Victimhood is compellingly seductive and we have cultivated it into a chronic disease across generations. There are, however, factual problems with this.
First, we’ve never been alone, except in 1965. In 1971, the Soviets were our treaty-bound allies. During Kargil, Op Parakram, and 26/11 almost all of the rest of the world leaned towards us. Even the Chinese were nuanced.
Even in 1965, the Soviets were halfway to getting hyphenated with India. Our first MiG squadron was forming (nine operational aircraft when the war began) and the first, solitary battery of SAM-II ‘Guideline’ missiles were deployed close to Delhi. But, even if you keep that out, India has never been alone. Since 1991 as the Soviet Bloc vaporised and our economy grew, there’s been a progressing warming of the relationship with the US and the West.
After Pokhran-II in 1998, the Americans took no time lifting the sanctions, accepting India as a strategically important friendly, nuclear-armed power, and have never said anything adverse over Kashmir again. This was just a few years after US Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel had made that loaded ‘reflection’ on the instrument of accession.
In 2000, on his brief airport stopover in Pakistan on his way home from India, Bill Clinton spoke on camera and, wagging his finger, told the Pakistanis that lines on the map of the region could no longer be drawn in blood. Pakistan lost its American anchor, and became a Chinese protectorate.
Following Pulwama-Balakot, the Americans played a constructive role in de-escalation in a manner that suited India. The difference between then and now is, Trump 47 is a far cry from Trump 45. This Trump is a schoolkid who wants credit for everything.
I really adore the wit on Twitter who remarked when Virat Kohli announced his retirement: How come Donald Trump did not announce it to the world first? One look at his track record tells you he takes special delight in trolling—even publicly humiliating his friends and allies—and pretends to flatter their common adversaries.
Think Putin, Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa, Iran and in the instance of our ongoing neurosis, unnamed Pakistanis: they are great people, make wonderful products, I know their leader very well. I am not sure, he does. He might think it is “that cricketer, very charming, great guy.” To be fair though, most people will be confused: is it the prime minister or the field marshal?
He insulted Canada’s Mark Carney, Zelenskyy, and most recently South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with WhatsApp University-quality folklore on the “genocide of whites”. Of course it helps Trump that Elon Musk has been fully playing his native country’s internal politics even as he holds a most powerful public office in the Trump Administration.
The world is still learning to distinguish between Trump that is theatre, and his administration’s reality. Any time you are triggered over Trump’s boasts, read the tweets of J.D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and others. Even the readout of Marco Rubio’s calls to India and Pakistan are nuanced. There’s advice to the Pakistanis to cooperate with India and to act against terrorists operating from their soil. What else does India want? A licence to shoot?
Self-pitying victimhood is worse than defeatism in that it also makes you frustrated. The stupidest thing you’ve been hearing lately is, the West (read Washington) has rehyphenated India with Pakistan. Hello, has anybody told you to enter negotiations over Kashmir and offered to mediate? Even Trump’s boasts are about mediating a ceasefire. It’s been nearly six years since India changed the constitutional status of Jammu & Kashmir. No friendly power has objected, asked you to reverse it. Turkey is marginal for us and Azerbaijan not even that. As for OIC, no Muslim nation has much time for that near-defunct body. Even in the latest round, important Islamic countries, Indonesia, Bahrain and Egypt ensured criticism of India was greatly moderated.
The reality, therefore, is that far from being friendless, India is better positioned in the world than at any point post-Cold war. It is a supreme irony and a stunning example of that incurable Indian ‘’ (I shall walk alone) fixation when India enjoys enormous goodwill and company of friends. Equally, it is also an incredible retreat from the heady G-20 era when India was hailed as the rising star in the world, and Narendra Modi the leader everybody deferred to.
Our understanding of what has changed then depends on what our expectations were. We’ve avoided using the term ‘ally’ with the Americans. We’ve insisted Quad isn’t described as a security alliance (though Trump did in Modi’s presence), we routinely upbraid the Europeans post-Ukraine. We set great store by strategic autonomy, which has served India well. What did we want our friends to do this time? To join us in clobbering Pakistan? It is, in fact, the Americans, many who’ve used the expression “ally” for India in their tweets and statements.
We’ve already expended a thousand words explaining how rather than being lonely or friendless we are living in a world filled with friends. We’ve worked very hard over decades to earn this stature. Then where is our pain coming from?
Back to that N-word. We are an odd people, in fact more the establishment, who hold the western media, NGOs, think tanks, intellectuals, academia in contempt. They are all prejudiced against us. They can’t tolerate the rise of India. They don’t matter. We must carry on regardless. If so, why do we hyperventilate at their criticism and questions. It’s inexplicable and if it wasn’t upsetting our public opinion so much, I’d even call it amusing. We can’t be so contemptuous of Western opinion and yet so angry they don’t understand us.
Over the years, our establishment has stopped engaging with western media, especially those based in India. Most of them have experienced visa struggles, admonished for being “anti-India”. Then we complain they’ve vitiated global opinion against us and send out these 44 MPs on taxpayer-funded summer vacation to undo the damage. We have to first decide if global opinion matters to us or not. If it does, we must drop all ego and bluster and engage with their media, think tanks, civil society. If we don’t, stop this of MPs going from port to port.
Global opinion isn’t just shaped by summit meetings or events like Op Sindoor. It is a combination of complex factors, including a nation’s soft power. When the Pakistani DG-ISPR said even the Indian media was raising questions about its government’s claims, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri gave a good reply by reminding him this is how democracy works, and how would a Pakistani know that. Does it square with him being targeted for his daughter’s views or the arrest of that Ashoka University professor for a Facebook post so innocuous even the honourable Supreme Court needs the help of three senior IPS officers to read between the lines for anything offensive?
Mahmudabad story made , as indeed a bigger one on the private war run by our commando comic channels that had the Navy finish Karachi, Army capture Islamabad and the IAF obliterate everything in between. It became so embarrassing that finally even the government had to direct them to stop using the air raid sirens as part of the background score along with the usual drum roll.
All of these have damaged India and turned, very regrettably, India’s soft power into a hard liability. To reset and repair this N-Word, we must begin here and now. Meanwhile, we wish our MPs a productive, joyful boondoggle.
