Now that Obama is deemed the "President-elect" (no offence to Dubya, who is technically still our "President"), and the election fever all but behind us, let us talk some global politics.
I read this headline "Indian frigate sinks pirate ship" in LA Times this morning and as the day progressed the same newsline seemed to appear everywhere - BBC, NY Times, Indian websites, Yahoo and other web portals. (In case you missed it, you can check it out at - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081119/ap_on_re_af/piracy). As I was reading the news item, I could not help but assume a smile of pride thinking about the further global clout a stunt like this will bring to India's already rising image as a true regional, if not a world, power. After all it takes a certain level of guts for a country to act unilaterally on international waters to take down another ship, albeit a pirate one. The fact that the Indian Navy was able to do it - without Manmohan Singh first having to pick up a phone and check with the UN or US or his Russian buddies - shows that India has come of age in taking on some international matters head-on. While I do want to pat the Indian Navy on the back for this remarkable show of valor, some after-thoughts popped up...
How come the Indian Navy that would protect and escort merchant vessels, both Indian and foreign, through the Gulf of Eden near Yemen - which, by the way, is over 1,000 nautical miles from Indian shores - not be able to drum up the same sense of duty and courage when it comes to protecting innocent Tamil (Indian) fishermen off the coast of Sri Lanka (hardly 50 miles from Tamilnadu coast) from indiscriminate firing by the Sri Lankan military? How come the Indian Government would not issue a word of condemnation of human rights abuses by China in Tibet, even when China is openly intruding into or claiming Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh? Why does India buy arms and intelligence from Israel while still saying it sympathizes with the Palestinian cause? Why is India's foreign policy fraught with so many hypocrisies? Anybody has answers?
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