On Friday, President Biden hosted the leaders of Japan, India, and Australia in Washington. The meeting marked the first in-person summit of the Quad, an informal grouping that is seen as a potential foundation for an anti-China NATO-style alliance in the Pacific.
In opening remarks, none of the leaders mentioned China by name, but Beijing was clearly on everybody’s mind. The leaders called for a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a term commonly used by US officials that essentially means a region free of Chinese influence. The “Indo-Pacific” refers to the region of the world that stretches from India to the eastern Pacific Ocean, where the US wants to maintain dominance.
President Biden has framed the US-China relationship as an ideological competition between “democracy” and “autocracy.” This Cold War mindset was echoed by the Quad leaders.
“The Quad is an extremely significant initiative by four countries who share fundamental values, cooperating for the cause of realizing a free and open international order based on the rule of law in the Indo-Pacific,” said Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
Ahead of the meeting, a US official said that the Quad is only an “unofficial gathering” and not a “not a regional security organization.” But in 2020, the Quad nations held joint military exercises for the first time since 2007 and have held more since.
The Quad meeting came shortly after the US, UK, and Australia announced a new military pact that will give Canberra nuclear-powered submarines and allow the US to deploy more troops to Australia. Over the past year, the US has also signed expanded military agreements with India and has lauded efforts between Japan and Australia to increase security cooperation.
After Friday’s meeting, Suga told reporters that the leaders agreed to expand cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines, space, energy, and other areas. He said they also agreed to hold a Quad summit each year.
After the lockdowns and deadly mrna China doesn’t have to do much
The West is regimenting their societies for 5G warfare using COVID-1984.
QR codes for vaccine passports are just the beginning.
but the jab kills and maims. How can that lead to regimentation. we are dying here
Regimentation is ordering, not health and fitness.
A society full of disabled people places more pressure on the fit and able to be compliant, to support disabled loved ones. Not everyone jabbed falls immediately sick.
The bad reactions are sky-high relative to the pre-COVID vax standard, but people still aren’t dropping dead on the streets.
Ask anyone with a disabled child or age-disabled parents how tough it can be without a good job and government support. Most caregivers, will be forced to run the vaccine gauntlet.
Social regimentation is more critical to 5th generation civilian-based warfare than being able to physically fight. AI robots and drones are becoming the future of physical battlefield warfare.
How physically fit do you have to be to be a keyboard warrior or Tik Tok social influencer under a filter?
The power of thought and ideas needs serve the ego-gratification of wannabe Great Leaders and their minions.
In fact they won’t want physically capable citizens as long they control the AI. As we move towards an automated society, fit and able citizens is not as great a priority. For example, in Japan, disabled people in back run the robots at robot cafes.
There’s also the reliance on immigration to fill the scut jobs. As more non-Western-borns migrate in, the Western-born expectations of civil rights have to go.
By any means. The hoards of undocumented migrants are not vaxxed. COVID-1984 vaccinations will affect this generation of citizen adults and children only.
The fact that Americans willingly wear the mask and take the Jab while …believe it or not..actually criticizing other nations of autocracy and undemocratic acts. So far guns have not been used but the forums are filled with comments about the 2nd amendment and the right to bear arms. America is going through the worst expression of extreme communism where doctors kill their patients without a forethought.
as for transhumanism, AI, Internet Robots and the dehumanized world that sprang from America and American philosophies, science and science fiction. It did not come from some deeply disturbed Communist nation. In that sense understanding what kind of culture gives birth to this soulless world is worth looking at. I bet Dantes’ 7th hell of and ice cold world is not as cold as the Cyber world
The roots of AI and transhumanism were also European in origin. Futurism dates back to just before WWI when automation and personal machines were a new thing promising a future of human ease, longevity, and leisure.
Then WWI happened and a generation of promise died in the trenches and survivors forever changed.
The Golden Age of American science fiction was spearheaded by European emigres. Europe was for the longest time always ahead of the U.S. in terms of real science and fantasy futurism, Europe being the cradle of Western invention for as long as they remained liberal democracies.
https://www.thecollector.com/philosophy-of-transhumanism/
That changed post WWII, when Europe turned from fascism to a form of socialism taking the free market ideal out of liberalism.
American early sci-fi thus seems marked by a duality; European-inspired themes of (socialist) decadence which ran contrary to an indigenous postwar popular culture of optimism, progress and prosperity.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that Hollywood uniformly adopted as default ‘darker’ themes.
