Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito (right) with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (left) and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, shown here meeting in 1956, are considered to be among the founding fathers of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Sadly, things changed after the assassination of our Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, in 1984 (whom Nixon and Kissinger really hated). Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, became our next PM, riding on a wave of sympathy following his mother's assassination. He was married to Antonia Maino, better known as Sonia Gandhi, daughter of an Italian Nazi, and alleged by many to be a CIA agent sent to infiltrate the Gandhi family.
Rajiv Gandhi began cosying up to Ronald Reagan and improving Indo-U.S. relations. In December 1984, one of the world's worst industrial disasters, the Bhopal Gas Leak, happened. According to many estimates, it went on to kill over 15,000 people while injuring another 50,000. Many thousands more (including those born much later to the victims) have been suffering from various diseases and disabilities.
Evil Empire: Rajiv Gandhi meets Ronald Reagan at the White House
Later on, Rajiv Gandhi and many in his coterie lost public support because of their involvement in the Bofors scam, in which they received kickbacks for importing Swedish weapons. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by LTTE (Tamil Tigers) militants in 1991, but his protégé Manmohan Singh (future PM from 2004 to 2014), known to have connections in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, was made finance minister of India.
Manmohan Singh destroyed Nehru's socialism by embracing the famous free-market reforms of 1991. Funny how this happened to the USSR and Yugoslavia at the same time. A few months later, by early 1992, India finally started having diplomatic relations with Israel (and Israel today is India's largest supplier of defense equipment - after Russia, that is). 'Thanks' to those 'free-market reforms' of 1991, Western multinationals started coming in from left, right and center. From having three state-run channels both on TV and radio, suddenly there was a plethora of private TV channels, both from India and overseas.
© CNN'CNN, bringing you the news that matters'
And so, US 'soft power' succeeded in re-colonizing us Indians (especially the generation born post-1970s). Today, almost all English-speaking Indians consider the US-UK to be 'bastions' of 'Democracy, Equality, Secularism, Free Speech and Human Rights'. Even other poor and working class Indians are in awe of the West. Indians living/working in NATO countries (especially the US, Canada and the UK) are treated as deities over here.
A large majority of Indians supported the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. A substantial number among us back Israel, have no idea how and why the Taliban was created by the British and American security services in cahoots with the Pakistani ISI, and consider ISIS to be a bigger threat than Saudi Arabia and the NATO corporate oligarchy.
People like Nehru are hated by our increasingly right-wing Hindu middle class because he was 'a socialist' and 'secularist' and wasn't 'friends' with the West. Shakespeare is far more popular than Dostoyevsky, and Dickens is far more popular than Tolstoy. Our secular elite reveres CIA stooges like Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama... because the West venerates them.
New PM Modi: Is he 'with us', or 'against us'?
Last year, we elected (for the first time) a right-wing party i.e. BJP, with an overwhelming majority in our parliament. Our current PM Modi is a right-wing Hindu, an Israel supporter, a neo-liberal, and a big admirer of the US (no wonder he invited Obama to become the first US President to be chief guest at our Republic Day parade on January 26th this year). Modi and his right-wing political party BJP have a lot of backers and sponsors in the US (mainly via the Indian diaspora).
One good thing PM Modi has done, however, was sign various treaties with President Putin in December last year to ensure that Russia remains India's primary defense partner. I guess then that another first at this year's Republic Day parade was Obama becoming the first US President in history to applaud Russian weapons and aircraft.
But today, overall, we in India (among the 'educated' classes) are left with basically two kinds of people:
1. Hyper-jingoistic, Muslim- and Christian-hating, and Israel-supporting, right-wing Orthodox Hindus that are mainly from business/corporate backgrounds. Many of them are under the illusion that all advancements in science and technology, as well as art and culture, came from ancient India. They do like the US though, because it is seen as 'so developed', is 'good for business', and because the US 'kills Muslims'.
Mind-numbing Western tripe, all over India
Because most of these 'trendy' liberal Indians love CNN, MSNBC, BBC and the New York Times, they are obviously duped into hating President Putin. You see, we are so wannabe Westerners, so we trust the Western media more than our own media. Thanks to these 'trendy' liberals, India is still seen as the land of slums, and now - the West's new label - the 'Land of Rapists'.
People like me are increasingly becoming a tiny minority here. It's much better to be Russian or Chinese. But still, I am slightly optimistic about my fellow Indians. I am sure many of us would have smelled the coffee before NATO turns fully hostile against us (which they inevitability will).
Power to the BRICS alliance.
....if this article is at all accurate, which I am sure it is. But then again, I suspect we're all screwed as well, and by the very same internal forces inherent in all humans, which said forces are currently speeding India towards becoming another willing slave of the oh-so-attractive Western economic model.
I have always feared that man's real core nature does not inure him to social fairness or justice, but towards taking advantage of the weaker and dominating any perceived rivals or competitors, thus explaining the incessant horrors we witness on the local and international levels every single day. The idea of mankind being naturally 'good at heart' is a convenient, but necessary, fiction for the capitalist model and its predatory proponents, a model that must continuously and successfully distort the reality of its murderous, thieving predations being endemic to such an economic system.
Why do you think that whenever anyone decent institutes social changes to benefit the masses, it never lasts, but always succumbs to the predations of the selfish? If human nature truly was good and decent, then decency and fairness would shine through all the various institutions and offices of governance and control around the world. Even Plato recognized this fact over 2,300 years ago in his 'dialogues', most especially "The Republic", wherein he posits that human society will inevitably mirror the inner self of those who create it.
So, do we see fairness and justice exhibited all around by the world's financial and political institutions? Do we see decency and kindness reflected by these social constructs ostensibly created to benefit all in their respective societies?
Hardly!
Instead, we see these institutions continuously twisted into engines of greed for the few, and the destruction of the universally but vaguely feared 'other'. This is our evolutionary heritage at work and play. Survival is the key, and Mother Nature mandates such via bloody tooth and claw. It is up to us to re-program ourselves towards love, kindness and altruism, and away from selfishness. Many try, but the vast majority of humans are uninterested in anything other than what benefits themselves.
This is why government rule via 'financial incentives' can be so successful, but government rule by moral authority usually fails miserably. Being moral is only an option when it benefits us directly, or so it would seem for the vast majority. Note how many, if not most christians seem to be 'good' only to insure their admission into 'heaven'. One wonders if those same christians would have the same beliefs and zealousness if they knew there was NO heaven, and we simply dissolved into nothingness upon death? In my personal experience, I have sadly found those that follow Christ are usually really only in it for the 'paradise' and 'eternal life' it (falsely) offers, and NOT in being good for its own reward and what that brings to the world.
Thus, the above-noted changes in India are not unexpected at all. People want the 'good life', which to most semi-hairless apes means a collection of 'things'. And the West certainly dangles this in front of the ape-sheeples to lead them to the slaughter successfully, time and time again. Just ask the Ukrainians currently......
Nevertheless, this was a fine article by what appears to be another, great new voice from SOTT. Hopefully, Sushant Taing will keep us all posted on how things unfold in India, but my sense is that India is in for a rapid devolution into the self-absorbed cesspool of Western materialism, and all that entails for any peoples who choose to 'dance with the devil'......
(So much for BRICS, I suppose.)