I kind of agree with this article but it is also the West who has been hypocrital on this subject. Countries in the West did nothing when the Junta in Burma was massacring Monks and doing very little against the regime. They did not go after their allies in Saudi or Bahrain, but go after Libya...kind of selective and weird. India, on the other hand, did nothing when Uganda kicked out Indians or during the coup in Fiji or in the West Indies or in L.America...India did nothing to protect her diaspora...
A Facebook friend of mine said,"India is really a mouse that feels offended when people don't consider it to be a tiger" - agreed! That is India's problem. India thinks not taking sides and sitting on the fence is the best non-controversial solution. India also has an ismalic terrorism and insurgency issue to deal with and it needs to be careful that al-Qaeda and LET don't make India the number one target! But their actions on Sri lanka, Burma, are impotent, so with Fiji, Guyana...
See below for Dean Nelson's article in The Telegraph.
When Barack Obama visited India last November he lectured his hosts on the responsibilities which come with the world leadership New Delhi craves.
The price of our own freedom is “standing up for others”, he said, mentioning Mahatma Gandhi’s role in challenging apartheid in South Africa as a reminder. When peaceful demonstrators are gunned down the world cannot remain silent, President Obama said.
“If I can be frank, in international fora, India has often avoided these issues. But speaking up for those who cannot do so for themselves is not interfering in the affairs of other countries. It’s not violating the rights of sovereign nations. It’s staying true to our democratic principles,” he told his hosts.
He was speaking about India’s failure to challenge Burma’s military junta over its human rights abuses, but the assessment holds true for India’s criticism of this week’s military action in support of the United Nations resolution to prevent Colonel Gaddafi’s forces attacking civilians.
After American, French and British fighter jets finally struck Libyan forces as they closed in on rebel Benghazi, where a massacre had been feared, India criticised the action and said the air raids would “exacerbate an already difficult situation for the people of Libya.”
Britain and America may be inconsistent defenders of those living under dictatorships around the world. There were no air strikes against China to stop the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, no-one acted to halt the genocide in Rwanda, and the numbers of civilians killed in drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas are enough to ridicule Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
But on Saturday, as Gaddafi’s tanks and fighter planes locked onto their own people in Benghazi, anything but support for intervention would have condemned thousands of Libyans – who want only the same rights Indians have in the world’s “greatest democracy” – to a bloody end.
I didn’t like the tone of Obama’s lecture in New Delhi, and I do support India’s right to permanent membership of the UN Security Council as the home of the world’s second largest population.
But he did have a point about the kind of leadership India would bring: the kind that ducks tough choices and sticks to cobwebbed slogans, that wants the baubles of power but shirks its share of heavy lifting.
India has let Obama know he wasted his breath and reminded its other friends it isn’t quite the kindred spirit they’d hoped.
Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.
Posted by: Rugged Xpress | May 17, 2013 at 06:12 PM