Namaste! I am delighted to have an amazing guest today, General Bakshi, in Delhi. He is a well-known person on Indian TV, but for many of the viewers internationally, I just want to tell you. He has had a distinguished career with armed forces. And now a different kind of career as a public intellectual and public spokesman, defending the country and its values in a very strong strong voice. Delighted to have you sir. Thank you! Thank you for having me over. So, this is part of a series I am doing called dialogue with the masters. What I do is I pick the top people in different fields. So, I am delighted to have you as one of our leaders, thought leaders in terms of security, not only in terms of physical security, but intellectual security, cultural security and so forth. So, I wanted to find out from you, what is your overall assessment of the safety or risks of this country viz a viz Pakistan, viz a viz China viz a viz internal problems. Firstly, I will start with the internal dimension first. You know, large countries like the Soviet Union Erstwhile and now Russia, China, India. You know these are like huge nuclei, they tend to be entropic. And we have invariably found that these large empires have broken up from internal stresses much more than they have, you know, gone down to external aggression. For example the Soviet Union survived the invasion of Nazis Germany, beat them back from Moscow to Berlin and destroyed Nazi Germany in virtually single handed. They lost 2500 million people, but they didn't give up, they didn't break up. The same Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 without a single shot being fired from within. You know, the same colossus of China were on the brink of collapse in Tiananmen Square when the crowd had just come out in hundreds and thousands. So, you know, just like heavier nuclei tend to be a entropic, these large states, these macro states, you know, tend to be brittle from within. And the greater danger that they have to look out for is the kind of danger that you have been warning of in this Magnum Opus of yours. which I keep as a standard reference work, Breaking India. Breaking India, yes. You see, the fact is that India has been I would say, twice blessed in terms of security threats. No other country has had its national identity so comprehensively destroyed as this nation state. The simple fact is we had a thousand years of Muslim invasions I mean and that did not do any good for national cohesion, moral etc. Except that in the reign of Akbar I would say that he turned secular and that's how he build the Mughal empire. But that same Mughal empire when Aurangzeb came and became tyrannical, I mean, there were revolts and the Mughal empire had collapsed and into this vacuum came the British. And the British after the 1857 revolt set about to comprehensively destroy the idea of India. Destroy! And I mean it with a capital 'D', that destruction. You know, it is John Risley who first picked on the caste fault lines. 1872 he holds the first caste-based census and he tells us that as long as there is caste, there will be no India. Every single collectorate in India had to had district gadgeteers where you had just like unleg the Aadhaar card today. You had to list your caste, your gotra, your subcase And it is almost like caste getting a second or a third you know dose of life because of the British intervention. And, not only did they identify the caste fault lines, then they went on to the religious fault lines. They gave separate electorates to the Muslims, then to the Sikhs, then to the Christians. And each of these communities you know we have had break away moments after partition, after independence. You know, these comprehensive fault lines, And these things are getting worse by the day in some sense. Because you have North-East insurrection and the whole Dalit movement in the South, the Christianisation of India and also lot of Islamisation. We don't talk much about it, but that's a problem. And the foreign nexuses are funding and exacerbating this. And then the intellectuals in India themselves are sepoys. Many of the intellectuals are themselves making the idea of India broken up into states and so on, kind of a fashionable thing today. How wonderful! You see the British Empire was built by our sepoys, paid 2 and a half rupees per month, you know. And they fought for the British Empire, they colonized the whole of India. And the spread of the British Empire was almost analogous to the spread of the Mauryan Empire. From the east, you know, it came and occupied the west. And who were the foot soldiers, Indians. There were at any given time 40,000 British soldiers in India. And there were something like 120 thousand, 300 thousand and at the time of World War 1.3 Indian in uniform. In the Second Word War we had 2.5 million Indian soldiers in uniform. The largest all volunteer army in the world recruited without conscription. They built the British Empire. The British Empire is being psychologically sustained because I do believe that before the British left, they left behind an Anglophile elite who would be beholding for them for the next decades. Many of the media are owned by these people. the media are owned by these people, it is Britishers like William Dalrymple who decide what is literature, what is good literature, what is bad literature. He runs all the literary festivals. And I am blacklisted because I point it out to him. (Both laugh). He makes two of us. His ancestors were in the East India Company I mean, his whole articles, you know, his whole and how he is powerful, so powerful that he decides through Indians who do the dirty work. The actual management is done by The foot soldiers are also called leftist liberals. Yes! The Bastions of this seditious behaviour, you know, is focused on the JNU that we have in New Delhi. Ashoka University in Gurgaon, there are many others like this. there is the Jadhavpur University in Kolkata, there is the Hyderabad University from where Verumala and the others, you know have been given traction. And they have their allies in the media, especially in the print and the electronic media sections of it. They have their allies. And it is a comprehensive moment. I just like to remind people, you know, because people tend to look at more overt threads. Looking at more overt threads they forget what is far more dangerous. In Syria, you know, where the problem started? In the universities of Damascus and Aleppo. Does that ring a bell? the