I often hear people saying that India is a soft state. True! Now Brahma Chellaney says that India is a lamb state. Doubly true!! I am a great admirer of vajpayee but could not disagree with Chellaney’s description of Vajpayee as far as our foreign policy is concerned. The exact passage reads:

“Vajpayee’s foreign policy was in reality an updated,post-Cold War version of Nehruvian diplomacy.
Nehru and Vajpayee mistook casuistry and word gamesfor statecraft, with the latter addicted to parsingand spinning his words. Both valued speech as asubstitute for action or camouflage to concession. Vajpayee’s fascination with telling the world about the ‘greatness’ of Indian culture was his rendering of Nehru’s moralistic lectures to the mighty and powerful. Like Nehru, he was so enthralled by his own illusions and desire for international goodwill that he could not deal with ill -will from India’s implacable adversaries. Even in war, Vajpayee declined– unlike Lal Bahadur Shastri — to take the fightingto the aggressor’s territory, battling the enemy on the enemy’s terms and relying on the United States to midwife a ‘victory’ in Kargil.”

Yes, indeed! even while India was fighting kargil, it decided to give a ‘safe passage’ to the Pakistani soldiers to return to Pak. Not long after, we had an attack on our Parliament and the famous Kandhar air -plane hijack and then attack on Akshardham temple. But yes, we are still running buses and rails to our neighbor country. In between we seem to wake up to the reality and look upto USA to declare Pak a ‘terrorist state’. Why India does not do it first if it is so convinced that Pak has a hand in every problem that we have at our domestic front!! What is preventing us to contain Kashmir and handle the terrorism with a iron hand? Why are we talking to separatist organizations like Hurriyaat and ULFA who are no better than parasites being fed by neighboring countries! What else do we need to call us a lamb state!

This article is a wonderful expression of India’s confused foreign policy since 1947. Here is the link to the article.