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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (100781)	6/8/2003 11:43:15 PM
From: EJhonsa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Ridiculous. Continue your analogy to the US. Imagine that a State government controlled by religious conservatives and allied to the central government deliberately instigated riots in which hundreds of members of a rival religion died, and the head of that government openly proclaimed that they deserved to die. Your comments are presumptuous on two levels. First, in presuming that the Indian federal government has the same type of political control over state governments that the American government has over its states. Go from one Indian state to another, and you'll find that people speak different languages, wear different clothes, eat different types food, and so on. In effect, you get the feeling that you're traveling into different countries. In this sense, they're more like states in the former Yugoslavia than in the present-day USA. And as a result, the federal government has much less influence on the courses run in local politics, and there's a much greater degree of variety in political norms from one place to the other. Second, in presuming that a federal government presiding over a country with a population above 1 billion, a per capita GDP of $2,500, and a literacy rate of 52% could ever expect to keep a lid on regional fanaticism the way that a country with a population of 300 million, a per capita GDP of $37,000, and a literacy rate of 97% could, regardless of how ethnically homogenous the country it presides over happens to be. Especially when passions have already been flared by a terrorist attack, and the former country is far from a dictatorship in which all political power flows from one or a handful of people residing in the capital. The problem is real; denial won't help. The problem is definitely real, and quite serious. However, at this time, it exists mostly on a regional level. Though it may become a major threat on the national level in ten or fifteen years if gone unchecked, it hasn't reached that point yet. And if you look back at my original comments, you'll see that I referred specifically to "the coalition currently running the Indian government", with the implication being that I'm talking about the federal government. To repeat, I do think this government has sadly pandered at times to militant elements, mostly to win favor with regional factions and political bosses who, for reasons already stated, can dictate the tempo of local politics to a degree that American state governors and state legislatures never could. However, it hasn't yet made the militants' agenda its own. And it definitely hasn't, to paraphrase Jacob, adopted a policy of encouraging pogroms against Muslims and razing mosques. I more or less agree with your reasoning for why Indian troops shouldn't handle peacekeeping work in Iraq if other options are available, but that's obviously besides the point here. Eric