University of JNU, the University of, and this so-called Arab's spring which is supposed to be in freedom got out of hand. Got out of hand? I think it was designed to disintegrate. All the major Arab powers and which were the most secular and liberal and possibly modernist, the regimens of, not liberal, but at least secular and modernist. Saddam Hussain was very much so. Iraq, Syria, Libya, these were at least modernists in outlook. They were building cities, they were wearing western dresses etc. These are the regimes targeted for destabilization via the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring is generated by the new technology of, you know, messaging, texting on the mass, creating a flash dance mob and you create use that to create mobs. The same mobs were created here in New Delhi. You see, before the problem started in J&K this year, it had started, the first slogans of Burhan Wani had been shouted in the university of Jawaharlal Nehru. named after Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi. My boys were fighting in J&K they were so shocked, they rang me up from there and said, sir what the hell is going on? We thought we had heard these slogans in the border states, now they are in Delhi, in your universities. That is the danger. I think precisely what you had warned 8 years ago in Breaking India, I mean that is coming to pass. It was, I mean, frankly, in the intelligence community, security community in India, we thought this book was prophetic. Prophetic! So, why hasn't something been done to close down this, to clamp this. I mean there will be complaints about freedom of speech, people will talk about that and they will say this is saffronization and you are denying them their human rights and so on. But enough is enough, at some point even Britain even United States would clamp down on people. Any free society has to first look after its own security. The American ambassador, Varma Saheb, in India. He has Indian genes. I am afraid he does not have an Indian passport. And when this JNU problem took place, he went on television to say that you know, we must protect free speech. At that stage I had asked him on television and I would like to address that question to him again possibly through you. Tell me one American university which under the banner of free speech, has hailed the martyrdom of Osama Bin Laden? If you can put it in inverted commas. That's exactly it should be. That's a good question. Tell me one American university where they have held a memorial service for Atab Mohammad and other bombers of 9/11. Tell me one university where there has been a protest against the extra judicial killing of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. Did the American transporter caught them? they transported the SEAL who went and shot him. And when his third or fourth wife came in between, they shot her in the foot. Was there any outcry on human rights? Tell me one American university where you can ask for the cessation of Alaska or Texas today. And if you don't end up in Gontaramabway faster than, you can say, Jack Robinson. Well, I will shave my moustache off. So, it can't be one yardstick for one democracy and absolutely different yardstick for another democracy. See, this business of post modernism has been exported. This whole idea of modernism, doing away with nation states, it's a flat world, you know, no borders. The point is, this is not applied to those countries. They do not live by that standard. They have exported it and Indians with inferiority complex, I must say, lot of Indians were in this intellectual kind of fashion, have deep inferiority complex. They are really ashamed of who they are and so they latch on to this idea because they think they would be picked and turned into some icon for being Indian So, there is a market, there is a job market, there is an economy of such left-wing kind of pseudo intellectuals, pseudo liberals to go and build big careers. This is the problem, it was started by Ford foundation and many others to recruit such people, make NGOs and get into the hinterlands and make trouble. Today, it's the elite American think tanks, the Carnegie India, the Brookings India and all these kind of things, they have decided that now Hindu type intellectuals or intellectuals from industrial families and intellectuals from you know, from government top officials, their kids should be recruited and kind of you know manipulated intellectually Or let's say influenced intellectually to become the carriers of American values, American ideological values. So, this... We don't have our think tanks. Or think tanks of similar quality. Or think tanks with similar pay grades and similar class and clout. So, what about that? This war is becoming more sophisticated. This intellectually, psychological war is becoming more sophisticated because now you are finding very highly educated people Indians from Ivy leagues coming back and joining this kind of a think tank machinery. You know the problem as you very rightly identified, Rajiv, is that the British conquered India with an army of sepoys, very low paid sepoys. And now the intellectual conquest of the psychological subjugation of this country, you know, a deeply rooted inferiority complex injected or enforced in the colonial era tends to persist today, 70 years after independence through an army of sepoys, intellectual sepoys, recruited, paid, you know, feted by the west and for recognition in the west, you know, you play to those tubes. Your history is still the history that the colonial regime left. You have not dared, it is sacrilege to change a word of what the British said. It is sacrilege to try and talk of a new nationalism. The pity is that we have let ourselves be guided by the no’s so to speak by an army of pseudo intellectuals, the Romila Thappars of this world, the Rajmohan Gandhis of this world, who were patronised by the Indians state, the Nehruvian Indian state, who were funded by the Nehruvian Indian state, caught historians, who twisted history, the history of the freedom struggle. You see, it suited the vote bank policies of the congress. To keep people divided, to create sub nationalist histories, divisive histories, to teach people that you are being exploited by rest of the Indians You are the victim. So, to create many uprising, they thought could manage it and control it and not they will get out of hand, not realizing that when you create such a thing, it will get out of it. So, this is a product of the