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India, Islands and an Ocean



The Maldivian political crisis is a suitable reminder of how difficult it is to run a sphere of influence. This archipelago nation should be a snap for New Delhi. The Maldivian elite is united on this one point — they may be fighting among themselves but there is little space between them when it comes to India. Its official foreign policy is India First. It’s a small country and incapable of defending itself interest. There are fringe elements of extremism but they are peripheral to the Maldivian mainstream. It is the perfect place for India to test its abilities in social development and nation-guiding.

And it is proving just a bit harder than expected. Evolution is not a beach party.

India has sought to bring stability to the Maldives by introducing democracy and ensuring no one else interferes in its internal affairs. But democracy is more than just about holding elections. It is also about developing norms, like the concept of a loyal opposition or an independent judiciary, which often take many years to develop and find social acceptance.

Hence New Delhi’s gentle interventions over the past few years to get the recently deposed president, Mohammed Nasheed, to try and build a stable parliamentary majority and more recently urge try and form a national unity government and, when that failed, persaude the new regime in Male not to arrest Nasheed.

India doesn’t have too much to worry about when it comes to Chinese or Pakistani influence but it does have some concerns about Islamicist influences gainijg traction when the mainstream polity is at war with itself.

The real stakes in the Maldives for India is showing that it can manage a friendly nation on its periphery when the latter is having problems. And, in a slightly broader context, whether it can manage a strategic policy one of whose elements have come unstuck.

The Maldives is a pillar of India’s oceanic policy. Securing the Indian Ocean requires, among other things, India having a strong say in Male as the maritime territorial claims of the island state covers a huge sprawl of Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Madagascar.

See

Last year, the Maldives had requested that India and Sri Lanka join them in creating a new maritime security structure for the mid-ocean area. As one senior Indian official had noted earlier this year, “We are working on proposals together and hope that our three countries will form the core of what may emerge on maritime security.”

It was also on signing a framework agreememt to allow them to be the latest South Asian country to tie themselves to the Indian economy.

Male in otherwords has been a cakewalk for India to win influence. But it is a test for India to also play therapist, financier. Military guarantor and political mentor to a country vital to its national interests.

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Posted by Pramit Pal Chaudhuri on Friday, February 10, 2012 at 1:27 am 
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  • Anonymous

    Whoa…goin by ur description, brunch cover-page z surely gonna b a treat i guess!! N abt e-reader, i 2 feel d same….its no substitute for an actual book.. i enjoy putin my sign on d first page of each buk tat i buy ;) … N ya Advanced Happy Diwali!!!

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  • Anonymous

    zia my mate CALM DOWN , not so fast yeh, Holy Maccaroni , only a semblance of election in arab world and zia is already blowing the trumpet of Second Islamic Renaissance.The word renaissance means NEW LEARNING. That new learning in case of Islam ought to be, that ALL THAT IS WRITTEN IN QUORAN IS MOSTLY HOCUS POCUS , HADITH IS A MISOGYNIST VILE DOCUMENT BASED ON HEARSAY.
    THE NEW LEARNING SHOULD BE “HUMAN BEINGS ARE AT THE CENTRE OF ALL DISCOURSE AND NOT ISLAM OR ALLAH” as was the case in the TRUE RENAISSANCE

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    Anonymous Reply:
    December 19th, 2011 at 3:23 am

    Shan,
    Bang on target..I in fact see Arab world going back in 7th century where non-muslims will be hounded out by Islamists. There have been numerous attacks on christians in Egypt post so called Islamic renaissance.

