What will be lost along with Kashmir [for Indians]? An unreal and bloated sense of self-importance. It has taken Great Britain 60 years to realise it is no longer the centre of an empire. Indian rulers have yet to realise they are no longer in charge of ‘the jewel in the crown.’ Indians are not the leaders of Asia — the Chinese are.
[…] Would not letting Kashmir go give the palm to Pakistan, India’s inveterate enemy? On the contrary, it might catastrophically weaken its real enemy, and the real enemy of the people of Pakistan, and dismantle its offensive structures. The Pakistani people have been held in thrall by a small corrupt military dictatorship, itself a captive of its mafia-style intelligence heads, who in turn are in cahoots with a medieval and benighted tribal terrorist force, which in turn is living on the bounty of drug dealers.
For the last 50 years or so America, for its own Byzantine reasons, has maintained this whole awful structure which oppresses the people of Pakistan and suppresses the development trends that are fast changing the face of Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Iran, and even Iraq till the Americans set the clock back a few decades. Will America discontinue support for this militaristic cabal now that they have experienced the result of their policies in 9/11?
Unlikely, for they are too Micawberish to change course. They will keep hoping that by supporting the Pakistan military, its ISI, and through it the Taliban, while at the same time giving alms to the unhappy Karzai, somehow something will turn up. They are dead wrong as they always have been. Nothing awaits them or India but sorrow.
The Pakistan military has propped up its power over people by rattling the bogey of Indian threat. If Indians end the Kashmir siege unilaterally, the Pakistani military will lose currency with their oppressed people.