subaltern movement, the whole intellectual movement to build history from below, to build revolting histories and to sort of, try to subvert the nation. Subverting the nation became fashionable in departments of history, social sciences and so on. Let me also give you just rather twisted possibly that has not been recorded earlier so much. You know, after the second world war the Americans, the occupying forces made sure that the German society, the Japanese society were demilitarized, pacified, and turned into absolute whims from what they were, given huge guilt complexes. India had an army of 2.5 million men and frankly we won the war for the British. You know, towards the end of the war the British generals wanted Indian division under them, I mean, they cost less, they fought much better. They fought much better. You know? And the fact of the matter is before the British left they neutralized this militaries, this rising militarism that was coming up in India, strong India. They made sure that they left behind a wimp government which said we have attained freedom. Which falsely claimed that they have attained freedom only by the soft power of nonviolence and ahimsa and satyagraha and what have you... The fact of the matter is that had it not been for Bose or the INA, the INA of Subhash Chandra Bose had 60,000 soldiers out of them 26,000 died. Do you call that a nonviolence struggle? Yet your history books, you know, in Vipin Chandra's magna Morpheus on India's freedom struggle which is about 600 pages plus, guess how many are the pages devoted to INA and Subhash Chandra Bose - one and half. One and a half! This is the distortion that you started with. You created a pacifist regime, those 2.5 million men you demobilized, you left India with an army of 300,000. And then you left India with a mindset where when general Sir Roy Bucher, the first British chief of the Indian Army when he walked up to Pandit Nehru with plans for the expansion and modernization of the Indian armed forces or the Indian Army at least, Nehru said, General, we don't need an army, we only need the police. And the expression of shock on the General, the British General's face when he reeled out of that office was something which is, you know, which is priceless. It seems Nehru will eventually come down in history as somebody who really destroyed our country. We keep naming things after him with great pride. You see, look, let me give you another insight from the constitutional point of view. What is the Indian Constitution today? It is the rehash of 1935 government of India Act. Right? That whole act has been taken lock stock in barrel. What are the opening lines of this, you know, what did the British base their empire on? On the concept of Imperial justice. They said, India is such a conglomeration of fighting, races, ethnicity, that it needs an external power to rule. You know, only an external power can dispense justice between the warring communities. Hence came the concept of imperial justice. You know, what is the Indian Constitution, the Preamble? We the people of India having no bla bla bla result give ourselves justice. How is justice the first, not liberty not equality, not other facets of, you know democratic dispensations all over the world? How is justice.... the concept of imperial justice has been made into the concept of Nehruvian that kind of a justice. An Anglophile regime which is separate from the warring communities of India, well above, you know. I mean it is anglicized, it is anglicized, it is only fit to rule. And therefore, you have the British Queen replaced by another dynasty. Now you have an Italian, you had till recently an Italian queen. An Italian queen mother. You see, you have replaced one dynasty with another. Right. You know, a white, a white, only a white can rule India. Can you accept that nonsense? And if that white lady was a lady of great learning and consequence, I would have, you know, said, yes. Possibly she is a great economist or philosopher or what have you. I am very sorry the academic credentials of that lady were nothing to talk over about. I think it is a white complex. If Rajiv Gandhi had married somebody in Africa, suppose he married a... Would she have been the prime minister? Then they would have not respected her the same way. If the deep inferiority complex of our people still looking up to the angrez as a sort of superior person. That's our problem. You see, that he says that precisely the victims of the colonial, you know, dispensation, so internalized their subjugation, their sense of inferiority. And I think the worst thing that British did before they left was to instil in the Indian intellectual elite, a deep-rooted sense of insecurity and inferiority which I am very sorry to say, 70 years after independence still raise supreme. We still send our children to English speaking schools and so-called convents. And you see this kind of a broken mind, broken psychological mind with inferiority complex and weakness can easily be turned against each other. And easily be turned that your nation is the culprit, your culture is the culprit, your Vedic civilization is the culprit. And this has become fact. Brahmanical, you know, domination. I just want to raise one simple question. Brahmanical domineering for one thousand years, who ruled India? The Muslims. And you think they were very partial to the Brahmins? The primary target of conversion of operation were these intellectual elite. These are the people who have suffered from the last thousand years and now today they are being painted as, you know, because they have been sensed as this is the possibly the intellectual segment that has held the assemblance of the civilizational order together. Look at the way they are targeted. Subaltern histories and other histories and Brahmanical operations and this thing. I ask you, one thousand years were the Brahmins ruling? Were the brahmins ruling this country? It was they were the primary targets of persecution, of victimization, of... My own people have suffered untold, you know, tortures. Bhai Mati das, Baba Praga. Bhai Mati Das was incidentally sawed in half, sawed in half. His Satidas and his other brother, they were burned to death and one was boiled to death by the Mughals. They were Brahmins, well. So, this is the kind of Brahmin elitism that you are talking of? You know narratives have been created. We have suffered more than this atrocity of ISIS. Actually, the Muslim atrocities in India are far worse