This time round can India NOT afford to go to war with Pakistan?
It was in 1971 that my father and all our neighbours in Shillong went about pasting pieces of newspapers on window panes at home. Carefully cut to size; no light was to slip out, no matter what. Nightfall would be about shrill sirens that would echo off the hills that surrounded the valley of Shillong, followed by quiet, candlelit dinners and a worried huddle, and along with them thoughts of bombardment by Pakistani forces. Public places in Shillong was pockmarked with Z-shaped trenches, while I watched my mother, a government employee, along with her friends at work, knit sweaters for refugees who had poured in from East Pakistan, crowding public spaces in what was then the capital of Assam. The stories that did the rounds were grizzly, of maimed people, dead people in the thousands, of fishsellers finding gold ornaments inside fish that had fed on the dead in rivers at the border… Mukti Bahini had become a term to be revered, Bharat Ratna Bhupen Hazarika would sing his ‘Joi joi nobojato Bangladesh, joi joi Mukti Bahini…’ that we were told became an anthem of sorts in new-born Bangladesh. That photograph of Yahyah Khan signing the instrument of surrender to Gen Jagjit Singh Arora would be etched on our minds forever.
They take to water like fish: Hordes of people from the Bangladesh delta have come to India ever since 1971 and now illegally occupy large swathes of land in Bharat’s east, with the population having then spread across the country. Photo courtesy Pexels
Come to think of it, that 13-day war with Pakistan never really ended. For perspective, ask anyone from the Northeast of Bharat and he or she will tell you that this is an endless war this region has lived through, in some form or the other. And that while the West and central regions of the country faced terror attacks from Pakistan given the geographical proximity, the East faced it from Bangladesh with the same viciousness, only here there has been this unstated lebensraum of the Bangladeshi ‘nation’ something that they have now taken from here to the entire country. With the tie-up—overt or covert, while Bangladesh for show asks for reparations for 1971—the picture is now complete: In a world
that battles Islamic terror on just about every front, Bharat is another nation on which this battle has been forced.
Today, after all these decades, it’s time for a civil defence drill once again. Bangladesh, who we had saved from Operation Searchlight, a pogrom rarely seen in human history, has turned friends with their tormentors and now often threaten to take over the Northeast of Bharat, also asking the Chinese to take over this region, one that gave them shelter, food and a place to call home when they had none. My mother, who passed last year, would say during the Assam Agitation of the 1970s and ’80s against illegal migrants, mainly those from Bangladesh: “We did everything for them, and this is what they did to us”. What they had done is become a political force and go on the rampage in Assam and various Northeastern areas. With their growing animosity towards Bharat, and the wildfire spread of Islamist domination and terrorism and the realization that you cannot be a “bhai-bhai” with a Bangladeshi or a Pakistani or a Chinese, Bengali friends in Assam’s Barak Valley now have a way of telling a Bangladeshi from a Bangladeshi: “They are the Khan lot”. That means the very fair part of the Bangladeshi population with features that resemble the Pathans of Pakistan. According to reports, West Pakistanis had created an entirely new population in what is now Bangladesh, through genocide and rape. That notwithstanding, the Bangladeshi is now an ally of the Pakistani. At home meanwhile, ‘secular’ peaceniks who only recently rejected any suggestion that it was time for Bharat to reclaim its territory be it from Bangladesh or Pakistan, have mostly gone silent. Some elements who simply don’t matter in the larger scheme of things have, for that desperate bit of attention, chosen to criticise the government. What they have in reality done is expose themselves for all time to come. This comes at a time when nation after nation after nation stands up to fight Islamist terror. The idea is simple: if you want peace, defeat Islamist terror.
It was during 1990-91 that I first that I encountered the Bangladeshi in Delhi. Families would live, eat and sleep on the pavement besides the cotton trees near Assam House at Chanakyapuri. They’d wake up early, gather the balls of cotton, make pillows out of them and sell them to locals. Till then, Bangladeshis were, to the rest of Bharat mostly a problem of its Northeast. Once asked by someone who they were (I speak their language) I had asked the person to wait for 20 years to get to know.
It didn’t take that long though. During a visit to Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah a few years later, I had some ‘Mias’ as they are called in Assam, rush up to me and ask ‘Panda lage?’. They had improvised, to speak to Bengali Hindus who visited the dargah. ‘Panda’ is what priests who show you around places of worship in the east of Bharat are called. The infiltration had begun, locality after locality. With the Internet slowly taking over the worldand with Islamists taking a lot of the Islamic world the story was complete. Bharathas survived this so far given its history of inclusion but that story may not see a happy ending unless the root of the problem—an Islamist state called Pakistan and another called Bangladesh—are uprooted and disposed of
because they are the source of the problems that Bharat now faces. Illegals within its borders constitute he battle within. It is a battle that Bharat must win. Pakistan and Bangladesh are the war just beyond its borders. To win that war, Bharat must reclaim Akhand Bharat. Rogue states must be tamed and brought back while those who oppose us dealt with.
Nationality documents… the rage against the NRC, Assam Accord, shielded by certain political groups whose survival depends on votebanks and the attention-seeking ‘kagaz nahin dikhayenge’ brigade.
As terrorists get taken to task, so must terror states. This makes permanent deterrence an imperative for Bharat with regard to Pakistan and Bangladesh. Both are bound by terror, one a little overt while the other carries out what the Supreme Court of Bharat calls a silent invasion.
The connotation of the word ‘Mia’ has to a large extent now changed. “Bulldozer action”.
Over 30 years of insurgent movements. The Mia word…
Cold start… Sundarji doctrine
Ahmedabad to Delhi
what needs to be dealt with while there is time is a complete takeover by the fringe
so how will this end? Bharat must reclaim bharat, and that includes breaking up Pakistan while taking back Bangladesh. Only then can there be a solution. OGW
It’s been a week since Pahalgam happened and I am still trying to wrap my head around it. Twenty-seven killed but, more pertinently, in a manner that involved religious executions based on whether a person was circumcised or not, based on whether a person could recite the Kalma. For a Northeast Indian who has for decades now covered illegal migration, militancies, army operations, death and destruction but has had the privilege to stick, whether by force of habit, or practised Indian journalistic propriety, to “minorities”, the challenge has been to suddenly switch to
“Islamist”, even if momentarily, briefly, or just this piece.
Fact though is, it somehow now seems too real, and no longer distant. It’s home, the
entire manner of these killings. Even the killing of XXXX in the XXXX Bakery attack by Bangladeshi jihadis who
After Pahalgam, What?
This time round can India NOT afford to go to war with Pakistan?
Indus etc
The ground covered so far… Modi’s visits and the way people laughed
Hundred cuts
Jug mo han
Nine standoffs only one initiated by india
Taimur
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