https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/25/chi...n-a-disputed-himalayan-border-with-india.html China is building a new bridge on a disputed Himalayan border, drawing ire from India Published Tue, May 24 202211:46 PM EDT Ravi Buddhavarapu@Ravishankarbudd Key Points China is building a bridge across a lake in Ladakh on China’s Himalayan border with India — a move condemned by the Indian government, which called it an “illegal construction.” China and India have tens of thousands of troops massed on the border despite 15 rounds of talks to de-escalate military tensions after a violent confrontation in the area two years ago. In June 2020, India and China had a brutal and bloody skirmish without guns, fighting pitched battles in the icy cold, using metal rods, bludgeons with nail filings and other such improvised weapons. An Indian fighter jet flies over a mountain range in Ladakh at the height of a military confrontation with China in June 2020 during which 20 Indian soldiers died. Tauseef Mustafa | Afp | Getty Images China is building a bridge across a lake in Ladakh on China’s Himalayan border with India — a move condemned by the Indian government, which called it an “illegal construction.” It is the second and sturdier of two Chinese bridges across the Pangong Tso lake. Speaking to CNBC, a retired general of the Indian Army, who used to be stationed in Ladakh, said the new bridge is capable of supporting tanks and armored personnel carriers and would help China speed up deployment between the river banks. “What the bridge adds to Chinese capabilities is the ability to speedily move forces between the north and the south banks of Pangong Tso lake, which they were earlier lacking” said General Rohit Gupta, who served with the Fire and Fury Corps of the Northern Command of the Indian Army. Ladakh is the site of an ongoing confrontation between the two nations. It was a flashpoint between India and China in mid-2020, when violent clashes killed 20 Indian soldiers and five Chinese soldiers, according to their respective governments. Other reports set the Chinese death toll higher, at between 38 and 45 Chinese soldiers. Pangong Tso lake is in disputed territory claimed by both countries. China has controlled two-thirds of the lake since the 1960s, and India holds the remaining one-third. “We have seen reports of a bridge being constructed by China on Pangong Lake alongside its earlier bridge. Both these bridges are in areas that have continued to be under the illegal occupation of China since the 1960s,” India’s external affairs ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi told reporters last week. “We have never accepted such illegal occupation of our territory, nor have we accepted the unjustified Chinese claim or such construction activities,” he said. According to Gen. Gupta, the new bridge — which shortens the 130-kilometer distance between the southern and northern banks of the lake — is part of an attempt to negate a tactical Indian advantage in the area. Interdiction of such known terrain entities is possible, especially through precision munitions delivered from a variety of resources. Rohit Gupta Retired Brigadier General Staff, Indian Army Gen. Gupta said India had also built a lot of infrastructure to assist “better tactical, operational” deployment of forces. While the new Chinese bridge was a matter of concern, it could be neutralized, he added. “Interdiction of such known terrain entities is possible, especially through precision munitions delivered from a variety of resources,” he said, adding that the Indian side had a clear view of the bridge from positions it held. The dispute about the bridge would likely have been discussed as part of overall security discussions in the Quad meeting, visiting scholar in the Asia program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Deep Pal, told CNBC on Monday, before the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue on Tuesday. A leaders’ meeting of the four-nation Quad — made up of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. — was held in Tokyo on Tuesday. The group’s goal is to counter China’s growing assertiveness in the region. “But there is no immediate response that the Quad could make,” Pal added, pointing out that the grouping was not an “Asian Nato.″ Of the four nations comprising the Quad, India is the only one which shares a border with China. The 3,488-km-long unmarked border between India and China is the world’s longest disputed border. Former Indian trade secretary Ajay Dua told CNBC on Tuesday that Quad nations should work together militarily, even if it’s at the risk of angering China. “I would like to see Quad nations getting together to provide greater military security,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia,” adding it is the “need of the hour.” China and India still have tens of thousands of troops massed on the border despite 15 rounds of talks to de-escalate military tensions after a violent confrontation in 2020. In June that year, the two nuclear-armed Asian giants fought a brutal and bloody skirmish without guns, in hand-to-hand combat with metal rods, bludgeons with nail filings and other such improvised weapons. Under previous treaties, both countries have agreed not to carry or use firearms to prevent escalation. HighlightingChina’s belligerence at its border with India and with neighbors in the South China Sea, Dua noted the Quad was formed in 2007 as a security dialogue — not as a trade agreement. “I would like to see [Quad countries provide] military security irrespective of the Chinese reaction,” he said, adding that China had alreadyconducted a disinformation campaign,labeling the Quad as an anti-China grouping. “No country in the region can handle China alone. The U.S. on its own can,” he said.
So India joins the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), colloquially the Quad, a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The dialogue was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the support of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Coming to the present day war between Russia and Ukraine, India supports Russia, buys military hardware from Russia including oil & gas to this present day, no embargos, India does not rebuke Russia, nether does it support Ukraine. In the event of a war in Himalaya's with China, India will expect the support from US, Aust, Japan to fight its battles, but when the boot is on the other foot, India will be nowhere seen, it will come up with a bs excuse for cowardice. Talk about a lopsided commitment. All the makings of another Afghanistan shithole.