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    Sibghat Khan2 Reply:
    December 19th, 2011 at 5:52 am

    This is not the renaissance of Christian who started crusade against Islam and Muslims all over the world and grabbed their nations ,continuously fought for two hundred years ,brutally killed looted their propirty. Islam taught to their Militia not to cut trees which bears fruits , not to kill old, disable ,infants and to those who does not wish to fight with you .Not to destroy worship places,that is why you will find Christian and Jews living peacefully in almost all the Midle East countries .All these three religion are monotheist and are branches of Ibrahimi religion who forbade to worship none except one God .A muslim is allowed to marry with Christian and Jewish girl . If you turn the pages of ancient history of India then you learn how Budhas Monestary were destroyed and entire population was chased away to other neighboring countries .Auregzeb has been called anti Hindu but he could not convert any but Sufi Hazrat chisti of Ajmer is revered by Hindus also . The Salook , common table and brotherhood brought lower strata Hindus in thousand in the fold of Islam .

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    Anonymous Reply:
    December 19th, 2011 at 7:59 am

    Dear Sibghat Khan,
    can you enlighten us Why there is no Christian and Jew in Arabian Peninsula, It was full of them at the time of Mohammed.All other Arab areas outside Arabian Penisula were populated entirely by Christians and Jews . There are some very small no. of them who have somehow survived.Mohammed had exhorted to his followers to clear whole Arab Peninsula of Jews and Christians, and they did it very faithfully.

    Destroying of places of worship started with Mohammed himself. Was Mecca muslim worship place?.Mohammed could have built another place of worship for himself.

    Please also enlighten us with reference where it is mentioned that Hindus destroyed Buddhist monasteries and chased away Buddhist people.No Buddhist has ever complained on this.
    Can you find any Hindu,Jain and Buddhist places of worship which is more than 400 years old (period upto which Muslims were in full power in above areas)from Afghanistan to Bengal, from Kashmir to Vindhyas.Any temple which would have survived would be either because of remote location or because of being very small/insignificant .
    You are totally brainwashed with this deranged cult philosphy which is called Islam.

    engrich Reply:
    December 23rd, 2011 at 9:13 pm

    can you enlighten us Why there is no Christian and Jew in Arabian Peninsula

    THERE ARE 1.5 CRORES CHRISTIANS IN ARAB WORLD.

    engrich Reply:
    December 23rd, 2011 at 9:15 pm

    Destroying of places of worship started with Mohammed himself

    PLACES OF WORSHIP ARE DESTROYED BY BRHMNS.NOT BY MUSLIMS.mecca is same so jerusalam.jews are destroying this.

    engrich Reply:
    December 23rd, 2011 at 9:18 pm

    Please also enlighten us with reference where it is mentioned that Hindus destroyed Buddhist monasteries and chased away Buddhist people.No Buddhist has ever complained on this

    aloke prayag kashi mathura and ayodhya were buhdhdist places of worship.brhmns never builted nything
    they decimated and exterminated budhhdists and jainese nd occupied their places of worship.

    Anonymous Reply:
    December 19th, 2011 at 9:00 am

    iGNORANCE IS THE HALLMARK OF MUSLIMS, and this geezer Khan is a living proof. Renaissance is only 500 yrs old , Crusade took place 1000 yrs ago BECAUSE MUSLIMS HAD OCCUPIED THE HOLY LAND THAT IS JERUSALEM.
    As for Muslim kindness , DOES THE NAME TAIMUR LUNG RING A BELL. How even a MULLAH TOOK PART IN SLAUGHTERING 100000 HINDUS IN DELHI.

    iSLAM IS GETTING ITS JUST DESERT FOR ALL THE SINS OF THE PAST CENTURIES

    engrich Reply:
    December 22nd, 2011 at 12:02 pm

    How even a MULLAH TOOK PART IN SLAUGHTERING 100000 HINDUS IN DELHI

    rubbish and shows ur ignorance about the subject.taimur killed most of the inhabitants of delhi which consisted mainly of muslims.

    engrich Reply:
    December 22nd, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    taimur was godless athiest though born in muslim family and hafiz quran.he conquered 68 countries in his life.he was great man.

    engrich Reply:
    December 22nd, 2011 at 12:13 pm

    THE NEW LEARNING SHOULD BE “HUMAN BEINGS ARE AT THE CENTRE OF ALL DISCOURSE AND NOT ISLAM OR ALLAH” as was the case in the TRUE RENAISSANCE

    rubbish billions were murdered after rennainance.not before.islam is based on highly moral principle.forgiveness is the supreme virtue of islam..during christaian rule in europe and america ,no other religion could survive ,while best church in europe and best temples in india were built under rule.

    most cruel and brutal wars in india took place durig vedic rule described i ramanaya geeta other holy scripture.entire orrisa was butchered by ashok before arrival of muslims.budhdhists and jainese were decmated and assimilated 2000 years before arrival of muslims.