than what ISIS is doing. Because ISIS has done for a few years and they have affected maybe a few tens or thousands of people. But we have suffered millions for hundreds of years. You see, the Jewish hollow caste, is nothing compared to this fails into insignificance before what was done in India by the invaders that wave after wave of invaders wave after wave of oppression. And today it is supposed to be, you know, politically incorrect to talk of that. It is politically incorrect. We have given ourselves a political dispensation where you are supposed to glorify the conquer, the invader, the marauder, the looter, the rapist. And now there is this book by one of Sheldon Pollock's student’s westerner on Aurangzeb, glorifying him, decent one. And she writes for the Hindu and she is invited to all these lit fests. So, it’s like really, we have a complex of self-hatred. We are really interested in destroying ourselves almost. We have a death wish. You see, let me put it this way. Carbon dating takes your civilization back to 7000 years. At least. Some of the ruins in Dwarka under sea has been dated back to 7000 years so has Meragadh been dated back to 7000 years. And Rakhigadhi in Haryana. So, the point is in these 7000 years how often were you united, politically. 300 years of the Mughal Empire followed by the Shunga Empire. Only if you combine the two empires you get 300 years. 300 years or so of the Mughal Empire and another 250 to 300 years of the British Empire of which we are the successor entity. That means only for 900 years out of 7000 years you have been united. For the rest you have been squabbling lot of kingdoms and you know fiefdoms of republics. Gantantras and ganrajyas and Vaishali and the others fighting for one courtesan or the other courtesan. I mean So the 900 years of some assemblance of unity, political unity along with versus thousands of years of no single political unity. But beneath the political unity, there has been a civilizational continuity. A civilizational, a sense of, you know, after all Adi Shankara goes to all the corners because he sees this is my Bharat. After all our itihas talks about from the North to the South, that whole land of Ramayana. So, in the imagination of the mind of the people, in their education, in the itihas, in the shastras and the person from the south, southernmost tip goes to Ganga for the dip. And the kumbh mela attracts people from all over the country. So, this sense of unity has been not a kind of a political states type of unity, but a different kind of unity. And my concern is that now that is the one they are attacking to break it. Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head. India is a weak state, but a strong society. And that strong society is because of the deep cultural continuity. Amazing cultural continuity. No other civilization can boast of such, you know, span of cultural continuity as the Indian, not the Chinese. Not the Chinese, not the Egyptian, not the Greek. All those civilizations are history. Those who built the pyramids where are they today? What is the cultural continuity between Egypt today and the Egypt of 2 to 3000 years ago. And yet, when you go to the ruins of Indus Valley Civilisation, which I would like to reterm as the Sarasvati Valley Civilization because 60% of the sites and settlements were not along the Indus coast. They were along the Sarasvati River coast. And so that Sindhu, that Hindu, that entire construct imposed by the westerners is a fallacy. But the fact of the matter is we have, if you see the ruins of the Sarasvati Stroke Indus Civilization, there are dolls with bindis. Our girls still today put on bindis. You know, the kind of necklaces, the kind of carts, you know, the proto Shiva, Pashupati is on the seals of the Indus Valley Civilization 5000 years ago. He is worshipped today. In the yogic asan, in the yogic posture, you know, there is a female goddess, the shakti is there in the Indus Valley Civilization. She is there today. There is an amazing cultural continuity and if the British told in terms of the civilizational state, there is nothing to hold a candle to this civilization. And the pity is, the danger is, when you ask me what is the greatest danger to India, it is this. It is this cultural construct that is under assault. It is this cultural construct which stud 7000 years of entropy which is under the salt. Now, but we do need to address the external threats. We cannot trivialize it. I mean, we do need a very strong army. We need a very very strong army. I have lived in the United States for a long time and I must say that I gained a huge respect for military and its importance in nation building because I lived there. And I saw the amount of respect being given by US corporates, by US government and the US society to their armed forces. I don't see the same intensity of patriotism here as far as respect for the armed forces is concerned as I saw in the United States. It’s a big deal when their soldiers go out to war, they come back the way they are greeted, when there are national parades, there are. The Indian army, you know, is still looked at something very specialized, particular thing they are doing but role in nation building I think is not adequately appreciated. So, would you like to comment on that as a military person yourself. Once again you have touched a very raw nerve of the Indian military. America is a democracy. 70% of their Presidents have been their former military men. Let me just put it bluntly. 70% Americans have been, does that make it less of a democracy? How is it that this country, in this country the ethic of self-sacrifice, it is the soldier alone who lays his life down on the line. Who suffers, who torture, death. And in United States it is a matter of pride to say, I served in the army. It’s a huge pride and people really look at it. And in India by sheer contrast tell me how many of the thousands of politicians has ever served in the military or sent his son or his daughter to the military? Not one! Not one. The British queen has two sons, one is in the Royal Air Force, the other is in the British Army. And these boys have not been the aedeses to the queen. they are not been aids de camp to the queen. They have served by volunteering in Iraq and Afghanistan. And every battlefield that there is, they go. So, they lead by example. You see! And the nation looks up to the sacrifice of the armed forces. In this country, and that's why I said the narrative of state, the Nehruvian narrative of state constructed was one to justify your political survival. Against the bogie of Subhash Chandra Bose and his INA, which actually got India free because, let me put a very little-known fact across. The key decision maker for Indian independence was Lord Clivent Hartley. The first British Prime Minister in 1947. 