India has won, Bharat ki Vijay!

I don’t really believe in luck. But I like to party when I have a chance. And… well.. it seems that the 3rd anniversary of the 2014 Election results has come bearing gifts for the nation. The other day I wrote about the triple bonanza on May 16 : what with raids on Chidambaram and Lalu followed by the announcement that CRPF had sent 20 Naxals to whatever version of jannat that Commies subscribe to…

Now, this is even more real. What a crushing humiliation for Pakistan in front of the whole world! Of course there were some glum faces in Lutyens Delhi.

These allegedly Indian outlets are going through denial, which is, classically the first stage of grief. But if you want to have fun, go watch Pakistani media.

They know how badly they lost despite anything that The “Indian” Express might say. They have not been defeated as much as they have been shamed on an international forum.

You guys should have seen Mani Shankar Aiyar’s face on NDTV yesterday. He looked like a man who had just lost his entire life’s savings. Somebody in the NDTV studio, possibly a retired Army man called Pakistan a barbaric state. At this Mani Shankar Aiyar winced as if he was in physical pain. Technically his point was that we need to be somewhat nice to Pakistan right now because they have our man… but it was easy to see where his real sense of hurt was coming from…

There is a lot of credit to go around. There’s Harish Salve, the man of the moment. The fact that he won his case for Re 1 appears to have become a buzz in Pakistan. From what I am hearing, the cartoonish loser from the Pakistani side charged their government something of the order of Rs 5 lakh to embarrass their country internationally 🙂

Sweet 🙂

Pakistan has not been walloped like this in a long time.

I know that it’s a long road to freeing Kulbhushan Jadhav (honestly, we don’t even know if he is alive), but sometimes it is good just to make merry.

What is particularly special is to see the Indian government move mountains to save the life of an Indian citizen.

The one key difference that I have observed between India and developed Western countries is that we generally do not value the lives our citizens that much. The Sukma attack was exceptional in that we talked about it for a whole week, perhaps because the death toll had crossed 20. Typically, Maoists can kill a dozen or so jawans and it will barely get reported. We don’t value the lives of our own.

But yesterday was different. We showed the world that we will go to any length to save a citizen. That India does not give up on its own.

Modi’s strategy of going to the ICJ is fraught with risks. On the ICJ floor, we basically disavowed bilateral treaties with Pakistan over treatment of prisoners and demanded that everything be done as per the Vienna convention. Certainly this makes our position vulnerable in the sense that Pakistan could now demand international meddling in Kashmir.

As you can see, this opportunity for Pakistan did not go unnoticed in the tweets of ringleader Shekhar Gupta:

Fine success #ICJ reprieve for #KulbhushanYadav Shows international laws work. Lesson also to warriors spoiling to dump Indus Waters Treaty

— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) May 18, 2017

But so what? We took a risk. And we took it for good reason. Because we wanted to save one of our own.

We have shown the world that we will deal with our rogue neighbor on a “case by case basis”. Last year, they attacked us in Uri. We replied with surgical strikes. Now, we have gone to the ICJ. We will use whatever means is necessary at that moment without thinking very much about future implications.

For a very long time, Pakistan essentially always had the upper hand. Because India was always too predictable in its response. That’s why Pakistan never had to worry about pushing us.

Well we have a new Modi doctrine now  and it’s called “By any means necessary“.

Pakistan can no longer anticipate our response. They don’t know how far we could go. They don’t know what is in Modi’s mind. The next time we just might decide to go bomb Lahore.

So, I am not going to sweat over the “internationalization” of what India’s foreign policy establishment has always treated as “bilateral issue” as a matter of faith.

Confident nations are flexible in such matters. From now onwards, when it suits us, we’ll treat Indo-Pak disputes as a bilateral issue. When it suits us, we’ll treat it as an international issue. Isn’t that what big powers do? They use international law when it suits them and say a big “F*ck you” to international law when it doesn’t suit them. And it’s about time we started thinking big.