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  • Abu Ahmed

    Yeah, that’s a historical victory, if for nothing else, at least for the process it took the ultras to understand that there is no way to turn the wheel backwards and go back in time. The tragedy is that it took so long for them to understand the meaning of tolerance that Islam itself preaches.

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  • Kumars1

    Zia mian, steady on. It is early days yet. The jury’s still out. Time will only tell. At best one can say a small step has been made. Saudi is the biggest roadblock.

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  • RajX

    Have people noticed how effortlessly Zia has turned the Arab spring which is a fight for political and ecconomic freedom into some redemption of Islam. I wonder what the christian Copts who formed a significant part of the Egyptian leaders of the protest would think of that?
    It appears that the seculars who actually lead the revolution and took the hit for it have been shoved aside by the people themselves who have preferred the Islamists to the seculars in the elections held so far n Tunisia and Egypt. That tells a lot about the mindset of these people who have lived in these types of societies where a lot religious brainwashing starts on every single one of them from a young age when they are not in a position to contradict anything which is being put in their mind.

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  • RajX

    “All the Islamist parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood, have demonstrated a strong will to reconcile Islam and modernity – a much delayed project.”

    The hypocrisy of Zia and his ilk are predictable. Promoting Islamist groups in Islamic countries where minority nonmuslims are persecuted while singing secularism and doing their atmost to destroy and arabize local culture when islamists are in the minority. It’s a sign of the times that HT has such a person writing for them. Will Zia will have such opinions as in the statement above if RSS decides to contest elections directly? Hahahaha..I don’t think so.

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  • engrich

    A US arms control expert has made the astonishing claim that Pakistan’s notorious nuclear engineer AQ Khan may have proliferated nuclear technology to India.

    The source of the article is as surprising as the assertion is fantastic. In a commentary in the adults magazine Playboy, Joshua Pollack, a US policy wonk who has done work on nuclear proliferation, says India may have been the secret, unnamed “fourth country” — after Iran, Libya and North Korea — to which AQ Khan “provided the shortcut to a nuclear weapon.”

    Pollack offers little credible evidence to back the contention, other than to point similarities between the centrifuges India uses in its uranium-enrichment program and Pakistan’s own centrifuges engineered by Khan. He also cites South African court documents claiming that a member of the so-called “Khan network” supplied India’s centrifuge program with specialized equipment (mainly flow meters), starting in the late 1980s.

    According to Pollack, although India went nuclear several years before Pakistan, it was done through the plutonium route (in 1972). But New Delhi’s ability to enrich uranium remained limited, and it was not until 1986 — by which time Pakistan had been churning out weapons-grade uranium for three years — that India was ready to break ground on its uranium-enrichment facility.

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  • engrich

    how to desroy and enslave a country,

    Bring false Accusations against Government
    Phase 2) Bomb country to rubble
    Phase 3) Install your own Government
    Phase 4) Loan the money for the “rebuilding” contract
    Phase 5) Win all the contracts
    Phase 6) Heavily in debt the country
    Phase 7) Impose SAP’s through the IMF
    Phase 8) Buy all national assets for pennies
    Phase 9) Send foreign “AID”
    Phase 10) Demand foreign “AID” procure only western products
    Phase 11) Convince the world the country failed because the people are uncivilized.

    anna is on stage.which takes some time other steps.other steps are bit faster.rss is sleeping cell of international zoinism.were caught at 53 places taking training with live ammunitions..after parliament session anytime game will start.

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