Farewell Jaswant Singh Ji

Farewell Shri. Jaswant Singh, former Foreign minister of India 🙏🏽 🙏🏽 🙏🏽 His sad demise after being comatose for 6 long years is a great loss to India. He was a gentleman soldier, a suave diplomat and a supreme patriot. I recall his visit to the USA in the aftermath of India’s nuclear tests in May, 1998. As a young graduate student, I was very excited by the “Shakti” tests and literally had tears of pride reading the news that day. The Clinton administration had imposed sanctions on India and was menacingly ordering to “cap, rollback and eliminate” India’s nuclear deterrent. When the sanctions did not work, an effort was made to engage India and Jaswant Singh was visiting America in that backdrop. I was particularly inspired by an interview of his on prime time American TV during that visit - I believe it was with Judy Woodruff on ABC News. Loved how he stressed the right words and phrases in his sentences for emphasis. Much time has elapsed since then.. and I remember just 3-4 sentences from that interview. Judy: “There’s a perception in the West that India is becoming increasingly hegemonist and plays big brother to its neighbors.” Jaswant Singh: “India does not, *necessarily* have to agree with that perception.” That assertion of fierce, yet diplomatically stated independence coming from a pagan Hindoo Indian instantly angered the interviewer. She was furious and it was quite visible on her face. Yet, being a thoroughly professional media personality, she controlled her rage and shrewishly asked her next question summoning all her feminine charm. Judy: “Isn’t it true that India looks at China, even more than Pack-istaan with some trepidation?” Jaswant: “India does not look, at *anybody* with trepidation.” That last assertion blew away the interviewer’s mask of composure and impartiality and her bias fueled by Abrahamic rage was out in the open. Shri. Jaswant Singh handled the raging White TV interviewer with a great deal of charm and diplomacy - that warmed my heart and left a lasting impression - particularly regarding the value of subtlety and soft spoken ness. Tribute to Shri. Jaswant Singh Ji by Bharat Karnad, one of India’s foremost strategic thinkers. https://bharatkarnad.com/2020/09/27/jaswant-singh-rip/ Footnote: I’ve been reading Mr. Bharat Karnad’s brilliant strategic analyses since 1998-99 and highly respect his opinion, that resonates with my own regarding China, thermonuclear weapon testing, India’s inadequate deterrent etc. Although this is not the occasion for it, I feel compelled to state that, in my perception at least - Mr. Karnad himself has drifted a bit from India’s Hindu civilizational ethos or was never quite genuinely rooted in it. Following are a few things I’ve discerned over the years: He has a blind spot regarding Pakistan; fails to recognize it as the eternal civilizational enemy that it is and instead longs for some utopia of Pakistan as a friendly buffer state with the Islamic world and India as its security guarantor! I understand that this was a British construct advanced at partition that Nehru eagerly subscribed to! Mr. Karnad apparently subscribes to this thesis too - the small matter of the Pakistani genocide, rape, forcible conversion and religious cleansing of several million Hindus and Sikhs notwithstanding! Mr. Karnad wants the Indian Army to dismantle armoured strike corps that are focused on Pakistan to assuage Pakistan’s mortal fear of being cut in half by an Indian armoured thrust and GOI to dole out billions of dollars in economic aid to Pakistan as a sign of goodwill! Mr. Karnad also has an unfounded obsession with the HF-24 Marut, a fighter aircraft that was built in India in the 1960’s and designed by Kurt Tank, a German aircraft designer who was brought to India at Nehru’s initiative - as the pinnacle of Nehruvian strategic achievement, whereas in reality, the HF-24 Marut did not perform well and was shot out of the sky by the Pakistani Air Force during the 1965 war! As a logical corollary, Mr. Karnad has a certain adulation for Nehru bordering on blind hero worship. Mr. Karnad recently wrote that he consumed beef steak while visiting the West for some conference. This is the antithesis of the Hindu ethos and would be considered abhorrent by the vast majority of Indians. Why deliberately advertise one’s personal culinary preferences when writing about national security? Regretfully, Mr. Bharat Karnad is one of India’s foremost strategic thinkers - whom I read regularly without fail! Shri. Jaswant Singh Ji was known to be one of the “moderate”, “modern”, English speaking faces of the BJP that was driven to power by Hindutva. Yet, why insist on saying “RIP” to a deceased Hindu who was in fact more rooted in Hindutva? Hindus DO NOT “Rest In Peace”. That is an Abrahamic thing! When constrained by the English language, one can always say “May he attain Peace”.