Putin Brings China and India to Russia for War Games Defying US India sends small contingent to Vostok-2022 military exercises More than 50,000 troops to take part in the week-long drills Chinese soldiers during the International Army Games in Alabino, Russia on Aug. 27.Source: Getty Images Bloomberg News 1 September 2022 Russia is holding major military exercises involving China and India as President Vladimir Putin pushes back against attempts by the US and its allies to isolate him over his invasion of Ukraine. More than 50,000 troops and 5,000 pieces of military equipment, including more than 140 aircraft and 60 warships, are due to take part in the week-long Vostok-2022 war games that start Thursday in Russia’s far east, including naval drills in the Sea of Japan. The regular exercises bring together member states and partners of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization of former Soviet republics. Even as the US is wooing India as a defense partner and urging it not to undermine international sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, the New Delhi government is sending a small 75-strong military detachment to the army drills. They include Gurkha troops and representatives from the navy and air force, though India isn’t dispatching naval or air assets to Russia. India, which has previously attended the exercises, has avoided taking sides over Russia’s war in Ukraine, partly because of its reliance on Moscow as its main weapons supplier amid persistent border tensions with neighboring China and Pakistan. Still, the south Asian nation voted against Russia on the issue for the first time in a procedural vote last week at the United Nations Security Council that allowed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to address the body via video link. India has also shelved moves to jointly produce helicopters and put on hold another plan to buy about 30 fighters from Russia. The Defense Ministry in Beijing said China’s army, air and naval forces are taking part in the drills, which aim to strengthen military coordination. The Chinese Communist Party-backed Global Times said the exercises this year will focus on possible threats, especially from the US in the Pacific region. China has refused to criticize Russia for its six-month-long invasion of Ukraine and condemned US and European sanctions against Moscow. But it has steered clear of siding with Putin by providing technology and military supplies for Russia’s war effort because of the risk of US secondary sanctions. The Chinese role in the drills “cannot be seen as support” for Russia over the conflict, said Vasily Kashin, a Russian military expert at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “It just shows us that the military-to-military ties are going on as usual.” Russia’s ally Belarus is also taking part in Vostok-2022 along with the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Tajkistan and other states including Syria, Algeria, Mongolia, Laos and Nicaragua. — With assistance by Benjamin Harvey, Gem Atkinson, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, and Brendan Scott https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ia-for-war-games-defying-us?srnd=premium-asia
China, India Stand by Russia Despite Its Setbacks in Ukraine War Beijing is seeking to deepen economic ties with Moscow, while New Delhi has increased its purchases of Russian crude and relies on the country for military supplies By Keith Zhai in Singapore and Rajesh Roy in New Delhi Sept. 21, 2022 https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-...s-setbacks-in-ukraine-war-11663774727?mod=mhp A summit in Central Asia last week served as a public stage for Moscow’s biggest backers to express misgivings about the Ukraine war, with Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledging that China had concerns and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, “Today’s era is not an era for war.” Despite those public expressions of doubt, China is staying the course in its relationship with Russia and even seeking to deepen the economic ties between the two countries, said Chinese officials familiar with Beijing’s thinking. For its part, although India is growing increasingly frustrated with the impact the war is having on the economy and developing world, New Delhi hasn’t altered its close ties with Moscow, Indian officials said. China and India see their close relationships with Russia as a necessity, even as Russia’s forces have faced some of their biggest battlefield setbacks, officials from both countries say. China sees Russia as a strategic partner in its escalating rivalry with the U.S., and India relies on Moscow for more than half of its military supplies. On Wednesday, Mr. Putin ordered the mobilization of the country’s reservists to bolster his troops who have lost ground in the face of a Ukrainian offensive and raised the prospect of a nuclear response in Ukraine. When asked about Mr. Putin’s comments on Wednesday, China repeated its call for a cease-fire and end to the conflict through negotiations that take into account “the legitimate security concerns of all parties,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin. India’s Ministry of External Affairs didn’t immediately comment on Mr. Putin’s speech. Chinese leaders have raised concerns about the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty from the outset of the conflict, but Chinese officials say that little has changed about Beijing’s view of its relationship with Moscow during the course of the war, including in recent weeks. The country’s strategic cooperation with Russia has only become more important due to rising pressure from the U.S. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a regional summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, last week. Photo: sergei bobylyov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images The major concern for Beijing has been about the potential for the war to be destabilizing domestically for Mr. Putin, who has been seen as a close partner of Beijing. Last week’s meeting between Mr. Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping—their first face-to-face since the start of the war—was friendly and filled with discussion of their close relationship, said one person familiar with the talks. “As their respective relations with the United States worsened, the two governments increasingly form a united front to oppose the U.S. across the board,” said Daniel Russel, who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration. The alignment has been evident in the growing economic ties between the two neighbors. China’s imports of Russian coal hit a five-year high in August of 8.54 million metric tons, up 57% from a year earlier, according to official Chinese data released this week. China’s crude oil imports were also up 28% from a year earlier, the data showed. At last week’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China, Russia and Mongolia agreed to move forward on the Mongolian section of a gas pipeline between China and Russia. On Monday, just days after the meeting between Messrs. Putin and Xi, senior officials from both nations held security talks in southern China and promised to “continue to deepen strategic coordination and firmly support each other on issues involving each other’s core interests and major concerns,” according to state-run Xinhua News Agency. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, spoke with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, as part of an effort to “fully implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state” to continue deepening political and security ties, according to Russian state-media agency TASS. The two nations have been trying to wean themselves off a dependence on trade denominated in Western currencies. The neighbors have also explored ways their financial messaging systems could work together to circumvent the SWIFT international payments network, a Russian lawmaker said in March, after some Russian banks were cut off from the Western-backed network. “The most urgent task now is to develop a new form of economic, trade and financial cooperation that would allow the two countries to further promote trade and economic cooperation in the context of anti-Russian sanctions,” said Yana Leksyutina, a political scientist at the St. Petersburg State University. “It is important to develop such interaction mechanisms that would prevent Chinese companies from falling under secondary sanctions while dealing with Russia.” India has also deepened its economic ties with Russia during the war. The country has increased its purchases of Russian crude after reaching a deal earlier this year to buy it at a discount to market prices. Indian officials have defended those purchases as being in the best interests of the Indian public. India has refrained from publicly condemning the war, but Indian officials say Mr. Modi delivered a pointed message to Mr. Putin last week about New Delhi’s increasing concerns over the impact the conflict was having on the developing world. Mr. Modi has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in his phone conversations with Mr. Putin in recent months, they said. “At the latest bilateral, Mr. Modi said the same things, but more clearly and in public,” said one official. New Delhi sees the war as jeopardizing the economic recovery after more than two years of the pandemic, Indian officials said. Mr. Modi said rising prices of food and fertilizer are pressing issues, both in his public remarks at the summit and in his conversation with Mr. Putin. India has curbed exports of wheat and rice amid inflation and disruptions to the harvest. Another concern for India is the impact the war may have on energy markets. As Russia cuts back on the supply of gas to Europe, New Delhi fears those countries may turn to some of the same suppliers India relies on. “This might lead to a huge spike in energy prices. Being a net importer, India can’t afford to take that huge shock,” said one Indian official. India has had a close relationship with Moscow for decades, owing to a partnership formed during the Cold War. The Ukraine war has forced New Delhi to try to balance that against its growing ties with the West. The U.S. is now India’s largest trading partner. Washington and its allies have tried to persuade India to not only become a closer economic partner but also a military one in confronting China’s ambitions in Asia. India is a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a group that also includes the U.S., Japan and Australia that formed as a counterweight to a rising China. New Delhi has also had a long-running dispute with Beijing over their shared land border. India is also concerned about the impact the war could have on its military supplies. The country has been looking for alternative sources for spare parts and equipment from countries other than Russia and has been trying to make some of them domestically, said an Indian defense official. Before last week’s summit, Beijing and New Delhi said their troops were disengaging in the Gogra-Hot Springs area in the western Himalayas. The move was the first sign of progress after multiple rounds of high-level military talks since 2020 and marked an opportunity for the first bilateral meeting between the Chinese and Indian leaders since 2019. The two leaders each held a handful of bilateral meetings at last week’s summit, but didn’t meet with one another. “Despite the good will expressed by the two sides, the border issue remains a tough one for both of the leaders to handle with an increasingly nationalistic sentiment domestically at home,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.
The New India: Expanding Influence Abroad, Straining Democracy at Home As India rises, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced little pushback as he weaponizes institutions to consolidate power and entrench his Hindu nationalist vision. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia meeting in Uzbekistan this month.Credit...Sergei Bobylev/Sputnik, via EPA, via Shutterstock By Mujib Mashal Sept. 24, 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/asia/india-democracy.html NEW DELHI — On the margins of a summit meant as a show of force for a Russian leader seeking a turnaround on the battlefield, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India leaned in with a different message. “Democracy, diplomacy and dialogue” — not war — is the answer, he told Vladimir V. Putin as the cameras rolled this month, before declaring that the two would speak more about how to bring peace in Ukraine. That assured interaction in Uzbekistan was the latest display of India’s rise under Mr. Modi. An ambitious and assertive power, India has become increasingly indispensable in the search for answers to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, from diplomacy to climate change to technology and trade to efforts at diversifying supply chains to counter China. It is India’s credentials as the world’s largest democracy that Mr. Modi rides on the global stage. But at home, diplomats, analysts and activists say, Mr. Modi’s government is undertaking a project to remake India’s democracy unlike any in its 75 years of independence — stifling dissent, sidelining civilian institutions and making minorities second-class citizens. While past Indian leaders exploited religious divisions and weaponized institutions to stay in power, Mr. Modi’s focus has been more fundamental: a systematic consolidation of power, achieved not through dramatic power grabs but through more subtle and lasting means, aimed at imprinting a majoritarian Hindu ideology on India’s constitutionally secular democracy. Mr. Modi has bent to his will the courts, the news media, the legislature and civil society — “referee” institutions that guarded India’s democracy in a region of military coups and entrenched dictatorships. As he has done so, the country’s indispensability on major global issues, coupled with challenges to democracy in both the United States and Europe, has ensured little pushback from Western allies. The question now for both India and the world is whether the country can remain an engine for growth and a viable partner even as its heavy-handed marginalization of minorities, particularly its 200 million Muslims, stokes cycles of extremism and perpetual volatility at home. Mr. Modi with President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada at a Group of 7 meeting in Germany in June.