1955 he comes to India and he is the guest of the governor of west Bengal Justice P B Chakraborty. They have a long conversation. He asks him the 1942 Quit India Movement of the congress had failed dismally, you had put every single Indian prisoner behind the bars, right? And it had all died out without a whimper. Why then did you leave in such a tearing hurry after you won the Second World War in 45? Hartley said, the key independence decision maker of India who signed the independence of India said three words, Subhash Chandra Bose, Indian national Army. When he raised an eyebrow, he clarified that the INA trials that we held, you know, they may have lost the wars of in Kohima and Imphal, but the INA trials that we held they were in February 1946 very few people know mass revolts in the royal Indian navy, 20,000 sailors on 80 ships pulled down the Union Jack, threw their British options into the sea. mass streets of Karachi and Mumbai waved portraits of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. That is the reality. What is the reflection in the history? It was only, de di hamein azadi bina khadag bina dhaal. We got it without firing a shot. We got it without firing, I am sorry. When 60,000 men, 26,000 die you call that a nonviolence struggle? You know the entire Indian Army after independence had just about 25,000 casualties. 26,000 Indians died. You have blotted their name out to give a construct of a pacifist state. Of a state based on ahimsa, nonviolence, non-alignment, a fossil of peace, Buddha hold in the world. You castrated your military, you castrated your this thing and we got the disaster of 1962. Fortunately, we learnt a lesson. Fortunately, we learnt a lesson. So, in 62 the Chinese came 40 kilometres and then they withdrew. -I mean they withdrew as a kind of slap in our face that we can come and do it anytime. So, they are still doing it? Haan! Things changed after 62. The next leader that you had was a definitive man called Lal Bahadur Shastri. And he proved to be far tougher I mean, not, they expanded the Indian Armed Forces, they expanded and modernized the military. All that had not been done in the years of the Nehru dispensation. I mean they tried to catch up rapidly. Pakistan saw that happening. It tried to strike before we could fully modernize. By 71 we had fully modernized and expanded the armed forces to the size that is required. And you saw the results And in Mrs. Indira Gandhi, we had a ruthless practitioner of real politics. The Kautilyan tradition had been reborn. And Maneckshaw of course did to come. And P C Lal, Admiral Nanda of the navy who struck Karachi home port of the Pakistani navy, sank six ships and put the Karachi harbour on fire so that it burnt for a week. You couldn't see the sun in Karachi. I mean that was the kind of a thing. Comprehensive defeat. We broke Pakistan in two in 1971. Broke Pakistan in two, right? And 93,000 prisoners of war, never has there been such a mass surrender after the Second World War. Yahya Khan was, of course, a broken wreck by that time and General Amir Akbar Abdullah Khan Niazi, Hilale-jurrat sitaraye-pakistan was a, I have seen him as a bundle of nerve, weeping like a child and 93,000 of their prisoners were being put into the cattle trains, goods trains and being carted away to India. I mean, this is a civilizational U-turn. The only problem, and that is what I keep warning against is and thank God for 2014. Because when the congress in their second avatar went back with a vengeance to Nehruvian socialism, went back to a vengeance to Nehruvian pantheism. Because after the nuclearization of South Asia, they said now war is just out of possibility. And Pakistan can do all the killing, terrorist killing it wants in India. And incidentally, let me just give you some facts and figures. Pakistan started, when it found that it couldn't win any straight head on war with us, it started a war of a thousand cuts. They said it is worked against the Soviet Union it can work against India. So, in Punjab they started interfering first. In ten years we suffered 21,000 Indians killed, soldiers, policemen, civilians. We were able to contain that problem, they started in J&K. 45,000 Indians killed till date. 45,000 Indian citizens! 1993 they spread that war to the whole of India, to the whole of India. And we have had another 15,000 Indians killed. So, 21,000, 45,000, 15,000. 80,000 Indians have been killed in this proxy war. - So, we should break them up again and separate Baluchistan. That is the precise point. You see, the in the collective unconscious of the Indian people there is the lodestar of the Mahabharat. Apocalyptic wars have always decided the fate of this continent, sub-continent rather. You see? And we had the Mahabharatan war, before that in Vedas we had the Dasarajnya war. And those wars are remembered to this date. So, to tell us that we are the pacifist blinking soft power-oriented people only concerned with ahimsa and nonviolence is to bely the truth of Indian history. The Dasarajnya war, the Mahapharat war, the battles of Panipat, which unfortunately you fought on your own territory. And therefore, you lost them, instead of fighting forward. So, with that the change has come with Bangladesh. Bangladesh war, another apocalyptic war changed the map of South Asia. Fortunately the pacifist regime that had come in of the congress, they were not stepping across the line of control. They were not stepping across the border to retaliate. They said your only option is to grin and bear it. Your only option is to turn the other cheek. The only option is to turn the other cheek, and therefore, we did nothing for the last 30 years. It's now in 2016 that you have hit back across the line of control with tactical level, with surgical strike, with fire assaults, which will now be the know. If you can cross the border, so can we. It’s no Laxman rekha. It won't exist anymore. And number 2, from the ramp point of the Red Fort, the Prime Minister said. He spoke about the people and the suffering of the people of Baluchistan. Gilgit Pakistan, the people of Sindh. The mahajans of Sindh, the sindhis of Sindh. The people of Sirikiya region. I mean