Indivisible with USA, and PM Modi as UNSC President

“At the Stroke of the Midnight Hour…”

Pandit Nehru spoke of ancient India being born again on August 15, 1947 and promised a “tryst with destiny.” The unanswered question for Nehru and India, as for any individual or nation, is always: what’s my destiny. For decades India asserted its non-aligned stance and became its leader, while becoming “inseparable” from the USSR during the Cold War. Not until PM Modi took charge of the Indian Republic did the age-old Greek wisdom of “order is beauty, and beauty is order” get real traction in India (even as the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi never did).

Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi flirted with America’s Charmer, Ronald Reagan.

While Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi flirted with the United States during POTUS Reagan’s tenure, no small feat since it was after Indira and India had been subjected to Richard Nixon’s one of two structural flaws, love and hate, in his dealings with China and India, respectively, and as to India, he was profane, naturally ignoble, while engaging in wholesale denigration of the largest democracy – and there I was, as member of Speaker Tip O’Neill’s Speaker’s Club and a then-member of National Advisory Council on South Asian Affairs, along with our ambassador to Delhi, Harry Barnes, at the South Portico of Congress to receive then-Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao while PM Rajiv Gandhi came to address a Joint Session of Congress – it is not until PM Narendra Modi, who in his joint address to Congress on June 9, 2016, which Ranju and I joyously attended, did India declare that her destiny was “Indivisible” for both, her and us.

July 4, 1776 is August 15, 1947, Anew; the American Dream, is the Indian Dream.

No sweeter declaration has been uttered – save the one penned by the late great Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1776, memorializing that Government is answerable to the Citizenry – as indivisibility means the “oldest” and “largest” democracies are going to rock & roll together!

Vedic & Western Values Honor Transparency vs Sun Tzu’s Recipe of “Deception” to Win.

So, thank you Pandit Nehru – whose lap I sat in as a 5-year-old kid thanks to my late great Dad, Hon. S.N. Batra – for India’s “tryst with destiny”; and, thanks to PM Modi, it has resulted in an awesome combination of ancient Vedic wisdom and core Western Values of a Government “of, by and for” the people. Both the Vedic and Western Values honor and cherish “transparency” to deliver Freedoms to the individual. Contrasted with the un-matched wisdom of general Sun Tzu, the foundational military genius of great Chinese empires and dynasties through the millennia: “deception,” as in basis for winning.

The Quad in the South China Sea to Maintain UNCLOS’ Goal of Maritime Security.

Hence, it is in the natural turn of events that India is a critical part of The Quad, and since Freedom of Navigation on the high seas is a high priority in perpetuity – especially in the South China Seas where China’s wistful 9-Dashes, imposed by psychedelic domination in violation of UNCLOS and EEZ, irritate (and sometimes kill) – PM Modi on August 9th served as President of the UNSC to enhance global peace and security, by seeking to enhance maritime security. While Pakistan is an eternal and honest ally of the People’s Republic of China since her birth in 1947, thanks to Chairman Mao’s century long-vision, and party to the secret bilateral 1949 Karachi Agreement to start creating China’s Golan Heights, it was impressive to me as an un-conflicted American that the only UNSC “P5”  head of state to attend Modi’s Security Council historic participation was Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

India Aids US, Europe and Democracy by Bringing Russia to Our Side vs Wolf Warriors.

In time, we in the United States will see this durable Russia-India relationship to be our operative asset, to solve many an insolvable dispute of territorial integrity of sovereign states in Europe and Middle East, let alone the primary issue now facing us all: how to keep the world free from becoming a collection of vassal states of an un-elected dominating nation, that likes sinking fishing boats of neighboring states, and has repudiated her own core wisdom, from her statecraft-master Confucius, “may you live in boring times” by weaponizing not just SARS-Cov2 viruses, with un-natural gain-of-function that threaten the ecosystem more than Climate Crisis does our survival, but even abandoning diplomatic protocols in favor of Wolf Warrior-commando’s: diplomat-Wolf Warriors in mortal combat. One recent appreciable change has taken place – that reflects President Xi’s appreciation that general Sun TZU violates the wisdom of Confucius – China’s new ambassador Qin Gang since his arrival on American soil has reverted to warm diplomacy, and rejected the prior Wolf Warrior mandate, visible in Anchorage and Wendy Sherman’s recent visit to Beijing, as it stunningly violates the wisdom of both general Sun Tzu and Confucius. I hope this change is real, and not merely deceptively warm and fuzzy in honor of the greatest Chinese General.

Even Benjamin Franklin wishes India Happy 75th Independence Day.

Ben Franklin in 1787 famously answered a lady after having achieved our hallowed Constitution, “It’s a republic madam, if you can keep it.” Thanks to India’s PM Modi’s Washington Declaration of “Indivisibility,” the largest democracy will help the oldest democracy to stay one, and hence, Ben Franklin wishes India “Happy 75th!” Indeed, all of us – Democrats and Republicans, President Biden and former President Trump – wish India well, with peace and security for all her citizens. The land of Mahatma Gandhi deserves no less.

(The author is an eminent attorney. He can be reached at ravi@ravibatralaw.com)

Twitter @RaviBatra