There’s still information around the making of Superman II and the saga of the Donner cut (versus the Europhile Lester who made the theatrical release). That seems to mark a kind of turning point in American pop culture, when Superman became an expression of the European man over the American man, but sold as Americana.
The producer, Salkind, was a Hungarian like Soros, oddly enough.
What makes this world of the internet American is a system meant to communicate across a large population stripped of ethnicity creating the generic white person where the only offenses are based on politically correct jargon. The cultural aspects of science and technology has given birth to unique innovations almost tailor cut to various cultures. the generic American culture is not only the creator but the most comfortable with cyber space. Europe with all its diversity cannot produce the impersonal world of cyber space and do so well as the American culture – When seen from abroad the American culture is fascinating in its bleakness
Americans did invent the internet, and early internet culture was very American; free-wheeling but also somehow mostly responsible enough not to undercut the foundations of that freedom.
European post-Enlightenment collectivist culture is bleak. They can’t handle individual responsibility as well as Americans and Europeans still in tune with the Enlightenment tradition.
Postmodern collectivists don’t want personal responsibility or believe that individuals have priority over social ‘betters’, even if not especially when dissidents are right over ‘authority’.
Even now, the main resistance to COVID-1984 seems driven by individual moral rejection of politically appointed positional authority. Sure, the official experts are clearly wrong, but those who comply, see nothing wrong with doing something wrong as long as everyone else is doing it.
The difference seems to be rooted in a perversion of belief in God; collectivists want the old ‘King’ social model where the sovereign bears the burden of sin and subjects although powerless, magically remain blameless before God because they were powerless and obedience is made the highest virtue.
Under the Protestant Enlightenment, the individual is always responsible for being right and there is no collectivist Great Leader out. The first duty is to dissent from wrong, not comply with the mob or the sovereign.
The Quad, is but one more expression of mindless militarist collectivism except nowhere near as successfully universal as COVID-1984 collectivism.
Elon Musk’s idea of attaching a chip into the brain of a human and linking him to the Cyber world is the worst perversion because it simultaneously rejects God and arrogantly elevates man while perverting the concept of a human body hosting an immortal soul. It is the monstrous version of Frankenstein
Bill Gates idea of a better human population is to limit it in an extremely cruel way. He is the new avatar of Dr. Mengele on steroids injecting the mRNA drug that causes painful death for the young and even babies. He doesn’t mind. It maims millions to die at some other time in worse manners.
When Silicon Valley united with the World Economic forum to support a Wyoming (?) high school girls’ Science project of Social Distancing people lost all their rights over it and it is applied for the State Surveillance so that each person’s face can be fully recognized.
When Larry Fink the ceo of Black Rock is using Federal Reserve funds to buy up distressed property caused by the Lockdowns in America and abroad he beggars the inhumanity seen in characters like Scrooge or even worse like Shylock. The horror is the tacit support from the government for him to buy up farmland even in places like India.
When the US foreign policy is based on wars and not on nation building it is the magnified aspects of men like Attila, Kublai and Genghis khan for non of them had the fire power nor the dismissive arrogance of other cultures, religions and people. The Mongol hordes actually left behind something for great empires to rise .
When the full effect of the global shutdown is felt no civilization or faith will be spared. thats America’s legacy today and it wipes out all the good it did in the past. Christianity for the first time in its 2000 year history did not perform the Holy Communion without which it dies
This is the America that comes from that bleak world where identity has stripped to create the generic uncaring personality
“Og’s idea of putting wheels under the ass of a human and moving him faster than a walking pace is the worst perversion because it simultaneously rejects God and arrogantly elevates man while perverting the concept of a human body with feet.” — 10,000 BC
I missed that B.C. strip.
If its yours, drop Mastroianni a line…
Taking communion is a symbolic act whose meaning has to be forgotten before the faith can die.
Not taking communion, is only one of many symptoms of a forgetting that began when Christianity borged the Egyptian Horus faith.
Christianity ending because Christianity became a pretext for wars without end and genocide in God’s name, a gross violation of the Third Commandment, makes more sense than Christianity ending for missing communion.
You can’t commune with something you don’t, can’t or won’t understand anymore.
” rule of law in the Indo-Pacific”
True translation we all know and understand; the current king of the hill( and ‘pals’) are fading,stumbling,falling passing china on the way as china ascends. This is causing the losers to freak out more and more…’Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent’s.”