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times The contradictions of India’s rise were crystallized in late June, when Mr. Modi stood alongside the Group of 7 leaders in Germany as his public relations team worked to document his seeming intimacy with his counterparts: a shared laugh with President Biden, an interlacing of fingers with Justin Trudeau of Canada. But just as Mr. Modi was joining his hosts in signing a statement urging the defense of democracies and affirming ideals like “freedom of expression” and the “independence of civil society,” his government was continuing a crackdown on dissent back home. The Indian authorities arrested an activist critical of the prime minister’s past record on human rights and a fact-checker who had highlighted disparaging comments about Islam by a governing party spokeswoman. Days earlier, officials had again rolled in bulldozers to raze the homes of Muslims as part of a campaign of “instant justice,” this time targeting activists accused of leading sometimes violent protests against the provocative remarks. For now, Mr. Modi’s focus is on leveraging India’s strengths. As the global order has been disrupted by Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an expansionist Beijing, Mr. Modi’s lieutenants have made clear that they see this as their moment to establish India, on their own terms, among the foremost powers. India is a rising economic force, having just passed Britain, its onetime colonial overlord, as the world’s fifth-largest economy. It is well positioned to prosper with its improving trade ties, large youth population and expanding technological infrastructure — a potential alternative, in the eyes of some democracies, to a future dominated by China. Mr. Modi’s diplomats are emboldened to overcome seeming contradictions, like holding military exercises with both Russia and the United States and increasing purchases of Russian oil despite American and European pressure. India’s Western allies have shown little appetite to challenge the Modi government as it diverges from some of their professed democratic values. A focus on trade and geopolitics has often pushed human rights to the back burner, analysts and diplomats said. With the European Union fast-tracking negotiations on a free-trade agreement with India, the talk is all “this deal, this deal, this deal,” one European diplomat in New Delhi said. The United States, which two years into the Biden administration still does not have an ambassador in New Delhi, is reeling from former President Donald J. Trump’s assault on its democratic system. Its seriousness about a foreign policy that prioritizes human rights was questioned as the quest for cheaper oil took Mr. Biden this summer to Saudi Arabia, where he fist-bumped with the crown prince implicated in a journalist’s murder and dismemberment. “The U.S. also has lost some of its authority to criticize other countries on their records on democracy,” said Lisa Curtis, a former senior U.S. national security official who leads the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. In many ways, diplomats, officials and analysts said, India’s rise brings together two unique developments: a natural opening in the country’s often-uncertain post-colonial trajectory, and the emergence of a leader at the peak of his power who has spent half a century pursuing his vision from the ground up. Demolished shops next to a mosque after communal violence in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in April.Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times After India’s violent founding as an independent nation in 1947, the country remained consumed for decades with questions of whether it would remain intact and whether its economy could feed an enormous population. The moment to define itself, and its relations with the world, has come only after those questions have largely been settled. Mr. Modi, 72, has spent his life in the trenches of a right-wing movement that calls India’s founding as a secular republic a grave injustice that accommodated minorities like Muslims and Christians at the cost of what they see as the Hindu majority’s rightful claims. Mr. Modi’s political consolidation at the top, coupled with extensive welfare projects to maintain a strong voting base, has given India’s right wing its most effective formula yet to bring about the cultural and systemic changes the movement has long fought for on the streets. The country’s central investigating agencies have become willing levers of intimidation against dissenting voices, analysts say. Journalists and activists face frequent harassment, mired in lengthy court cases or thrown in jail under laws that make bail difficult. Independent institutions — from courts to Parliament to the national human rights commission and the elections body — have been overwhelmed or have largely retreated, as the compliant are rewarded and detractors are punished. Mr. Modi is not the first Indian leader to capture institutions and unleash them at political opponents, said Josy Joseph, who has chronicled a long history of abuses in his book “The Silent Coup.” The closest the country’s democracy has come to fracturing was in the 1970s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared an emergency to jail opponents and censor the media in a bid to remain in power. Mr. Joseph said Mr. Modi had been much more effective than Mrs. Gandhi in achieving his aims, aided by an unparalleled propaganda operation — allied broadcast media and newspapers, and a social media machine reaching into every phone — that provides cover both at home and abroad. Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party “have very cleverly combined India’s traditional democratic credentials and autocratic controls,” Mr. Joseph said. Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a B.J.P. spokesman, attributed criticism of the government’s human rights record to politics and an unnamed “nexus globally” that cannot stomach India’s ascension. “Our rise at the international level is because India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is looking out for Indian interests, taking independent decisions,” Mr. Agarwal said. “We are leveraging the strengths of India — whether it is the large youth population, resources, manufacturing strength, I.T. strength, human resource strength.” Mr. Biden with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia in July.