at June 30, 2005 3:58 PMSeriously, Rediff has a messageboard question on their website saying that even before the ink dried on the defense pact between India and Us, there were revelations of Henry Kissinger called Indians “bastards” during the Nixon era. They want to find out if India should react to that. Does it make any sense whatsoever to react to decades-old stuff just because it has just been declassified? Nixon is no more, Indira Gandhi is not alive and Kissinger is in no way involved with the current administration - what is the point on making a big deal about this now?
I think this is what is the problem is with us - living in the past. We refuse to let go of the demons of the past and refuse to look ahead. Every time there is a remote chance of us getting anywhere better, we go into a self-destructive mode and shoot ourselves in the foot. Idiots!
Posted by shanti at June 30, 2005 11:06 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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? Past from Soulkin.com
What is the problem with the past? Everywhere you hear people say, “You have to get over it, you cannot live in the past!” or “Forget the past, today is what counts.” Well, isn’t it important to be aware of your past in o... [Read More]
Tracked on September 13, 2005 1:45 PM
Reaction from far away place - Norway. I think that frustrated comments from quite rough speaking american politicians in the cold war period shouldn’t be remembered too well. I see your point about Indians not always beeing their own best freinds. At the same time i admire your culture, Patience(! - yes), and the economy is better than for a very long time, isn’t it?
Posted by: abmonitor at June 30, 2005 2:38 PM
Shanti,
Whom do you refer to as ‘we’. In this case the ‘leak’ -aka the declassification from U.S. side. Ofcourse, the idiot desi media too are harping on this irrelevant story. So, who is playing this game?
Posted by: L. at June 30, 2005 3:19 PM
Abmonitor, you are right that things are really looking up for India - this is precisely the reason why I don’t want them to relapse into the cold-war-era politics and undo whatever good has happened so far.
L, even though it is the US that declassified the documents, there is surprisingly little talk about them here. Rediff and other Indian media on the other hand, are doing Indians a great disservice by trying to provoke reactions to a long-gone past.
You do bring up a good point - I will Google up a bit and see who released the documents and why now - the timing of it all seems awfully suspicious.
Posted by: shanti at June 30, 2005 3:58 PM
Hey Shanti,
while I agree we shouldn’t harp too much on days gone by, it’s still interesting to get an insight into what was going on those days, because many Indians are still confused - they wonder that if we won the war in ‘71, why the heck is there still a Pakistan? These documents clearly show us why. Another good reason is more for american domestic consumption (although I doubt any of them actually care). Americans tend to wonder these days - “Why does the world hate us so much?” - well there’s an answer in these de-classified documents.
Posted by: TTG at June 30, 2005 11:48 PM
TTG, I am with you there - information is always a good thing. What I am not in agreeance with is the Indian media’s provocative stance and inability to keep things in perspective.
Posted by: shanti at July 1, 2005 9:24 PM
There is a law in USA, when government documents get declassified. They have different time scales for different kind of documents and their nature- nothing special about the current ones.
Kissinger’s and Nixon’s utterances had been documented even in 70s, even in newspapers. They are not at all new. It was a different time, different politics….time to move on.
Kush
Posted by: Kush Tandon at July 3, 2005 8:04 PM
It’s really stupid, because I doubt if anyone really cares. And even if someone today says something, what you really have to worry about is the economy, nothing else. Are the markets happy? Are folks happy? If so, then who gives a damn.
As long as they’re not saying something profoundly inflammatory (which is quite unlikely, but you never know), how does it matter? Laloo (and the crazy left in India) keep belittling the west all the time, it’s not like they give a damn. Maybe NYT should pick that up and make an issue out of it.
And TTG: politics during the Cold War was too weird, after all, we did side with Russia (and Russia did much worse and much more barbarous things), so you cannot really blame the US.
Indian media has gone to the dogs, there is no journalistic responsbility anymore; it’s all about how best we hype things up and get more readers (or viewers, depending on the media). Bleh. Color me surprised.
Posted by: Metlin at July 4, 2005 4:10 PM
Kush and Metlin, good points. I think we need to know history, but we should also refrain from applying the current thought processes to something that happened decades ago. That is the only way we will learn anything useful.
Posted by: shanti at July 5, 2005 10:05 AM
Honestly, who gives a damn about what some ex-president of USA said about Indians 30 years ago? The real thing is probably that most (or at least, a lot) of Indians are anti-US… the whole world is jealous of its one-nation-dominating-the-world policy. They control the international markets, they control the wars, and they even control the UN… US is probably one of the only countries that can go against the UN and get away with it without even getting a scratch on its dog-collar. The media is either trying to feed the desire of the average Indian to find something wrong with the Indians or simply trying to get the Americans to apologize, which won’t happen anyway…
Or maybe I’m just a kid with weird ideas?
Posted by: px at July 7, 2005 4:00 AM
i would rather think - it is an issue of rediff trying to get as much mileage as possible out of the stuff. (wont call it an issue)
Posted by: anya at August 2, 2005 7:35 PM