It is China launching massive incursions into Taiwan’s airspace. and not vice versa. Free and open” does not,mean that China cannot grow their economy fair and square, it means non-belligerence.
I have yet to hear of a single incident of China launching any incursions into Taiwan’s airspace.
Whenever we hear about China launching aerial “incursions,” they refer to Chinese aircraft entering Taiwan’s “Air Defense Identification Zone,” which extends onto the Chinese mainland.
It would be like the Cuban government declaring an ADIZ that includes south Florida and then complaining about all those “incursions” landing at Miami International Airport.
The small off shore island of Taiwan previously called Formosa has always been part of China. When the UN were founded in 1945 and China was still part of the Kwomintang under Tsjang Kai Chek it recognised Formosa as part of China. Tsjang fled to Formosa now Taiwan. When the Chinese PL Army took over in 1949 Formosa was still recognised by the UN as a sovereign part of China and still is!! Taiwan/Formosa is still not a member of the UN exactly for that reason. China has legally a full right to liberate Taiwan by militairy force.
Tom, U are mistaken and confused.
You like to insult. That’s not debating an issue.
The small offshore island of Taiwan has, occasionally, been “part of China.” It’s also occasionally been independent, part of the Netherlands, and part of Japan.
What Taiwan has never been part of is the People’s Republic of China.
Makes no difference; the Chinese nations have included Taiwan and has for centuries.
China will not accept an arbitrary redrawing of traditional boundaries. European Westphalian precedent amalgamated empires into nations.
All I can say Mr Knapp is that you are historically uninformed. What you are saying is complete nonsense. The United Nations in 1945 at its inception accepted China, including Present day Taiwan membership of the organisation. That did not change when the PLA took over China to this very day. Also the US recognised Taiwan as part of China after Nixons visit in the seventies.
I can “recognize” your back yard as part of my property all I want. That won’t magically make it so. Taiwan is “part of China” in the same way that Cuba is “part of Spain” or the Philippines are “part of Japan.” That is, it has occasionally been conquered by China.
I suggest you go to Google/Wikileaks. You will find a lot of information that corroborates what I have stated earlier. Also look at the map. Taiwan is a small offshore island some 150 kms from China. It’s size is even less than half of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s has been part of China since antiquity and also when China was ruled by the Kwomintang under Chang Kai Shek. Sure it has been occupied and colonised by foreign countries in centuries past, such as Japan and Britain. But that does not make this tiny little offshore island an independent state and that is the sole reason why it cannot be part of the United Nations. If you can’t see that and I am talking to deaf ears, than there is little point in continuing this discussion.
Is Vietnam also part of China? It’s even closer to “China” than Taiwan is (not separated by a 150 km strait), and like Taiwan it has also occasionally been invaded and occupied by China.
China would be unwise to use military force though.
No small number of Chinese in Taiwan, still consider themselves of the Mainland, though they probably have to keep their heads down and dislike the CCP.
Its the Western supremacists that needs a Chinese civil war, that gets off on Chinese killing Chinese like they do Muslims killing Muslims.
Ask the people in Taiwan if they are part of China. The people in hong kong were quite unhappy about being eaten up
Jingo jingo
so long ago
same tune though
singing the same ol’ song and dance
jingo
jingo
this aint saigan
this is kabul
Still with the same pun
‘ne’er lose a battle
but ne’er win the war’
this graveyard of empires
jingo jingo
bit confused?
know your history
makes perfect sense
nausea
for any over 40
insanity
for those 60 and above…
History: http://folksongandmusichall.com/index.php/macdermotts-war-song/
How to rule the world by having a policy completely devoid of reality. China is big, powerful, with many allies, plans to cooperate with others (BRI, SCO agreement) and NO DESIRE for conflict. Go figure.
No Duterte. He’s showing some realistic appraisal of what the risks are in being on the front lines of any possible shooting conflict that might, by some misjudgment, break out.
Whatever we think of his lingo, audacity or extra judicial killings of drug dealers as condoned, he’s still considerate of the retaliatory brunt his populace would risk should he take our side. We’ll be seeing how much support he might have in that in their next election. Somehow I think it’s more than the media outlets would like.
Malaysian Prime Minister Yaakob also absent despite sharing claims over some of the disputed South China Sea real estate.
HaHaHa…The Four Losers would get entangled in themselves to contain China…! The opposite will happen…!
