What does the U S get from its alliance with Pakistan?
I'm not a huge fan of Modi but India has a genuine democratic tradition and is a much larger hedge against China than Pakistan. And let's not forget they let OBL hide there while we went on wild goose chases looking for him
= new reply since forum marked as read
Supposedly it's a realpolitik thing, or was once upon a time, but there's also inertia. The risk-averse move is to not change things because whatever happens next gets blamed on whoever made the change.
Last edited Mon Aug 16, 2021, 11:53 AM - Edit history (1)
As you know India and Pakistan are "new" countries, founded in 1947. Poverty has been an issue in India. Indira Gandhi came up with these programs to eradicate poverty, including putting the word "socialist" in their constitution. She had great ideas, but it didn't really work. Her father Jawaharlal Nehru, was also left leaning. India in practice is capitalist. Their social programs tend to be poorly funded and overpopulation remains an issue. As matter of fact, some rural parts of India are still a bit feudal.....
Nehru was a contemporary of Mohandas Gandhi, who also was left leaning. Nehru was founder of the Congress Party, which is the left leaning political party in India. Congress advocated for one India as opposed to two nations. They did not support a religious state for Moslems. Congress Party has not been relevant for awhile and now Modi's conservative BJU Party now dominates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru
Indira's grandson is active in Indian politics, but he struggles for relevancy. If Congress Party wins elections again, he will probably be the prime minister....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahul_Gandhi, but right now Congress Party isn't doing too well.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a Moslem...during the time leading up to the British leaving, he founded another party: All-India Muslim League. Jinnah supported a two state solution, The Moslems were also a bit more loyal to the British crown. They were more eager to serve in the British military....Jinnah would get his two states and become the first prime minister of Pakistan...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_Jinnah
The name "Pakistan" is a interesting:
The name Pakistan means literally "a land abounding in the pure" or "a land in which the pure abound", in Urdu and Persian. It references the word پاک (pāk), meaning "pure" in Persian and Pashto.[23] The suffix ـستان (transliterated in English as stân after stem word ending in a vowel; estân or istân after a stem ending in a consonant) is from Persian, and means "a place abounding in"[24] or "a place where anything abounds".[25]
The name of the country was coined in 1933 by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in a pamphlet Now or Never, using it as an acronym ("thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKISTAN"
, and referring to the names of the five northern regions of the British Raj: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.[26]
Israel started out as a socialist movement...and we know how that turned out....
