Hacker News Reader

Comment by phakding | Hacker News Reader

It's curious how western media portrays India as a rogue, failed state with crazy leaders who will start a nuclear war at drop of a hat.

India is 7th largest economy in the world by GDP and has more than one billion people. It's also a country with no first use policy. The country which never started a full scale war with any country even after many serious attacks on her soil (mumbai blasts of 93, parliament attack of 01, mumbai attack of 08).

All fearmongering articles like these show colonial/racist mindset of western media, even the liberal ones like NYT and WaPo.

View on HN

According to the article, I don't think it's India who is portrayed to be the rogue state -- it's Pakistan.

>> Among the most audacious were the 2001 attacks on India’s parliament and the 2008 siege of Mumbai, which killed over 150 people. Had such an attack occurred in the United States, Narang said, America would have ended a nation-state.

The reason why India didn’t respond to force, according to Narang, is that—despite its alleged Cold Start doctrine—Indian leaders were unsure exactly where Pakistan’s nuclear threshold stood. That is, even if Indian leaders believed they were launching a limited attack, they couldn’t be sure that Pakistani leaders wouldn’t view it as expansive enough to justify using nuclear weapons. This is no accident: as Khan said, Pakistani leaders intentionally leave their nuclear threshold ambiguous.

The first time I have ever heard India portrayed that way is in your comment. The linked article decidedly does not portray India that way - in fact, the opposite, IMO.

How much South East Asia related news do you consume?

Did you even read the article, it addresses pretty much all of these points. It doesn't portray India in a negative light, it talks about they may eventually feel forced into a proportional response to terrorist attacks like those you mentioned. That proportional response might encourage Pakistan to start a nuclear war.

That's very realistic scenario that absolutely does not require India to be at all a "rogue, failed state with crazy leaders".

Perhaps it is only anecdotal on my part but the Australian, French, and British media I've regularly consumed during my lifetime has never portrayed India as a failed state with crazy leaders heartset on nuclear war. I would imagine there are fringe media who might, but mainstream media depicting them as a failed state or rogue state? Unlikely to impossible.

Apparently this person gets their news from the Civilization series.

Pull up BBC articles about India in past 10 years and I guarantee you that 90% of politics related opinion and news pieces are very biased.

The rest of your comment aside, the colonial mindset of western media is very apparent. Look at the BBC's treatment, very inflammatory.

Pakistan is the rogue state - in fact it's almost two states. The government, and then the shadow government/deep state of ISI that seems to do what it likes EG hiding Osama Bin Laden, funding/organising terrorist attacks in India etc.

It is only one state - the army. The government is just a figurehead. As Imam Tawhidi said, other countries have armies. In Pakistan, the army has a country.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com