The Russians are on to the Rat King.
“Soggy rodents tangle their tails in one big knot in horrifying ‘rat king’ video” – Mindy Weisberger, Live Science.
A farmer in the Stavropol region found the waterlogged “king.”
https://www.livescience.com/rat-king-found-in-russia
The fifth rat half off-camera is the European Union and the soft power brains of the bunch.
The rat at the bottom trying to get away is probably India.
You did not notice that India ensured that the final statement mentioned “inclusive and would NOT allow anti-China comments. See Alexander Mercouris for a great amount of detail on the Quad and its “significance”.
The Western imperialists know there is only one chance to stop the Asian century from permanently overturning the ‘international rules-based order’ of Europe First domination, enforced by America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Century
Western imperialism (read: Europe First) needs decisive wars that break China and mess up India. Japan is 1/4 gone by Fukushima. Europe, will gladly sacrifice the Pacific Anglosphere.
The ‘Pacific Age’ was feared as early as 1924 by German geopolitical strategist Ernst Karl Haushofer, who foresaw axis of China, Japan, and India.
Since that time, Japan was conquered, India seduced, and China inflicted with Western self-lobotomy under Communism then neoliberal CCP crony capitalism, and encouraged to self-gencide under one-child-per-family Western Malthusianism.
Yet Asia still rises, led by India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan.
India IS a mess up by the mere fact of New Delhi ruling it which it has never done before the empire
A gift from British King George V.
The last indigenous Indian capital was Allahbad (Prayagraj), Uttar Predesh.
This ended in 1858 with the British Raj.
In the future India may have to move the governing capital to anyplace in India that’s not subject to stifling heat waves from climate change
No there was no “India”. That word is alien to the subcontinent languages. There was no “Indian capital” or “Indian” identity. It was created based on a European take. At best Delhi was the capital of some empires and they never controlled most of what is today called “india” or “Pakistan”. in fact the only name known to the ancients was Sri Lanka which is mentioned in both epics
Yes and no; pre-Westphalean India appears to have had a regional identity whose centralization waxed and waned. Pre-Westphalean group identity seems very different than today.
That the locals had no name for ‘India’, is perhaps more a demonstration of regional identity taken for granted such that no name is needed, than denial of having one. Once given name, the label stuck because the word defined a reality.
Its like how many (though not all) Europeans now have a sense of core European identity, despite diversity in the language and culture they grow up in. Before Westphalia, identity was consciously more local.
Similarly, there was no China yet there was. Traditionally Chinese would have identified with the ruling dynasty and the lands associated with that government and local rulers.
Actually the Subcontinent is probably the most diverse region. 3 families of languages (Indo Aryan, Dravidian and Tibeto Burmese) not counting the Tribal languages spoken by 100 million. Birthplace of 4 faiths and played host to 2 major ones in a big way. There were 2 independence movements. One was against the Empire and the other was against New Delhi. Out of the many independence movements only that for the Muslims won Pakistan freed itself from London and New Delhi. Sikhism had one Empire and its a faith that has been under the British and then N Delhi. Partition divided the Sikh lands and the Bengali lands. they were not asked. After Indian and Pakistani independence the Khalistan movement was crushed in the 80;s
The Justice party asked that the Indian subcontinent be divided into 4 regions : Hindustan, Pakistan, Bengalistan and Dravidistan. Lip service by the British and Congress. The southern region still wants their own lands (4 dravidian languages) Look at this way all these kingdoms and Empire gave up their militaries to become this nebulous nation under one military that only represents the government of New Delhi and in the case of Pakistan and Bangladesh the same can be said. they contain twice the pop of Europe
The Treaty(s) of Westphalia turned empires of diverse popuations into Nation-State sandboxes and was the only way to end the Hundred Years War.
The silent movement to end the Westphalean era, is driven by European imperialist imperatives.
Empires of cross-national soft power emerged in the nation-state era and doubtless now feel powerful enough to express hard power initiatives.
Globalist empires of soft power are characterized by consistent disregard for the well-being of local populations, often under the hubris of a greater good.
Populations who should be safe and politically autonomous behind their national boundaries, are disrespected for getting in the way of grand power schemes that enhance the power of a reprehensible globalist minority harnessing the power of finance from a few powerful European imperial nation-states, the core nations of past European empires.
Many of the most successful states were naturally, viable contiguous geographies and able to overcome any ethnic and religious differences.
