Various emails

Hi,

I read with great interest your article "INDIA'S NATIONAL SECURITY MANAGEMENT (NSM) & CHINA" on http://saag.org/papers6/paper593.html

I thought it was a very well written article and more importantly it made several excellent points regarding India-China security relations. It is not often that one comes across relevant and on point analysis by an Indian living in India, especially one who was a former addl. secretary in the cabinet secretariat and who presumably has access to strategic intelligence and the thinking which fellow gov. workers employ to such matters. It's good to know that Indian gov. leadership at high levels has some insightful people, even though seemingly their recommendations are not being implemented.

I too think that strategically and in the long term China is a bigger threat to India's security than Pakistan. The Chinese are more hardcore and practical in their security process that the Indian leadership realizes and despite recent thaw in relations, I suspect that the ideology and thinking employed at their party headquarters has not changed much. I also read some articles on the Nepal Maoist insurgency, where again your analysis is on point, except you did not mention China's support of the insurgents. Not sure if they do support it, but I feel the Maoist insurgent's unusually good organization and weapon's cache is derived in part from Chinese support/training.

Overall, I found the http://saag.org website to contain a lot of excellent articles and am going through a bunch of them. It seems you and Mr. Chandrasekaran are the main contributors!

FYI, I am an Indian who has been living in the US (DC) for the past 15 years. You could say I am a hybrid best of the Indian-American mentality :)

I noticed that the pics on the article mentioned above were not displaying and the links to the main page, etc. were not working. Since I am in IT/web design, if you need my help, I will be happy to volunteer my time.

Ranjit

Subject: i was going to blast you but then i changed my mind
Body: this is regd. your article in IHT--- Philip Bowring: Arroyo's burst of defiant nationalism http://www.iht.com/articles/530787.html

I was enjoying reading the article until i reached this last paragraph......"The Philippine withdrawal from Iraq is partly an ill-considered burst of gut nationalism, of a sort which occurs periodically in a country which at other times fawns on its former ruler. Resentment coexists with the knowledge that tens of millions want to migrate to the United States, but only a few will succeed."

"fawns on it's former ruler" left a bitter after taste in my mouth and i considered fantasies of this former slave/brown skin kicking your white ass. but, the aggression was short lived and i had to admit that we were ruled by the white empire. Ofcourse, as everybody knows not because they are/were superior human beings but becasue of the disproportionate advancements of different civilizations...but all that crap notwithstanding, it still hurt that we need to fawn, as if there is something inherently damaged in our psyche....and i'm sure white people get a kick out of it also, which is also rationalizable, but still makes me want to kick their ass. secondly, i don't think it's tens of millions who want to migrate. there is just a broad realization/misconception, among the masses of the third world nations, that the US has a better lifestyle. which since i live here, is a pure junk assumption.

the point of this email is that I detect a hint of smug condenscion / "haha i'm better than you" attitude in your last paragraph, towards the same species/genetically similar siblings, from the island of philipines and by proxy the entire asian continent of brown people. Shame on you! Did your Oxford education not teach you anything?

by the way, i'm from india, now settled in DC, usa.

I am somewhat surprised by your comment. As a regular reader of the local media and frequent visitor for the past 30 years, the fawning on the US is hardly news. Just look at the coverage of the Arroyo state visit to Bush. Or the passports of the elite's kids.

It may well be a false promise but the US is still the promised land for many Filipinos (unlike for Indonesians or Malaysians). Economic opportunity transcends most things.

Just from a personal and family perspective I see no future in indulging in polemics based on skin colours.

Hi,

Upon re-reading my email to you, I was deeply mortified by it's crassness and lack of sophistication. being on the web so much, tends to make me excessively informal and tongue in cheek. i hope you sensed that and realized there was no true malice towards you. i do truly and humbly apologize for any emotional or psychic trauma i may have caused you :)

that said, i do stand by my point about the way your structured your sentences in those last two paragraphs. because the point is rather complex and it's definition of a very fine hued grain, i will not try to explain it here...suffice to say, that what we write reveals our psyche.

all in all, apologies again for my boorish email and well done on an article well written.

cheers,
ranjit