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times Mr. Agarwal said the government’s approach to law and order should not be “classified as human rights violations.” He rejected the contention that Mr. Modi was deploying investigating agencies against his opponents, saying the raids were intended to clean up corruption. “If somebody has objection to the investigation agency, there is courts, etc., which takes care of balance of power,” he said. But local courts, analysts and activists say, often act as a stamp for the executive’s abuses. The already-clogged higher courts struggle to keep up and are at times accused of aiding the executive by ignoring important cases of constitutional overreach. There are nearly six million cases pending in India’s high courts and more than 70,000 in the Supreme Court. One tactic the governing party deploys is to jail critics under strict laws against terrorist activities and money laundering. The conviction rate is abysmal, but the process of exoneration serves the political purpose of spreading fear, critics say. Siddique Kappan, a journalist, and his taxi driver were arrested in October 2020 as he tried to report on the government’s efforts to contain the blowback over a gruesome rape case. Before Mr. Kappan had even reached the village, the government charged him with intending to hurt local communal harmony. He was repeatedly denied bail. When the Supreme Court of India finally heard his appeal this month, the judges took less than 30 minutes to rule that the government’s case for denying Mr. Kappan his freedom was flimsy at best and granted him bail. Both Mr. Kappan and the taxi driver had already spent nearly two years in jail. But even the highest court’s intervention did not free Mr. Kappan: He remains in jail under another pending case against him, while the driver has been freed. “In our criminal justice system, the process is the punishment,” N.V. Ramana lamented before his retirement as India’s chief justice last month. Mr. Modi’s confidence at home has extended into confidence abroad. Officials in his government often denounce international indexes rating countries on key indicators like health or press and religious freedom, dismissing them as products of colonial agendas or foreign naïveté on India’s civilizational approach — an attitude that reminds many diplomats of the stance often taken by authoritarian China. Mr. Modi before delivering an address in August celebrating India’s 75 years of independence.Credit...Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “Shall we not set our own standards?” Mr. Modi said last month at an event marking his country’s 75 years of independence, as helicopters showered rose petals. “We want freedom from slavery.” In April, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a rare public comment on India’s domestic policies that the United States was “monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials.” His Indian counterpart, S. Jaishankar, fired back. “I would tell you that we also take our views on other people’s human rights situation, including that of the United States,” Mr. Jaishankar said during a visit to the United States. “So, we take up human rights issues when they arise in this country.” Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
An Anti-Muslim Symbol From India Is Paraded on Main Street, New Jersey An Anti-Muslim Symbol From India Is Paraded on Main Street, New Jersey The bulldozer has become a symbol of oppression in India. Its appearance in a New Jersey parade has exposed fault lines between the region’s Hindu and Muslim communities. A business association that runs the annual India Day Parade in Edison, N.J., included a bulldozer, which has become a symbol of oppression in India.Credit...via Minhaj Khan By Tracey Tully Sept. 25, 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/nyregion/bulldozer-indian-parade-new-jersey.html EDISON, N.J. — The India Day Parade featured a pretty standard lineup of festival fare. A Bollywood actress waved to fans from the top of a handmade float. Indian flags fluttered in the breeze. Flashy cars and quirky ads (“Kidney donors are sexy,” read one) passed by. Then, toward the middle of the caravan, came a small yellow bulldozer, decorated with photos of India’s prime minister and a hard-line protégé. To some bystanders, the solitary piece of construction equipment was no more than an oddity as it rumbled past during the parade last month in Edison, N.J. But to those who understood its symbolism, it was a blunt and sinister taunt later likened to a noose or a burning cross at a Ku Klux Klan rally. “I felt disgusted,” said Deepak Kumar, 50, a co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights, who attended the parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of India’s independence from Britain. In India, where a divisive brand of Hindu-first nationalism is surging, the bulldozer has become a symbol of oppression, and a focus of the escalating religious tension that has resulted in the government-led destruction of private homes and businesses, most of them owned by members of the country’s Muslim minority. But now the bulldozer was here, in Edison, a sprawling suburb that is home to one of the largest Indian American communities in the United States. To Indian immigrants outraged by its presence, it represented a threat to the highest ideals of their adoptive country and exposed subtle fault lines within the region’s Muslim and Hindu communities. Mohammed Nisar, a Muslim oncologist who emigrated from India and has lived and worked in Edison for 45 years, said the bulldozer was as offensive as a hooded Klansman would be to African Americans or a swastika to Jews. “We have enough hate groups here,” Dr. Nisar said. “We don’t need any more.” Officials with the Indian Business Association, a private group that organized the Aug. 14 parade, said at first that the bulldozer was meant to represent law and order in India, where they said it was used to raze illegally constructed property — echoing the explanation India’s government frequently offers to justify demolitions that circumvent the legal process. “What is the bulldozer’s meaning?” Chandrakant Patel, an Edison restaurant owner who leads the association, told the township council. “Illegal land construction.” Others dismissed the claim that the bulldozer was a symbol of hatred and expressed strong support for India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. “Nobody has a right to disrespect our prime minister,” said Bimal Joshi, who has lived in Edison for 30 years and is not affiliated with the business group. But within two weeks, at the urging of the mayors of Edison and the neighboring town of Woodbridge, where the parade ended, Mr. Patel had apologized. In a letter, he called the bulldozer a “blatant divisive” symbol. Mr. Patel added that his group was aware it had “offended the Indian American minority groups, especially Muslims, from the local area and across the state and country” and vowed to never again include anything similar in future parades. He did not respond to requests for additional comment. For many, the apology was too little, too late. Muslim leaders had already filed a complaint with the Edison Police Department, citing intimidation and bias. Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. arrived to hold meetings with community members. The State Legislature’s Joint Asian Pacific American Caucus issued a statement condemning the bulldozer as a “symbol of division and hate,” as did the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. One Edison township council meeting ran nearly three hours long and another four as dozens of speakers waited for a turn at the mic to discuss the bulldozer. A Muslim high school student warned that the simmering religious tension in the community was likely to seep into the classroom. And an Episcopalian pastor who is a member of a human rights group in town said the rift was the most alarming thing he had ever witnessed as a lifelong resident of Edison. Days after the parade, Minhaj M. Khan, a past president of the Indian American Muslim Council of New Jersey who has led much of the local opposition to the bulldozer, said he felt wary buying ice cream in Edison with his oldest daughter, who wears a hijab. “I feel scared,” said Mr. Khan, 48, a father of four who immigrated to the United States from India 25 years ago, and settled in New Jersey a year later. “We all love this place. We chose it for a reason. I don’t want this ideology spreading any further.” Dominic Sequeira, left, and Minhaj Khan, have met with government officials to express their outrage over the bulldozer.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times In many ways, the schism now gripping New Jersey’s large Indian American community reflects longstanding divisions in India, where an extremist political movement that strives to make India a Hindu republic has gained strength. Monks there have encouraged Hindus, who make up about 80 percent of the country’s population, to use violence against Muslims. Lynch mobs have killed Muslims suspected of slaughtering cows, a sacred animal in Hinduism. And bulldozers have been used to destroy homes in acts that Amnesty International and officials with the United Nations have said appeared designed to punish religious minorities. Mr. Kumar, a software engineer, said he feared that India, his home until the age of 27, was being consumed by religious hatred. He said he was intent on speaking out against similar divisions in the United States, even though he said it had alienated him from some fellow Hindus. Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the presence of a bulldozer at a parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of the world’s largest democracy “a dog whistle.” “It’s a warning sign,” he said. “You are taking social divisions that are prominent in India and replicating that in the diaspora.” There are 4.2 million people of Indian origin in the United States, representing the second largest immigrant group in the country. Mr. Modi has made outreach to the Indian diaspora a signature element of the foreign policy of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. After his election in 2014, he spoke at Madison Square Garden; in 2019, accompanied by then-President Donald J. Trump, he addressed a large crowd at a Houston football stadium. A study done last year by the Carnegie Endowment found that half of Indian Americans approved of Mr. Modi, with the strongest support among Hindus and people older than 50. In Edison, about 35 miles southwest of Manhattan, nearly half of its 108,000 residents are Asian. The Oak Tree Road commercial strip, where the parade was held, is lined with stores and ethnic restaurants that cater almost exclusively to immigrants from South Asia. As explosive as the controversy was to some, other Edison residents said they had heard little about the parade bulldozer in the weeks after the event, besides a few stray messages on social media. Rajasekhar Chesuku, 34, a software engineer who emigrated from India to attend graduate school, said he had never sensed any outward religious strife in Edison, a sentiment echoed by many other residents as well as the mayor. “We came here for some work, for the better future,” said Mr. Chesuku, who is Hindu. “I can feel secure here.” Dominic Sequeira, 54, has lived more of his life in the United States than in India. Most of his friends are Hindu, he said, and he was raised Roman Catholic, another religious minority in India. He said he believed it was impossible for people familiar with the news in India to ignore the timing of the parade bulldozer or to overlook its hateful intent. Two months earlier, he noted, the family home of Afreen Fatima, a Muslim activist, was destroyed by a bulldozer in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in a story that captured headlines worldwide. The demolition came after protests over anti-Islamic remarks by a former official in India’s governing party. Ms. Fatima said news of a bulldozer appearing in a parade in the United States felt surreal. The four-bedroom, two-bath house where she had lived with her family in the city of Prayagraj for roughly 20 years was gone. “For it to be celebrated, it feels like a defeat,” she said of the bulldozer during an interview from India. “It’s a very loud and clear message once again to the Hindu community: You have support outside of India, and you can get away with whatever you want to do,” she added. That is part of the reason, Mr. Sequeira said, that he decided to speak out. “I’m here because I live in a community where I have prospered,” he said. “I’ve come from India, where before this current government, there was no such oppression. We never talked about this.” “There comes a tipping point,” he added, “where you have to draw a line.”
Opinion Hal Brands If China Invaded Taiwan, What Would India Do? The New Delhi government fears its expansionist neighbor but is deeply wary about getting in the middle of a brawl with Beijing. By Hal Brands 14 November 2022 The US, Australia and Japan would be the core of any alliance to defend Taiwan from an attack by China. But the Indo-Pacific is enormous, so the success of this coalition of the willing might hinge on what support it could scrounge up from an axis of the ambivalent — a group of strategically situated, and strategically hesitant, countries across the region. Access to bases in the Philippines and perhaps South Korea could help Washington bring its airpower to bear. Use of logistical facilities in Singapore would make it easier to operate in the South China Sea. Overflight rights from Southeast Asian countries would allow the US to get long-range bombers stationed at Diego Garcia into the game. And simply to get to the fighting, one Australian official told me last week, Canberra would need Indonesia’s “grudging acquiescence” to transit through its archipelagic waters and airspace. All of these countries fear an expansionist China. All are positioned well to help contain it. Yet all are deeply wary about getting in the middle of a brawl with Beijing. This applies in spades to another Indo-Pacific power I’ve been visiting: India, whose behavior in a Taiwan crisis remains a question mark at best. India’s centrality to the US-China rivalry is clear. The country is a major regional power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, two regions where China aims to expand. India has experience with Beijing’s bullying along their contested border in the Himalayas. Since a military clash that killed at least 20 Indian troops in June 2020, officials and analysts in New Delhi told