It was only a little after that ethnic purity came into play as a basis for state identity, but also pretext for foreign meddling towards partition, dissolution, and fomenting strife to re-align populations and real estate among states and even to dissolve states. This becomes a self-reinforcing drive by majorities to squeeze out minorities that can break up their sandbox.
The United Kingdom, mixes diverse language groups and cultures. Many are at risk of being lost forever, but at least may go gently into the good night.
Not all other cultures are so lucky. Longstanding friction between Islam and Hindu resulted in the divisions into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Tamils also want to separate.
Yet India, is economically better off united, as is Iraq. Colonial partitions, were never to local advantage. Historically, though, golden eras were eras of relative regional political unity and ethno-religious harmony.
There are even partitioners looking at breaking up China.
Anti-nation statists aren’t after what’s best for local populations, but to divide and conquer, pillage, raid and dominate to their own selfish benefit.
The Catholic/Protestant wars was the reason for the Treaty but the formation of the colonial empires stemmed from the Catholic explorers during the age of Discovery. Marco Polo and China, Vasco Da Gama and India. The reason for the BRI are the silk roads first started by China, Persia, Rome and then rediscovered during that age.
The major economies were China and the Subcontinent each accounting for 25% of the known world’s economy since the fall of the Roman Empire. Europe accounted for 17 to 18% till the East India companies which created the colonial Empires. Power then shifted from the Muslim empires to the West.
The reason why the Subcontinent had such a large role in the world’s economy was because there were several not one. when the Empire ended the Subcontinent emerged with a combined economy of less than 1% It stayed that way till 1991 and only opened after the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989. If it didn’t the iron hand of N Delhi would have kept that economy shut and in poverty. They rule and control by poverty, not wealth. The poverty of that region keeps the power in the hands of a population about the size of San Francisco controlling a pop larger than the new world (1 billion 100 million and India 1 billion 350 million). Since 1947 the Indian army was used primarily against its own people crushing armed separatist movements . In Operation Polo over 200 thousand were killed to prevent the Nizam forming his own nation
The iron hand of New Delhi was guided by Great Britain’s security and economic needs, whilst still recovering from the great plundering of 200 years bankrolling the British Empire.
India is rising, slowly, regaining their sense of independence, sovereign purpose and place in the world as a full geopolitical player, not the Raj and one of Europe’s hands and pawns in Asia.
In the Old World, the price of wanton aggression was an Indian Answer – a cut from their peerless sword steel. Squandered and lost under Tipu Sultan.
The Western brains may think to use India as an empty headed enforcer like America, of their whims against China. However, China and India have no real differences or antagonisms.
At best, the only reason India is loyal at all to the Commonwealth, is that the Commonwealth was founded with their stolen wealth.
Those trying to stop India’s rise as they would stop China’s rise, might find an Indian Answer long in wait.
The shortcomings of India as a super state.
-Each year over 21 million tons of wheat is wasted. same with Rice and other grains. It is the world’s largest waster of Fruit and Vegetables. The waste includes the cubic ft of fresh water, fertilizer, pesticides. herbicides, fungicides and man hours. 5000 Indian kids die each day from malnutrition and hunger related problems today.
At the same time India ranks among the top 10 for grain exports. This shows extreme corruption and a disregard for life. hardly matched in its own collection of history or anywhere else.
Literacy rate in India 72.1%, Afghanistan 38.1%, Bangladesh 61.5%,,Nepal 65.7%, SL 92.6%
What this shows is New Delhi has done a bad job in a region where the culture of languages ranks among the highest. It has done a worse job than most African nations for India and for SAARC. SL high literacy is due to its society maximizing its culture of language ensuring both genders are equally literate
Poverty and Corruption
India is home to some of the world’s largest slums in the most expensive real estate. Laws prevent slum construction. Every major city have massive slums
India is home to one of the largest pop of pavement dwellers where too many were born, grew up, married, had families and died on the pavement. That is a nightmare and shouldn’t exist.
This is alien to its history and cannot be found in Europe a region of over 40 nations.
Indian constitution allows N Delhi to arbitrarily form or take apart, or rename any state at will. States do not have rights which violate each groups identity and historical claims a lot more but this is clear.
Yeah, the British left behind quite a mess.
They left behind a power structure that managed this region through poverty and by that maintains its hold through world institutes
Benefit of a smaller nation Sri Lanka vs India.
Sri Lanka stats.
