PMO BEAT Riding high on sea horses By R. Prasannan Narendra Modi made much of being the first Indian PM to visit Australia after 28 years. No great deal! Despite it having been part of their empire for a century and a half, no British PM visited Australia till Harold Macmillan did in 1958. They used to send only their cricketers to Australia, to get walloped by Don Bradman. So have we been. We used to send our cricketers to Australia. Poor things used to get beaten black and blue by the Thomsons and Lillees. Australia didnt matter to us till lately, except in cricket. They lived in their own westernised nest in the east; we lived in our own socialistic terra tertiary or third world. The twain never met, except on the cricket pitch and in the clubrooms of the Commonwealth. Times changed. Test cricket gave way to One-Dayers and now to 20-20. The Cold War ended; the last Russian submarine left the Indian Ocean in 1991. We were left friendless and penniless. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan opened up the economy and looked east for capital and markets. The worthies of the east, the Japanese and the Australians, acted snooty. They turned nasty when we refused to sign the nuclear test ban treaty in the mid-90s; they were nastier when we made the bomb in 1999. The Aussies snooped on our warships, till Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat threatened to shoot down their spy planes. The Japanese, the only ones who came close to conquering us in the last 200 years after the British did, scowled at us, much in the same manner that God scowled at Adam when he was caught sinning with the forbidden fruit. By the 2000s, the Americans began showing signs of having been wearied with hunting, and fain would lie down. Now the Aussies and the Japanese felt friendless. New dangers arose. The sea lanes in the Indian Ocean, which has more choke points than both the Pacific and the Atlantic put together have, came to be clogged by Somali pirates and Malaccan buccaneers. The Chinese dragon, not trusted by anyone on the Indo-Pacific rim from Australia to Vietnam and even beyond, showed signs of moving into the sea. Thats when everyone realised they had to get together to secure the waters through which they all traded. Now, we acted snooty. Give us the entire Indian Ocean to rule over, we said. Vajpayee re-dreamed Lord Curzons 100-year-old dream of the seas from Suez to Singapore being controlled from India. The Pakistanis ran in panic to Washington. No way, Bill Clinton and then George Bush told India. Weve divided the world under our various commands; you are under our Pacific Command; dont look west where we play power-games with Pakistan under our Central Command. Miffed; India sulked. Now, Modi has ended the sulk. Now the flip side. Modi is making the same mistake that Manmohan did—ignoring his near abroad. Apart from getting the South Asian rulers to stand attendance at his coronation, and doing road-shows in Nepal and Bhutan, Modi has hardly said hello to his neighbours. Sheikh Hasina, cut up over Teesta waters, gave Modi a piece of her mind when they met in New York. Nawaz Sharif isnt talking, but getting his mortarmen, now trained by the Chinese, to fire on the Indian posts. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who secured our southern waters by crushing the worlds only guerilla force that possessed a navy, is letting Chinese submarines to berth in his ports. The Afghans, who stretched their hands of friendship over the heads of the Pakistanis, are miffed that neither Manmohan nor Modi has listened to their desperate pleas for guns to kill the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Next week, Modi will see them all at the Kathmandu SAARC. Good luck! TAILPIECE: MODI HAS addressed five Parliaments in the last six months—of Bhutan, Nepal, Australia, Fiji and India. Once each! prasannan@the-week Privacy | About Us | Media Kit | Career@The Week | Contact Us | Our Publications | Feedback © Copyright 2011 The Week.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 17:24:59 +0000
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