these are all the nationalities in Pakistan which have been oppressed by them. Punjabi, Muslim, minority which has swayed and the very construct of Pakistan which was created to see that India would not emerge as a strong state. Could not emerge as a strong states would we kept in check. Would be for the destabilization of India for ever and ever and ever. I think it’s about time that we repeated Bangladesh. -So, is the Trump residency an opportunity because he has his own designs against the whole clash with Islam and so on. And I think he is looking for allies, he is looking for put in ally. Isn't it an opportunity for strong Indian initiative to put some ideas on the table educate this new government because they are not experts in geo politics, they have an ideology. They want to fight, hit back, but they don't know the detail. Because I think that freedom of Baluchistan would be very strategic for United States. Because it would pick Afghanistan no longer landlord. No longer dependant on Pakistan for supplying to Afghanistan. It will make it accessible to the ocean. And to win Afghanistan is very strategic Because they don't want the return of Taliban, Al-Qaida because that's a very dangerous thing for them. So, we should profoundly convince them that this is a very strategic thing You should be investing in. And there may be other countries, Israel, Russia who may want to join because a free Baluchistan would give access from the sea to all the central Asian countries. You know, like I said that the Nehruvian dispensation had destroyed the culture of military thinking in this nation state. Thank God for the successors that revived it. Now, let me tell you we don't think in geo-political terms. You know, in the 19th century - 20th century there was this Russian thrust for the warm waters of the Arabian sea. And look at the bravohathe British created about the Russian quest on the warm waters and they started the fight not on the coast of Macra, they started the fight in Central Asia and in Afghanistan. When they started playing the great game. Century, a century before, you know, the Russians could have actual thought of warm waters of the Arabian sea. That was the kind of, you know, kind of you don't let these things happen in your backyard. Yet what has happened here, Pakistan used to rent out its territory initially to the United States. And now it is rented its territory out to China. And we have the so-called China Pakistan economic corridor. If you take a look at the map, and the alignment of this corridor, you know, if it was only meant for trade, it would have gone on the other side of the Indus to be safe from any war thrust, war type thrust by India. You know, this corridor takes two loops like this, one comes to the Punjab, one comes to Rajasthan. The main area where tank battles will take place in the next war with Pakistan. What is China trying to do? China is trying to see that its tanks, China's army is mechanized now. Almost every formation is on tanks or wheels, right? So, they cannot be applied through the Himalayan passes. They can operate in the plateau of Tibet. They can't come down through the passes because of the steep terrain. So, now they will come via Pakistan. You allow it to happen. Gilgit Pakistan is whose territory? It’s our territory. This road has been built over our territory and we have slept over it. We have allowed it to happen. Why? Why should we? The second factor is the port of Gwadar. China is now a player in the Indian ocean region. Do the Americans want it? Do the Russians want it? You know, it can now pose a threat to the economic lifelines. The sea lanes of communications. the energy supply lines of India, Japan, Korea, South Korea. Every other nation, major Asian nation, we get our oil from middle east and Africa. So, and all this is vulnerable. If you base Chinese submarines at Gwadar, you have created a paradigm shift in the security architecture. See, you could have woken up much earlier. -The geo-political significance of Baluchistan has not been adequately understood. And we are the ones who do this job of educating other people but we haven't done that. I would like to say that apart from the suffering of the people of Baluchistan, which in itself is a cause enough to try and help them for the rest of the world especially a democracy like India to help them. But the fact of the matter is, you will be safeguarding your own interest. If you are able to see that the future of the people of Baluchistan is secured. And like you get access corridors to landlock Central Asia, landlock Afghanistan. But you raised a very important point. And that is the trump administration. Firstly it shows the American leftist liberal media are hopelessly out of touch with ground reality. And the Indians are, you know, this is actually the demise of pseudo liberal era, worldwide. Brexit did that, Putin did that. Everywhere, China doesn't have that kind of people, anyway. Japan. So you are finding major countries instead of throwing out, rejecting their pseudo liberal left, intellectuals, that whole era is over. That whole era is over globally. There is, I would say, a receding of globalization, the so-called triumphal end of history. Francis Fukuyama, I think he is history. he is now history. It is end of his history, at least. But let me say outright. I as an Indian military analyst strongly feel that what has happened in United States and the coming up, the triumph of Trump, is a very good thing as far as India is concerned. -We have to take advantage of it. We have to be able to leverage. See, this requires quick thinking because trump is a kind of person that once he has announced this is my policy then he will be too arrogant to change. So, while they are still fluid, while they are figuring out new people are appointed, we... They have three months. Till January. So, now is the time to really, and I don't know who is doing what. But this is the time that people like you should be deputed to go and put these things on the table. We must reach out to the people of the United States to the new dispensation right wing nationalist dispensation. Which are natural allies, I feel. We are at the right wing nationalist revival, so has the United States. So, I think, there is a normal natural synergy between the two democratic entities. At least common enemies. At least, you see, what united you always. It is always said we share liberty, fraternity, equality and shared ideals, but I am afraid we were still