Literacy 92% for both genders. youth literacy 98%
Lifespan 77 on average
Electricity covers 90%. clean water for 87%.
India stats
Lifespan 70 on average. Literacy 77%. Youth 92%. Kerala is the most literate 96.2%
Computer literacy 98% but only 6.5% know how to use a computer. India has a water crisis and over 10% have no access to clean drinking water in 2021. 240 million no electricity
mere summary of basic stats
May as well say, these are the benefits of a tropical paradise island.
I am sure it is but Sri Lanka kind of fits that ancient concept of a nation state. It is the only ancient civilization to have an unbroken written history of itself spanning 3000 years. It canonized Pali by writing the Tipitaka in the 1st century BC and gave copies to the Buddhist world. It is the oldest uninterrupted Buddhist nation. Today it has the largest ancient monuments in South Asia and they rank among the worlds largest . Oldest Democracy in Asia – universal franchise in 1931- There is a lot more about that nation.Same can be said of other South Asian communities but they are lost under the generalized history of “India’
Sri Lanka has long existed separate of India and not today part of India.
Their brief period of cultural union in ancient times with the subcontinent was never politically enforced.
They are not really a good example of (or for) Indian separatists, having never had to separate.
Could you explain
I am presenting 3 methods of looking at the Subcontinent:
1- Its history based on Language and compared to Europe. focused on the evolution of nation states
2-The firepower of the Subcontinent compared to Europe
3- The shortcomings of India as a nation
4- the benefits of smaller nations
HISTORY
The history of Europe based on language: 750 BC to 1000 AD Latin and Greek shaped empires and Kingdoms where the literature & laws were written.
Around 1000 ad the modern languages of English, French, German, Italian, etc began forming and the Kingdoms and Empires used these languages to define their kingdoms.
-By the 18th century the Nation State formed with America being the first and by the 19th most of Europe formed states with those languages defining them.
The history of the subcontinent based on language:
1500 bc to 1000 ad Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil, Telugu shaped Kingdoms and Empires on their laws and literature
Around 1000 AD the modern languages began to form and they included Arabic and Farsi. Hindi, Bengali, Malayali, Odissi, Rajasthani, Marathi and many more. they shaped the Kingdoms and Empires. When the European powers entered English, French, Portuguese, Latin also became part of the Lingua Franca of the subcontinent and shaped laws and literature
These powers brought together these disparate Kingdoms for profit and better governance. The Subcontinent never had the chance to evolve nations states based on language, faith and culture like Europe did. That is one major reason for the economic and cultural wealth of Europe and its combined military strength. The Colonial Age denied the most significant part of South Asia’s evolution
A little too Eurocentric. The origins of the nation state and even the first nation state is disputed but predates Westphalia in practice and likely not exclusively European in actual practice.
What made Europe ‘successful’ was that they were so good at killing each other in their own rivalrous imperial wars.
The weapons technologies they mastered for use against one-another and especially the warmaking process, totally overwhelmed the rest of the world.
By the battle of Lepanto, European military superiority definitively shifted the bottom line of war from having the most willing bodies to having the best of ever-improving weapons technologies.
South Asia was already politically well developed and had economic and cultural wealth well ahead and advanced of Europe.
The Westphalian nation-state system, was misapplied deliberately in non-European countries to divide political partitions that already existed to deny post-colonial subjects the full benefits of nation-statehood.
This would only have been possible had the indigs already been operating at some level as nation states or potential nation-states that could be so identified and divided.
With the concept of sovereignty and recognized borders, national currency, army, government and the identifiable nature of State that came into being is within the 18th century, not before. It may include China but only in the widest interpretation and definitely not “India”. The nations within that configuration include Rajasthan “The nation of the Rajput:, Tamil Nadu “Tamil Nation”.
The Sikh faith, language, ethnicity and history alone qualify it for Khalistan and self determination. Why should they suffer under the bad governance of an alien capital like New Delhi? It is not Sikh or Hindu or affiliated to any faith.
There is nothing that unifies South Asia, not even Hinduism. No language is common to all nor its collection of histories. If the Sepoys won in 1857 India would not exist. Instead they lost and the British created that mega “India’ administered under the Bombay, Madras and Bengal Presidencies which included parts of Saudi Arabia and Singapore
All those institutional trappings evolved since Westhphalia, but the point is, the basis for a national identity that would find formal statehood complimentary, already existed, sometimes with their own equivalent institutions.
