It has recently come to my notice that our great country, India, is a sovereign nation. I was surprised at this revelation. I always thought we were an open nation for anyone to come in and chill out and leave if and when they wished to do so. I didn't know that foreigners couldn't just stroll into our borders and kill people and claim our territory as their own and basically try to intimidate this great giant of South-East Asia.
Well these false notions of mine must have been generated due to what the successive governments of this country have been portraying to its people and the world for the longest possible time I remember. This country seems to do nothing at all when its neighbours deliberately try to provoke it. This country not only refuses to retaliate, but also stubbornly seems reluctant to even defend itself.
Our Westernneighbour constantly keeps sending terrorists into India to blow up people and places and lots of other things but we behave like all is well and invite their politicians to hang out in Delhi. We even agree to start peace-talks over and over again because they manage to break the cease-fire every now and then.
Just some trigger-happy buffoons, eh?
Then there are our Easternneighbours who ‘unintentionally’ just wander into Indian territory and settle down in our eastern states .These people are also known as aliens because they have no right whatsoever to settle in another country without permission from two respective governments first. But since we believe in the phrase, “Atithi Devo Bhava” (Guests are God), we let them stay in our big beautiful land of opportunity.
Population problem? No problem!
Our very friendly Southernneighbours can’t be forgotten. Just because they have an unmitigated prejudice towards some of our countrymen, they cannot be deemed bad, right? Yeah, they treat human rights like toilet paper and consider the sea corridor between our nations to be their own personal waterway but so what? They can be allowed certain indulgences for being stuck on a small piece of land next to our humungous country. So we keep quiet about their tantrums and just because they are too tiny to bother about, we pucker up the courage to condemn them in the United Nations.
Wow! We did that? Sweet!
Last, but not the least, let us take a look at our Northern frontiers. The land-where-everything-is-made has apparently run out of space to build more factories and they need a little territory from us it seems. And well, they’re not asking for it, they’re just claiming it to be their own. And we just stand and stare and send our minister for defence to have a little peace talk. Wait! Where have I heard that before?
Hey, you want some land? Ask the Gujarat chief minister, he’s giving out land for free anyway.
Now I know that we cannot afford to antagonize all our neighbours because we certainly aren't ready for war but can we not do a little more than lodging letters of protest or holding futile ‘peace-talks’? Then there is the argument that we will be called perpetrators of war in the UN but I think that the time for making excuses has passed and we need to do something to protect the interests of this nation.
For how long are we going to stand by and watch while Pakistan wrecks havoc within our nation?
For how long are we going to tolerate Bangladeshi nationals residing illegally in our states?
For how long are we going to be pressurized by Sri Lanka, an island country the size of a peanut?
For how long are we going to keep watching while China claims that the northern half of our country is their backyard?
… And they say that India is a Superpower.