influenced by the ideas associated with the age of enlightenment in Europe.
Dr. Singh reminded his audience of the startling fact that India has the largest number of English-speakers of any country in the world:
     It used to be said that the sun never sets on the British Empire. I am afraid we were partly responsible for sending that adage out of fashion!
But, if there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set, it is the world of the English speaking people, in which the people of Indian origin are the single largest component.
Of all the legacies of the Raj, none is more important than the English language and the modern school system. That is, if you leave out cricket!
Of course, people here may not recognise the language we speak, but let me assure you that it is English! In indigenising English, as so many people have done in so many nations across the world, we have made the language our own. Our choice of prepositions may not always be the Queen's English; we might occasionally split the infinitive; and we may drop an article here and add an extra one there.
I am sure everyone will agree, however, that English has been enriched by Indian creativity as well… Today, English in India is seen as just another Indian language.
All those local dialects of the same language, modified and adapted to serve the needs of commerce and government all over the world… Roll over, Shakespeare!

But Dr. Singh’s tour did not meet with universal approval at home. In an editorial in The Times of India, Percy Fernandez wrote:
     On being asked whether India would expect the United States to say no to Pakistan for a similar nuclear technology agreement that was signed between Bush and Singh, the Indian Prime Minister did say what he had to and rightly, that it’s a decision the United States has to make. But he didn’t stop there. He went on to add that he was realistic enough to recognize the role that terrorist elements have played in the last few years in the history of Pakistan.
He also said Taliban was a creation of Pakistan extremists, how Wahabi Islam flourished and, numerous madrassas were set up top to preach this jihad based on hatred of other religions and Pakistan is not a democracy in the sense that we all know. One would not want to doubt the intentions of his remarks but it was the timing and its appropriateness that is fiercely in doubt.
[…]
Was Dr Singh any different than his predecessor, Prime Minister AB Vajpayee? No, not in any sense. Vajpayee in his address to the US Congress in 2000 said that religious war has been proclaimed to be an instrument of Pakistan’s state policy. He said that he believed forces outside India could use terror to unravel the territorial integrity of India.
Dr. Singh’s comments seem sensible and commonplace to those of us who urge resistance to the Great Jihad. But India is in the process of a delicate rapprochement with Pakistan, and some members of his own party find the Prime Minister’s remarks less than tactful.

And Dr. Singh has cannons to his right as well. Former Prime Minister Vajpayee is in the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has criticized the Prime Minister for his shameful embrace of India’s former masters:
     The Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded an apology from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for praising the British colonial rule during his speech on Friday at the Oxford University.
So it is a fine line that must be walked by the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy.

Just imagine it: more than a billion people, dozens of languages, several major religions including a large Muslim minority, and still India is a functioning democracy. One can only hold its leaders in awe.

And just next door in Pakistan lies one of the world’s largest concentrations of Muslim extremists and terrorists. The Great Islamic Jihad makes itself felt every day in Kashmir, and the restive Muslim minority in the other parts of India continually pushes the envelope, wanting more space, more rights, more Islam. With the nuclear option hanging over both countries, the diplomatic abilities of Dr. Singh are of great moment indeed.

7 comments:

Oengus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Baron Bodissey said...

Heck, given the part of the world he's in, it's more likely to be "Singh=Genghiz Khan", or even "Singh=Tamburlayne".

Singh lied! Sikhs died!

Baron Bodissey said...

The Indian people debunk just about every myth about the third world. But remember: they were a highly civilized country, and had been for more than a millenium, when the British came. Very different from most of Africa in that way.

V.S. Naipaul is one of my favorite writers. He is, of course, a West Indian of Indian descent.

Always On Watch said...

Too few Westerners know about the slaughter of Pakistani Hindus as the Muslims continued their conquest of Asia. One of Dr. Singh's American relatives lives here in the D.C. area and, this past spring, helped to rally support from the Hindu local community with regard to a new world-studies textbook, which omitted the Muslims-Pakistani connection. It remains to be seen if the new teaching unit will actually be implemented in the classroom, but the Hindus here managed to get the unit adopted by the County school system.

Dr. Singh does indeed walk a fine line in this world of political correctness.

Always On Watch said...

DP111/PD111,
Your hypothesis about Islam and slavery is something to think about. Of course, despotic ideologies always enslave, because enslavement empowers the ruling class.

I've also noticed in my study of Islam that Arabs desire to enslave black Africans. Is there Koranic "justification" for that, along the lines of the sons of Ham will be servants (if I remember that Southern argument properly)?

You wrote "We were fooled into letting Islam into the domain of Freedom. Islam avoided the radar that protects Free societies, as it cloaked itself as a religion." Indeed!

Let me toss out this comment....Some Christian Arabs believe that Islam is Satanic in origin. One evangelical Arab points out that the voice of an angel doesn't come from a human's mouth, yet Mohammed claimed that the voice of the angel spoke through him, This evangelical states that when a spirit's voice comes from the mouth of a human is a demonic possession.

Wasn't Allah originally a moon god? Was this a god of the group which the Old Testament referred to as the Canaanites?

Jude the Obscure said...

pd111 (or DP111) If you are forced to pray five times a day, repetition of the words must have a dulling effect on the brain leading to inability to think properly and subsequent apathy which itself is a type of dementia.
I no longer bother trying to relate Islamism to any other ideology. Islamism practised by Islamists is an ideology devoted to the eradication of all other cultures and religions. That is its raison de'etre. It has no scientific, mathematical, philosophical, economic or artistic basis. Say for instance the Islamists get their worldwide caliphate and everything is the way they say they want it, (once the Shi'ites get rid of the Sunnis or the other way around) and they can expand nowhere. What then?

Your identifying the slave mentality of Islamists may have something in it. Islamism's disguise as a religion with submission to an almighty being is familiar to us and acceptable as such but some fine tuning into the difference between philosophical freedom of will and mental slavery might produce something. I can't do it. My head hurts from posting this.

Jude the Obscure said...

Ik said 'we might ally with the west but it will be on our terms' - You might have no choice.