This chapter almost made me miss my flight even when I was next to my Gate, it's that informative.
On my facebook I have created an album called Why Islam haunts India where I have captioned each picture with the salient sentence.
By the way I went to a lot of trouble to get all this lolz.
Zachary I am surprised with your land based obsession. True, it explains history, but the land based geopolitics is not as important as sea coastal one. The geopolitics moved into that phase with colonialism.
ReplyDeleteI am impressed that you read the article. Urdu Daily Mumbai
DeleteIslam used to haunt India. It no longer does so. Islam in India today is a largely harmless cultural expression. It has long lost all its political implications and is no threat to anyone as a generalized whole.
ReplyDeleteWhat haunts India today is Socialism-Marxism and its bastard offspring called Causal-Activism. This is the greatest danger that Indian (South Asian) Civilization faces right now.
Thanks for the effort. Very informative. A few points:
ReplyDelete(1) Ultra low-cost shipping, enabled by the development of containers and jumbo cargo ships, has irrevocably changed many of these dynamics.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-14
(2) Central Asian horses aren't just that important for India anymore. With modern technology, virtually none of the previously crucial traded goods seem remotely important. "Oil/Gas" just seems to have become an easy placeholder for this previously irreplaceable dependence of India on Central Asia- ignoring the far more easily accessible Persian Gulf or even the Americas.
(3) When discussing Kashmir, the issue of water was completely ignored. There is no way Northern plains are ever going to give up control of Kashmir considering it is so critical to ensure the flow of their rivers.