at log ahead. We were on the wrong sides on the cold war, you know. But when you have common enemies rather than common ideals, the bonding is far stronger. And he has talked about enemies, keep talking about China and Islam. It is precisely what threatens us. Correct. It is precisely what threatens us. You know, for a very long time the Chinese and the Pakistanis have used the Americans as a cash cow. The Chinese have a 366 billion dollar trade surplus. They have taken away 5 million manufacturing jobs of the United States. And Trump doesn't like it one bit. And we hope, if he goes by his election time rhetoric that he will do something to change this. That he will possible impose penal tariffs on the Chinese goods and import of Chinese. hit the Chinese economy when its already reeling. If that happens, I think, it will do the world a lot of good. Because we have an over aggressive, over assertive china., which says it is above international laws. You know, this is precisely what had happened to the league of nations. You know, they had ignored it with contempt. The Germany and Italy and Japan, the rising powers of that time, had ignored the league of nations with contempt. That is precisely what China is doing today in South China sea. Tomorrow it will do it to us. If you don't wake up in time. They might, we might, you see. One scenario is Chinese tanks and all, another scenario is they will fund and weaponize Pakistan to do the dirty work. That is precisely what they are saying. They will use because they need money, they have enough militants in Pakistan, they keep funding them and keep giving them technology, weapons and use Pakistan as a hit squat. Pakistan has a rabid disease of extremism. You know. Islamic fundamentalism too gone beyond the point of tip, the tipping point. I mean, it is become a rabid country. And China is very happy playing that rabid country against us as its trump card. So, we need Donald trump now to tackle this card. And because Donald Trump said in unequivocal terms during his election, he called Pakistan the most dangerous country in this world. And he said the solution to this country, the problem that it poses to the rest of the world, lies with the Indians. Right. So, we are very sure, we must take him up. We must take him up on this analysis of the... This is where you need military thinking rather than that old fashioned, old school diplomats. And absolutely because. You see, like I said, 70% of the American Presidents have been former military, their secretaries of defence, their secretaries of states have been former military men. All that top corporation Boeing, Lockweed, people migrate from the military and go to there so. Top people were there from military. Westpoint is where they graduate people, work in the military, they feel military training gives them some really good credentials, leadership qualities and they become Fortune 500 chiefs. They are a pool of leadership available to the nation. in this country they are treated as they are only good for security guard duties. Right, right. And that is why you have been trying to, you know, absolutely marginalize the military from strategic thinking, strategic planning, to your own discomfiture. And only when a war takes place is the military called centre stage. So, I think it’s about... but things are changing. The good news is that things are now seriously on the meant... One of the very important on Indian narrative that has to change is very strong military. Much stronger of money, dosage, of weapons, whatever it takes to make the military strong. And indigenization of the weaponry. In the next ten years India is going to spend something like 250 billion dollars on modernizing its military. If we can speed that process up, you know, we get the best of the east and the west. The Russians are prepared to sell us their cutting edge technology. They sell us nuclear submarines or the lease to us nuclear submarines, they are prepared to give us state of the art fifth generation fighters, as for 100 triumph missiles. The Americans sell us the C - 17, they are prepared to give us the F - 16 and whatever technology that we want. the French sell us the Raphael. And therefore, we get the best of the east and the west. And we definitely have a technological edge right now over the Chinese which we need to deepen to an extent that the Sino-Pakistan nexus, the Sino-Pakistan threat can be countered. And we can take decisive action. We need allies like Japan for instance. Japan has a similar enemy. Japan has the same threat of China. Korea has the same threat of China. So, there are people on the ... We think so much alike. I am amazed. Actually China's neighbours are all, it’s got very, all the neighbours are anti-China. In the trump dispensation has also given a warning signal to its old allies in Europe and Japan and South Korea, that they will have to do more to defend themselves. He has even told the Japanese and the South Koreans to create their own nuclear deterrence. They don't count on us. In such a scenario, In such a scenario, which has the Japanese so clearly worried. One of the first foreign leaders to rush to United States has been Shinzo Abe of Japan. He has already met Donald trump. He has hit the drum running. He has already met Donald trump. So, the fact is, this scenario makes it even more imperative. For an Asian balance of power to be created against China. An Asian balance of power in terms of Japan, India, Vietnam, South Korea, possible, if there is some more stiffening of the spine in the Philippines. And Singapore and other countries. But we need to create an Asian style Nato to balance the power of rising China because no single country, less possibly India can hope to balance China all by itself. We need to spread the Chinese military resources all along the great arc of Asia. we cannot allow them to be focused against any one... This kind of military alliance is very important. And I hope some people are looking at that. We definitely are looking and we are already very much in a way towards a very special strategic relationship with the Japanese, with the Vietnamese. The magazine that I edit, incidentally, Indian Military Review, monthly magazine, has one senior research fellow from Japan, one senior research fellow from Vietnam, one senior research fellow from South Korea. Excellent! You know, so, we are already on that. Not only at the government to government level, but people to people contact. And there are historical