me, any remaining illusions about Chinese President Xi Jinping have fallen away. As the world’s largest democracy, India is unavoidably — if not always enthusiastically — prominent in a US-China competition that President Joe Biden frames in ideological terms of free nations versus autocracies. As a leader of the developing world, which is again becoming a geopolitical battleground, India exercises great diplomatic influence as well. The Biden administration is bullish on India, and with good reasons. New Delhi has aligned itself with a reborn Quad — alongside Australia, Japan and the US — and its vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” Washington reportedly provided intelligence support to India during and after the 2020 Himalayan skirmish. India is using naval exercises and arms sales to countries such as Indonesia to deepen its engagement in Southeast Asia in ways that complicate Beijing’s designs. The relationship with India is “the most important for the United States in the 21st century,” the Biden administration’s Asia policy czar, Kurt Campbell, has said. But don’t get carried away, because India can be both a hardheaded and a halfhearted partner. There is no enthusiasm for anything like a formal alliance with Washington. As former foreign minister Vijay Gokhale said to me, “India is too big, has too much of a history and identity as a great civilization, to be attached to someone else.” The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose commitment to democratic norms at home is questionable, lacks any sentimental attachment to the liberal international order abroad. Much to the disappointment of US officials, India’s dependence on Russian guns and gas has produced an unabashedly equivocal stance on the war in Ukraine. So how might India react if China attacked Taiwan? Although India can’t project much military power east of the Malacca Strait, it could still, in theory, do a lot. US officials quietly hope that India might grant access to its Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in the eastern Bay of Bengal, to facilitate a blockade of China’s oil supplies. The Indian Navy could help keep Chinese ships out of the Indian Ocean; perhaps the Indian Army could distract China by turning up the heat in the Himalayas. Even short of military assistance, India could rally diplomatic condemnation of a Taiwan assault in the developing world. During the crisis that followed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, India publicly accused China of “militarization” of the strait. New Delhi has a real stake in the survival of a free Taiwan. China has a punishing strategic geography, in that it faces security challenges on land and at sea. If taking Taiwan gave China preeminence in maritime Asia, though, Beijing could then pivot to settle affairs with India on land. Expect a “turn toward the South” once China’s Taiwan problem is resolved, one Indian defense official told me. And in general, a world in which China is emboldened — and the US and its democratic allies are badly bloodied — by a Taiwan conflict would be very nasty for India. But none of this ensures that India will cast its lot, militarily or diplomatically, with a pro-Taiwan coalition. Appeals to common democratic values or norms of nonaggression won’t persuade India to aid Taiwan any more than they have induced it to help Ukraine. Armchair strategists might dream of opening a second front in the Himalayas, but India might be paralyzed by fear that openly aiding the US anywhere would simply give China a pretext to batter overmatched, unprepared Indian forces on their shared frontier. The Modi government has been happy to have America’s help in dealing with India’s China problem but is far more reluctant to return the favor by courting trouble in the Western Pacific. What India would do in a Taiwan conflict is really anyone’s guess. The most nuanced assessment I heard came from a longtime Indian diplomat. A decade ago, he said, India would definitely have sat on the sidelines. Today, support for Taiwan and the democratic coalition is conceivable, but not likely. After another five years of tension with China and cooperation with the Quad, though, who knows? Optimists in Washington might take this assessment as evidence that India is moving in the right direction. Pessimists might point out that there is still a long way to go, and not much time to get there. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, he is co-author, most recently, of "Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China" and a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board.
What a clusterfuck! You'll get sweet fanny fuckall out of India, there are more chances of extracting blood from a stone is my bet. They'll want the West to save them and I doubt not lift a finger in return, I'd love to be proven wrong.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1745466/nato-stops-short-of-opening-its-doors-to-india Nato stops short of opening its doors to India Apr 02 2023 WASHINGTON: The Nato alliance is open to more engagement should India seek it, but the organisation is not seeking new members in the region, the US envoy to Nato said. America’s Nato Ambassador Julianne Smith also spoke of China’s increasing assertiveness in the region and how it has impacted the alliance’s approach to the Asia-Pacific region. “Nato has really shifted in a pretty noticeable way in terms of how it conducts outreach and engages with its partners in the Indo-Pacific,” she said at a virtual news briefing on Friday evening. In the past, the alliance didn’t have a “particularly rich agenda” with the countries in this region, but in recent years, it has started reaching out to them. Responding to a question about a new role for India in Nato, Ambassador Smith said: “The Nato alliance is open to more engagement should India seek that”, but added that: “membership is not something that we have really considered with anyone in the Indo-Pacific or Asia-Pacific”. The ambassador said that various countries come to the door seeking different levels of political engagement and some are more interested in working on inter-operability. The alliance, Ms Smith said, “remains the Euro-Atlantic military alliance [and] there are no plans by the alliance to expand this to a broader global military alliance.” Speaking on the meeting of Nato Ministers of Foreign Affairs on April 4-5 in Brussels, the ambassador said: “At this stage, we would not want to invite them (India) to Nato ministerial until we know more about their interest in engaging the alliance more broadly”. However, four countries — Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan — that have already established formal partnerships with the alliance have been invited. “These are four countries that joined us at the summit last year in Madrid,” Ambassador Smith said. “In terms of the future with India, I think Nato’s door is open in terms of engagement should India be interested. But we would not want to at this stage invite them to Nato ministerial until we knew more about their interest in engaging the alliance more broadly,” she added.
