And the US ......
To the US , the hundreds of thousands who died in their hands - the Afghans, the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Libyans etc in the middle East, and the Vietnamese, the Laotians and the Cambodians in Indochina - and the millions they caused the local regimes / dictatorship to exterminate in Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, Central and South America and Africa all in the name of fighting communist dominos ( see Bevins V, The Jakarta Method, 2020 .) are just inconvenient collateral damages in their mission of zeal to hold their concept of goodness to the world.
And Down Under ......
For years there was a White Australian policy until it was formally dismantled by the Whitlam Government in 1973. Successive governments have been friendly until the present one came into power. Even Scott Morrison did not lend himself as an attack dog at the beginning , even though several of his cabinet members were already making strong anti-China statements from time to time. Things came to a boil when Trump came to power and Morrison was happy to lend a big hand to help Trump to contain China. There was no looking back since then. Australia is now a staunch American ally. Many would ask, why would Australia do it when one-third of its goods are shipped to China? But if you look into history, Australia has always been willing partner to the UK and the US: First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and more recently the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
And day in and day out, you read and watch incredulous stories about China spun by the Murdoch papers and TV channels!
The Real winners of Genocide / Atrocity Medals .....
If there is such a thing as a Genocide medal to be awarded in modern history, I am pretty sure the US, Canada and Australia with their treatment of natives would have made it to the podium. And if there is such a thing as Atrocity Olympiad, then Japan with its deeds in China and South East Asia during World War 11 would certaily qualify to be No 1 with Germany in close second. But in the Unconscionable Killing category, the US is surely the indisputable champion during the last fifty years. Whereas Germany and to some degree Australia and Canada have expressed their guilt, Japan is still most reluctant to admit what they had done during World War 11. To their misplaced mind, they were trying to do these victims a good deed!
And the last of the QUAD: of all people , Modi's India!
And in Narendra Modi's India, it is all about poppies. How can China be more successful than us? The most formidable names in the world are headed by Indians - Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, Harvard Business School and even the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, which was founded by Chinese, etc. We were the first Asian to reach the Martian orbit. How can China be more advanced than us?
Not many Indians have visited China. Their concept of China is not different from the Americans: Blue ants and sweatshops. But they love the affordable mobile phones from China. I love to use the term Modi's India to describe India. I have many friends who are Indian. We are intellectual equals, but I couldn't help rubbing into them this irony. A country of 1.4 billion people and you have some of the best brains in the world, yet you have chosen a Donald Trump to be your prime minister.
I remember when I did my sixth form , many of our science testbooks were from India. When I was doing my engineering degree, we knew many of the peoneers of our Keretapi Tanah Melayu ( Malaysia's railway authority ) came from the Indian Railway .)
And there was the Non-Aligned Movement ( NOM ) during which China's Zhou Enlai and India's Jawaharlal Nehru were together at the forefront to resist "imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialsim, racism and all forms of foreign aggressions occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics. More recently you had the BRICS Summits where the leaders of Brazil Russia, India, China and South Africa would meet to promote political, commercial and cultural cooperation between the five nations. No one doubted India's non-aligned mindset.
However, the recent border skirmish with China and its inability to manage the corona virus pandemic must have jolted Modi and turned him into an anti-China fanatic. Your enemy's enemy is your friend, how true it is ! The US became an overnight friend, hence the formation of QUAD hoodlums.
Many scholars contend that India was never a nation until it gained independence from the British. A nation as defined by Cambridge Dictionary is "a country especially when thought of as a large group of people living one area with their own government, language, traditios, etc." In another dictionary, it is "a large body of people, associated with a particular territory , that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own." To a hair-splitter like me, India is not a nation in the strictest sense of the word. It is a country of many peoples - in terms of religion, culture, language, history and what-have-you.
In the Tang Dynasty, circa 600 - 900 AD, there was already a strong bond between China and India. The glue of this bond, as we all know, was Buddhism. I honestly believe most Indians today do not think that historical foundation is significant enough for posterity.
There is no head or tail to this article. It starts with the US, Iraq and ends with Indian textbooks and Modi and Buddhism.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the author should break this long story into categorized parts rather than one long running diatribe.
Use subheadings and paras so that the point can be understood clearly in each section.
If we look at part 4 - you cannot form a clear heading which tells us clearly what it is about.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Not easy to write, to organise ideas to make it easy to read.
ReplyDeleteShould encourage people trying to write.