ties. Koreans tell me that this whole division between North and South Korea is sort of East West Germany. And it's kept alive by China because if the Koreans unified, it would be a threat to China. It would be a major power on China's door. Major power right there. So, this again we have to play. This kind of a thing. This is precisely what it would be. And, you know, because China must understand. It cannot arm Pakistan. China, the entire Pakistani nuclear weapon program has got a made in China stamp. China gave to Pakistan the blueprint of the nuclear bomb. It gave to Pakistan uranium for the first four bombs. It tested the first Pakistani bomb in Lofnaur in Xinjiang. Then it gave to them M 9 and M 11 missiles. And when the Americans imposed sanctions, they put A Q Khan in touch with North Koreans and they paid for the Pakistani purchase of the Nodong and typodong long range missiles. No other country in the world, repeat, no other country in the world, Rajiv, has done so much to nuclear arm a proliferate another country than China with Pakistan. The united States hasn't done it with Great Britain. Great Britain had to do its own heavy lifting as far as its nuclear program was concerned. Even Israel developed their own. Israel had to develop its own. This is the only case of somebody deliberately arming a nation state. So, Pakistan is sort of sold out like a prostitute to China. And they do whatever it takes. They have rented themselves out. They have no narrative of history of their own because they don't want to admit that they are Indians, who got Islamized. They don't want to do that. They disown their origins. They will disown their origins because then the question would be why you are disobeying, why you are betraying your own heritage. that kind of thing. Nor can they claim they are from the Middle east because the Arabs don't think they are equal. Arabs think, you are Muslim but you are not equal. Araf and Ashraf, Ashraf are the high born and these Arafs they are low born. Yes, they are the low born. You know, who tried identified themselves. I had a big fight recently with the Pakistani Muslim in the Indian circle. Where, who said we don't have a caste system in Islam as you have in Hinduism. And I gave a long lecture. It's very interesting that all my friends who are Hindu Indians, very nervous you know, what he is saying. So, I had to give them lot of evidence, lot of stuff to convince our own people that actually Pakistan and Islam have very deep caste system. They have this complex that they are not Arabs. They try to Arabize, this whole language business. They want to the Turkish, Persian and Arabs are considered superior to the people of the Indian sub-continent. And this business of Pakistanis have been proving itself to the Islamic world that they are nuclear therefore, they bring something to the table and therefore they have a right to be considered with respect. With the Ashraf. To be countered as the Ashraf. we are bringing something to the table, nuclear power of the Ashraf. So, they have deep complexes and people of that kind can be very dangerous. They are up for sale. So, China can easily buy them and use them. I mean it would not be a big deal for China to sort of cut some deal where Pakistan does the fighting. You see, the Pakistanis have almost slapped the United States in the face. You know, they were anticipating that just like the last time around they would be dumped like used condom. After the Americans had finished with their major fighting, heavy lifting in the Afghan war. What has happened is that the Pakistanis have now tried to dump the Americans, they have tried to tell the Americans you are a has been power, that they have written the Americans off. I would think prematurely. Yes. I would think rather prematurely. Right And they will have to pay a price for it. They have gone totally into the Chinese camp, in the new emerging power scenario the kind of a bipolar equation that you are seeing Which China is trying to create between itself and the United States. Pakistan has become a camp follower and an ally. It has dumped United States contemptuously after ripping it off 31 billion dollars. And keeping Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad 800 metres from the Pakistan military academy Kakul. And when he was discovered and shot and killed by the American seal, they had the chutzpah to say but we never knew he was here. I mean this is the way this country lies through its teeth, tries to hoodwink the world. And I am amazed that the Americans have let them take it for a ride for so long. 3000 American soldiers Rajiv, have been killed because of the proxy sent in by Pakistan. They have killed 3000 American soldiers. The blood of 3000 American soldiers is on their hands. The United States knows it. Till recently they were keeping quiet because of those compulsions. May I tell the Pakistanis those compulsions are over. We understand. And I think Donald Trump got it absolutely right when he said the way to sort out Pakistan is to let the Indians loose. I hope he lives up...not let the Indians loose but...on Pakistan...turn them loose...turn them loose on Pakistan, you know. This country has been suffering patiently for 30 years. And the soul here is crying out for catharsis. And that's what I have been telling the government that the country needs a catharsis. I mean the people are so fed up that they say to hell with the nuclear war even has to come to that. The country is looking for the Mahabharat. I would like to see you in a position where some of these ideas are moved forward. I really would like to see that. And I want to thank you for the wonderful...Thank you, Rajiv... you know, it's always a pleasure talk to you. I mean we talked privately so many times, you know, for many many years. And I just wanted my followers on Facebook and other places to get the benefit of, most of them know you. You are a famous person and we all admire you. We admire your courage, your honesty, your integrity to just say it like it is. Thank you. I am deeply honoured. I am deeply honoured that you considered me worthy of this exchange of views. I found it so refreshing. And we will do more. And we will do more because there are synergies that I didn't know existed because generally the military mind thinks so differently from the civilian mind. But I am so so delighted to see that we are in synchrony on most of the things that threaten our nation, within and without. Thank you very much sir.
