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Comment by chvid | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot of Indian English-language media on YouTube and Twitter. There the war drums have been sounding strongly for the past weeks.

They seem to draw a parallel between India/Kashmir/Pakistan and Israel/Gaza/Iran - seeing India as the superior and morally just super power against a weak corrupt dysfunctional terrorist-sponsoring Pakistan.

So in that thinking right now there is an opportunity to get a final solution on Kashmir and throw a punch against Pakistan so strong that it will fall apart for good.

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India has been notoriously hostile to its minorities and it seeks displacement of the “majority” population of Kashmir because they have been seeking secession from India. Typically when a country has acted harmfully, world leaders of the west have intervened especially in the case of India and Pakistan because it is a great disruption to trade and profit. It seems this time the West is overwhelmed with several issues including the backlash against Israel from its own people, that they are exhausted.

Yes. Right now the thinking in the west seems to be that India has a bigger role to play in terms of geopolitics as a replacement of / balance against China. And India seems to have picked up on this and sees a greater opportunity to act in areas where it otherwise would have been constrained by the west.

This is a good take. India is definitely aware and is playing the west for advantages as an alternative to China.

Just because you harp over the same thing again and again about "India has been notoriously hostile to its minorities" does not make it true. Infact, the minorities in India have been notoriously hostile to the nation and care more about their ummah.

Haven't there also been conflicts with the Sikhs for decades? I don't think you can completely blame this on just the Muslims.

Its a country almost 3x bigger than Europe, 4x bigger than US, and brutally diverse. Thousands of languages and tribes. People from west are very different to east, north and south is same. People who haven't experienced it first hand (or at least grokked the numbers properly) can't fathom how huge it is not just geographically but culturally. There is a reason why India is often referred to as subcontinent and people often do a mistake when mentally they think about it as 'just another country', especially in smaller European states.

Compared to say Europe over past 50 years internal conflicts have been miniscule.

Sikh conflict you may be referring to are events from 1984 IIRC.

> Sikh conflict you may be referring to are events from 1984 IIRC.

The 70s and 80s were the most intense, but it's far from isolated to just that period. There was a major row with Canada just last year because, according to Canada, the Indian government has been killing Sikh separatists in Canada.[1] Since there is no historical adversity between Canada and India, Canada has nothing to gain by seeking conflict and generally doesn't seek conflicts, I am inclined to believe the Canadian claims.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/14/canada-modi-...

The Canadian connection is historical, goes back to 1900s when a British agent William Hopkinson infiltrated the Ghadar movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Hopkinson

> can't fathom how huge it is not just geographically

I grew up in India but I don't agree that people in the west can't fathom how huge it is geographically. Geographically speaking India is the 7th largest country, and every country larger than India (Australia, Brazil, US, China, Canada and Russia) is at least 2 times to up to more than 5 times larger than India. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

That said, I do agree a lot of westerners might not be able to relate to the cultural diversity of India.

India is not the subcontinent. The subcontinent includes several other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_subcontinent

That said, you are right that India alone does have massive diversity of culture and geography.= and is vast.

The conflict is not with Sikhs as a whole, but a subset which is separatist in nature.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP06T00412R0006067...

> Conflict with Sikhs for decades

HN is seriously ignorant about India. There has been no such insurgency since early 90s.

India, where minorities become Bollywood superstars, beloved musicians, richest men in Asia, and even presidents, has been notoriously hostile to minorities? I don’t think any other country in Asia has a track record like India when it comes to minorities. Let’s not get rhetoric and false propaganda into our way of critical thinking. India has flaws but it is steadily proving to be a responsible power in that geography.

If you look at the facts: The only exodus happened in India was in Kashmir.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35923237

Yes, The same India where minority movie stars were rallied against from being featured in movies. https://time.com/6250414/bollywood-hindu-supremacists/

I fail to see how this corroborates your claim of India being “notoriously hostile to minorities”.

Just countering the claim that Bollywood stars are the richest and don't face hostility being a minority

False on both fronts, the 'majority' population of Kashmir has already been displaced and reduced to minority

It is true though, India has the moral upper hand here. All Pakistan has achieved in it's short existence is to be thug for hire(first US now China) and a place for midwifing every other Islamic terrorist faction.

It is also inherently unstable given they have never been able to solve their innate identity crisis, in short it is as Islamic North Korea(nukes) at best. It should be treated like the pariah that it is.

You can't kill civilians in cold blood and expect to get away with it.

"..there is an opportunity to get a final solution on Kashmir and throw a punch against Pakistan so strong that it will fall apart for good."

So let's escalate and see if one side decides to push the nuclear button?

I hope there are saner people than you, making the decisions.

Just to be clear - I don't support this and I think India is dangerously overestimating its advantages.

I am just describing what I have seen in Indian media.

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