The Sikhs are on nationally critical real estate. Its not in their interest to foment civil war with the far larger Indian state.
You can go on and on, but the nation-state can’t be uninvented. India, will violently resist any attempt to further partition their sandbox, and, not all Sikhs want separation.
Europeans seem to be saying, mega nation-state for me, but not for thee. However, South Asians were on the receiving end of piecemeal conquest already.
The notion that little geographies like Khalistan and Goa aren’t marked rubes in a renewed Great Game India, is a little naive.
It would be only Mackinderan for European imperialists to advance breaking up mega state rivals into more manageable bits.
Here is where you are wrong. Commerce created “India” not nationalist sentiment and it is weaker than similar entities like Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia.
“India” is really New Delhi and when the independence movement took off by the late 19th century it morphed into 2 within a few decades and by 1947 2 nations were created based on religion. By 1971 a 3rd was created based on ethnicity.
New Delhi has encouraged secession among its neighbors as another method to control that massive population and it has spent the last 74 years using its military to battle militant secessionists within India.
74 years is less than the time it was part of the British Empire (1857-1947) when England used the Sepoys to fight local kings to keep that India together and over 1/3 retained their kingdoms
Some other factors you fail to take into account is managing vast populations through poverty. Investing in poverty gives short term results. Negating ethnic identities in order to control seldom works.
The rise of Hindu Nationalism undercuts the concept of India in every way. The militant nature of the secessionists including the Maoists who have controlled 11 to 12 Indian states for decades. That requires a lot of local support.
The most immediate challenge are the land laws and refugee laws passed by the present government.
Brockland
I understand what you are saying because nation states from the Greek city states to republics in South Asia flourished. but just for this issue of the modern Indian state they may not apply. When Pakistan and Bangladesh formed they included the basics of the modern state that India was modeled after. I am sure if the Sikhs, Tamils, Kashmir or Goa were to break from New Delhi they too would follow the model of the modern State
Such new states would probably follow a Westminister constitutional role model, like New Zealand, not the United States.
Pakistan did to a limited level. It was created as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims. The only other homeland to be created was Israel in 1948. Since then Pakistan has gravitated towards a theocracy creating a new capital called “Islam-abad” from its old one Karachi.
Bangladesh was created to be a homeland for Bengali Muslims where ethnicity plays the dominant role but not at the expense of religious exclusivity.
Khalistan would be the first Sikh nation where Amritsar is its “Jerusalem’ or “Mecca” or “The Vatican” where it may move its Capital as well. There are variations. Kashmir would have unique properties to it if it became independent
“Anti-nation statists aren’t after what’s best for local populations, but to divide and conquer, pillage, raid and dominate to their own selfish benefit.”
Dumbest thing I’ve read this week.
Thomas
Thanks for pointing that out. It missed me. I did not catch it. That is an absurd conclusion on Brokland’s part
How so?
To claim that self determination had value when Congress demanded it from England for an entity created by England but not for those wanting a nation based on their ethnic identity goes against the concept of self determination.
I understand where you’re coming from, both the attractive ideal and reality of abuse of the ideal.
The nations-state is a political technology that cannot be uninvented anymore than the gun can be uninvented from personal defense and warfare.
The only people trying to dissolve national boundaries, are trans-national crony capitalists who find borders a nuisance to their own free movement – when not being misused as their corrals of labour and consumers.
The real nation state, is a sandbox of true local sovereignty by the people who live there.
It’s true that the nation-state can’t be un-invented.
But the Westphalian Model nation-state is only one, thus far short-lived and deadly, version of the nation-state.
And plenty of people other than crony capitalists dislike both its specific post-1648 features (“national sovereignty” and “borders,” which put what would otherwise be minor wars on steroids and guarantee periodic, politically driven genocides) and the reason for those features (to more efficiently exploit the serfs by making fealty a religious duty to immortal statehood rather than a matter of mere personal loyalty to /biological dynasty of particular feudal lords).
Before 1924 the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny led to the consolidation of the British East India holdings handed over to the crown which officially formed the British Empire. The Opium wars in China (Sanskrit name) led to the theft and destruction of the Summer palace in 1860. By the late 19th century both the Subcontinent and East Asia were subdued and SE Asia fell under the French and Dutch Empires. by the end of world war 1 the last Muslim Empire the Ottoman Empire was taken apart for the creation of the modern ME states and Israel – by 1948