Quad faces reality check as alleged plot to kill U.S. Sikh dents trust Whether Biden attends Jan. 26 India parade will be test of partnership The Quad leaders, from left: U.S. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Pool photos) KEN MORIYASU and KIRAN SHARMA, Nikkei staff writers November 28, 2023 https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/In...as-alleged-plot-to-kill-U.S.-Sikh-dents-trust WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI -- Since the Quad held its first leaders' summit in March 2021, the grouping of the U.S., Japan, India and Australia has had no major public hiccups. Until now. The revelation that U.S. authorities thwarted an alleged conspiracy to assassinate a Sikh separatist on American soil -- and that the Indian government could have been involved in the plot -- has instantly underscored a fundamental question regarding the grouping: Is it a set of like-minded democracies who share common values, or is it a quartet bound by strategic interests, namely common skepticism toward China? The answer may be just around the corner. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited U.S. President Joe Biden as "chief guest" to the Republic Day parade on Jan. 26. Plans are also being made to hold a Quad leaders' summit the following day on Jan. 27 in New Delhi, but the whole itinerary could be shelved if Biden's State of the Union address overlaps, sources said. If that hurdle is cleared, whether Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese decide to fly to India could be a test of the Quad's glue. While analysts in India claim that New Delhi's strategic importance is too big to undermine relations with the U.S. or among the Quad, U.S. counterparts see the alleged plot, first reported by the Financial Times, as "very serious" and potentially damaging. "The facts about the assassination plot are still unclear but if the FT story is true, the U.S.-India relationship will certainly get more complicated," said Ashley Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Tellis, who served as the National Security Council (NSC) senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia under President George W. Bush, warned, "It would be a mistake for New Delhi to conclude that India's importance to the U.S. strategy for balancing against China gives India the latitude to unilaterally target U.S. citizens." The alleged target of the assassination plot was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada. The incident comes two months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were "credible" allegations linking Indian agents to the June murder of another Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb. Both Pannun and Nijjar had advocated creating a separate Sikh homeland in India known as Khalistan. New Delhi has rejected involvement, saying that activity of this nature is not India's policy. Demonstrators protest outside India's consulate in Vancouver on Sept. 25, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised the prospect of New Delhi's involvement in the murder of a Sikh separatist leader. © Reuters Michael Green, CEO at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, suggested the allegations could complicate the case for the Quad. "Our 'common values' form one part of the glue for the Quad and it will be harder to make that argument than it was before." When Green led Asia policy at the NSC under Bush, he spearheaded an effort to bring together the four countries to provide humanitarian and disaster assistance after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. That loose coordination became the origin of the Quad. Green said that it will be important for Modi to keep India's foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, in check. "If Modi can't get the RAW under control or doesn't want to, that would damage his personal relationship with Biden. And that would not be good for the Quad." Hours after the publication of the FT report last Wednesday, Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson of India's Ministry of External Affairs, said in a statement that during recent discussions on India-U.S. security cooperation, "the U.S. side shared some inputs pertaining to [a] nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others." India takes security inputs from the U.S. seriously since this "impinges on our own national security interests as well," he said. "The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow-up action," he added. Some Indian analysts have been more direct. Raj Kumar Sharma, a senior research fellow at NatStrat, an independent think tank working on India's national security and foreign policy, said that New Delhi would not accept "promotion of terrorism, separatism and hate crimes by [a] few elements to foment trouble in India," and that applies to all countries, including the U.S. A strategic partnership with the U.S. is important for India, but so is the question of a combined and unified approach to terrorism and separatism, Sharma said. "They are not exclusive of each other." He added that more consultations will be needed in the coming months but predicted that, by and large, this issue "may not radically change the nature of the India-U.S. relationship, which is mainly based on geopolitical considerations." Prerna Gandhi, an associate fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a security think tank, said that while parallels will be drawn to India's falling out with Canada following Trudeau's open accusation, "India-U.S. ties are more wide-ranging than ever before and contribute substantially to geostrategic priorities for both countries." She pointed to an inherent resilience that prevents any one matter from derailing the entire bilateral relationship. Meanwhile, well-known commentator Brahma Chellaney tweeted strong words on Friday, claiming that "the U.S.-planted story in @FT about the alleged Indian targeting of a Sikh radical who has been making terrorist threats from U.S. soil with impunity is yet another example that ought to give pause to those in India who think that the Biden administration can be a reliable partner." In a report published in October, Chellaney wrote that the Sikh diaspora living in the five Anglosphere countries of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- otherwise known for the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership -- are the most active, "thanks to those nations tolerating the operations of extremist Sikh groups." The presence of such elements has long been a source of tension between India and Western governments. Chellaney wrote that America's siding with Canada over the Nijjar killing "shows that its relationship with any of its Five Eyes allies will always take precedence over its ties with India," reinforcing India's imperative for preserving its strategic autonomy. Indian Army combat vehicles are displayed during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi on Jan. 26, 2023. © Reuters But while the U.S. did voice support for Canada, and reportedly shared intelligence with Ottawa, other experts suggest the Five Eyes' reactions were telling in a different way. One Washington observer said that when Canada announced the assassination plot against Nijjar, they had expected vociferous backing from the Five Eyes partners, but this did not materialize. "This implies a simultaneous acceptance of the possibility that the Indian government was involved, as well as India's strategic importance in the region, and hence the reluctance by any country to antagonize it," he said. India is well-aware of its own importance, he added. Aparna Pande, a research fellow at the conservative Washington think tank the Hudson Institute, said India would like to host the 2024 Quad leaders' summit as close to its Republic Day as possible. "I am sure all four countries are discussing it and will depend on the schedules of all four leaders." Biden's decision will be based on the importance of India to the U.S. in the context of his administration's national security strategy, she said. "As of now I don't see this incident impacting the relationship. However, we have to wait and watch." USSC's Green added that the bilateral relationship is "too important to be badly dented by this just yet," not just for geopolitical reasons, but because the Indian diaspora in the U.S. and the broader business, academic connections have become stronger. "The bottom line is that it is very serious, but if the two leaders handle it and make sure it doesn't happen again," it can be contained, Green said.