> only major country/culture that has never been aggressive towards it's neighbors is India
I have Indian heritage, and I heard this take growing up, and I'll concede that India is on the peaceful side of the international median. That said, the folks in Sri Lanka [1][2] and Bangladesh [3] would aggressively disagree. (Book recommendation: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida [4]. Also, anything by Assamese authors.)
And this thesis really only applies to modern India. Pre-EIC India was a subcontinent of warring states. And even for the "modern India" designation, we have to ignore the violence of political integration [5][6].
India saved Bangladesh from genocide at the hands of Pakistan. Those ungrateful bastards still stand with Pakistan on everything against India. I don't know why you would bring that up. India could have easily took over Bangladesh after Pakistani forces surrendered, but they chose to let them be independent.
Sri Lanka is more complicated, but India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces it sent, and those too targeted the Indian Tamils, which was the reason they assassinated Rajeev Gandhi.
Well yes, we turned them into a suzerainty. The Iranians didn't like it when America did it through the Shah. The Bangladeshis don't like it when Indians think they should be a supplicant sovereign. (Sheikh Hassina was to New Delhi what the Shah was to D.C.)
Like, America rescued Japan from a ruinous autocracy. It would still be mean and violent to demand their gratitude for us nuking them.
> India could have easily took over Bangladesh
And it would have had another Kashmir. In practice, buffer state was the only correct play. (Arguably, it's what China should have done with Tibet.)
> India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces
Yeah. The entire American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was done with "peacekeeping" forces. The peacekeepers in both cases committed documented atrocities.
China doesn't belong on this list. Nehru's government was aggressively pro China. China returned the favour by invading Tibet and then attacking India [1].
If Mao hadn't done that, we'd probably be living in a Sino-Indian world order today. (India and China have surprisingly few fundamental geopolitical overlaps, the Himalayas neatly partitioning their spheres.)
India never attacked Pakistan. Every war was started by Pakistan. India took over vast swathes of Pakistan in 1971 but unilaterally returned all the land. Kashmir is integral part of India. India didn't attack china, China attacked it.
Returning the land doesn't make 1971 ok. There are no excuses for sri lanka and sikkim. The 2019 strikes on Pakistan seem unwarranted from the outside. I'll conceed China's claims India was the aggressor are very questionable.
> only major country/culture that has never been aggressive towards it's neighbors is India
I have Indian heritage, and I heard this take growing up, and I'll concede that India is on the peaceful side of the international median. That said, the folks in Sri Lanka [1][2] and Bangladesh [3] would aggressively disagree. (Book recommendation: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida [4]. Also, anything by Assamese authors.)
And this thesis really only applies to modern India. Pre-EIC India was a subcontinent of warring states. And even for the "modern India" designation, we have to ignore the violence of political integration [5][6].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_intervention_in_the_Sri...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffna_hospital_massacre
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Moons_of_Maali_Almei...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_India
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Hyderabad
India saved Bangladesh from genocide at the hands of Pakistan. Those ungrateful bastards still stand with Pakistan on everything against India. I don't know why you would bring that up. India could have easily took over Bangladesh after Pakistani forces surrendered, but they chose to let them be independent.
Sri Lanka is more complicated, but India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces it sent, and those too targeted the Indian Tamils, which was the reason they assassinated Rajeev Gandhi.
> Those ungrateful bastards
Well yes, we turned them into a suzerainty. The Iranians didn't like it when America did it through the Shah. The Bangladeshis don't like it when Indians think they should be a supplicant sovereign. (Sheikh Hassina was to New Delhi what the Shah was to D.C.)
Like, America rescued Japan from a ruinous autocracy. It would still be mean and violent to demand their gratitude for us nuking them.
> India could have easily took over Bangladesh
And it would have had another Kashmir. In practice, buffer state was the only correct play. (Arguably, it's what China should have done with Tibet.)
> India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces
Yeah. The entire American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was done with "peacekeeping" forces. The peacekeepers in both cases committed documented atrocities.
2 replies →
1971: India intervened militarily in East Pakistan, leading to the creation of Bangladesh.
1987–1990: India deployed ~70,000 troops to Sri Lanka and engaged in combat during the civil war.
1971: India saved Bangladesh from absolute genocide.
1987-1990: Indian peace keeping troops only targeted Indian Tamils, which was the primary reason they assassinated Rajeev Gandhi.
Sure:
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Pakistan_wars_an...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy6w6507wqo
In which one of these India was the aggressor?
All of them. It turns out there's plenty of blame to go around.
That's always been the nature of partition.
Because it's only existed since 1947?
Indian culture is over 5000 years old. It was a British colony for only about a century.
You said country/culture. If you're counting the Mughal empire, the Mughals were warlike.
4 replies →
What? Kashmir, Pakistan, China, Sri lanka... I don't think has any neighbors it hasn't been aggressive towards. Was this sarcasm and I missed it?
> Kashmir, Pakistan, China, Sri lanka
China doesn't belong on this list. Nehru's government was aggressively pro China. China returned the favour by invading Tibet and then attacking India [1].
If Mao hadn't done that, we'd probably be living in a Sino-Indian world order today. (India and China have surprisingly few fundamental geopolitical overlaps, the Himalayas neatly partitioning their spheres.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
They had some recent border scuffles, I think, on the level of pulling faces at the foreigners or something like that. Yeah, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...
Hmm, so in eastern Kashmir, in fact. Versus Tibet!
1 reply →
India never attacked Pakistan. Every war was started by Pakistan. India took over vast swathes of Pakistan in 1971 but unilaterally returned all the land. Kashmir is integral part of India. India didn't attack china, China attacked it.
Your turn.
Returning the land doesn't make 1971 ok. There are no excuses for sri lanka and sikkim. The 2019 strikes on Pakistan seem unwarranted from the outside. I'll conceed China's claims India was the aggressor are very questionable.
4 replies →