Chapter 5C: Before we move into the final 30 month lap (15.2.45 to 15.8.47) of a 90 year movement from 1857-1947 – one needs to understand the 30 month period before the final lap (15.8.42 onward)
There were three actors – BN, AK and Others. The most visible and least consequential were the Others. The quiet behind the scene players were BN and AK. The master stroke played by AK was to move to Europe and to make inroads into the upper echelons of the British High Command. He understood fairly early on that decisions were made in London, and not in India.
BN on the other hand was more of a businessman than a politician or an activist. For him business came first – and all else followed. What he did not realise is that business is a subset of various things. If you get displaced from your country or your country gets taken over – it is hard to defend your business.
The 30 month period before the last lap to independence defined the strategy of Pakistan for the next 60 years. It was one of alignment with foreign forces without bothering about business or financial viability. As USA was to show subsequently, if done right, one could become the consumption capital of the world without producing anything – and yet rule the world. Pakistan realised this model way before America did. In fact Pakistan invented the unviable country model way back in 1947.
There is no IIT in Pakistan. There is no industry of global consequence. People are poor. These are great ways to subjugate at population scale. All that was required was to keep the army under control. And to do that you had to put a larger army over that. That larger army was the U.S. Army.
The other aspect Pakistan excelled in was to play the underdog. It was better to be a colony of USA or of China than to try to compete with them. To remain relevant, you just needed to be at war with India and to buy out the leaders of India.
And so came to the front.
A friend of the Congress.
Who controlled the Congress till 2014.
From across the border.
It marks a period of abject diplomatic failure, common sense failure and country level failure. It was not the failure of democracy, the failure of tax collection (IRS) or the failure of general administration (IAS) which kept India poor but the failure of diplomacy and foreign services (IFS).
Even today the Epstein files show that complexed Indian government leaders will connect with all kinds of wheeler dealers and middlemen – instead of going directly to the leadership of other countries. The Modi government has tried to correct that.
But you can hardly correct that if you have former IFS officers in your cabinet. Change is done by outsiders. What insiders do is to continue the status quo.
What I saw at Howdy Modi in 2019 was hope that we had a leader who could bypass the IFS officers to reclaim lost ground. Trump was and is the best thing to have happened to India.
Abki Bar Trump Sarkar was a good motto.
And I will explain why.
#418
2026