"Arjuna’s crisis on the battlefield was not cowardice but moral confusion—an inability to distinguish restraint from abdication. Krishna’s intervention was not a call to blind action, but a refusal to dignify indecision," says Sahasranshu Dash, a longtime keen watcher of diplomatic developments in the region.
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| Namo and Nawaz : Did they try something sincerely ? |
"Across crises as varied as Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, and the Rohingya catastrophe, India’s conduct follows a familiar pattern.
Moral language collapses into procedural platitude, legalism substitutes for judgement, and “all sides” rhetoric persists even where asymmetry is unmistakable. There is near-zero willingness to absorb diplomatic cost in defence of principle. This is not situational caution but doctrine.
Silence is treated as prudence; judgement as risk.
The result resembles a paralysis the Mahabharata recognised long ago," says Dash, a research associate at the International Centre for Applied Ethics and Public Affairs (ICAEPA).
It's an independent research organisation based in Sheffield, UK.
Now handle this revelation.
'The Guardian', London-based newspaper says --
"Donald Trump made 30,573 “false or misleading” claims during his first term, according to calculations published in 2021 by the Washington Post. That’s roughly 21 fibs a day.
Second time around, he’s still hard at it, lying to Americans and the world on a daily basis. Trump’s disregard for truth and honesty in public life – seen again in his despicable response to the fatal shooting in Minneapolis – is dangerously immoral."
It's true like the US voters, foreign leaders have grown accustomed to the Trump's chronic mendacity.
"Trump’s lies and deceptions are a common aggravating factor in three intractable present-day international crises," says the Guardian article by Simon Tisdall.
He also puts it somehow acidly - "What unites Greenland, Venezuela and Ukraine? Trump’s immoral lies and Europe’s chronic weakness".
Tisdall says - Trump claimed, without evidence, that the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, was a “narco-terrorist” cartel boss. His administration killed more than 100 people in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean on unsubstantiated suspicion of drug-smuggling.
Truth is, Trump has pursued a personal vendetta against Maduro since his regime change plot failed in 2018. Truth is, as Trump now admits, the coup’s main aim is not to restore democracy ... It’s not to “rescue” Venezuela’s people, or safeguard US security. The aim is the oil."
"Of course Trump is shamelessly, ruthlessly looting the country while threatening Mexico, Cuba and Colombia, too."
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| Israeli Defence Forces |
Now the Indian context and take a closer look at the article by Dash in 'The Raisina Hills'.
It runs --- "Dharma is not rule-following. It demands choice. It accepts tragedy but rejects abdication. It understands that refusal to choose is itself a moral act—and often the most damaging one.
India does not need to intervene everywhere. It does not need to moralise indiscriminately. But a power of India’s scale no longer has the luxury of refusing to explain why some injustices matter more than others.
Silence is not neutrality. It is a choice, and the world has begun to interpret it. The most damning feature of India’s current posture is the absence of an articulated end state. If invisibility is a tactic, to what end and until when? At what level of power does hedging stop?
No answer has been offered because no decision has been made. That is not strategy. It is drift."
The Roadmap : Back to Future
Primarily we need to examine -- Has India arrived at the international stage?
Narendra Modi could have been hyped as an economic moderniser or a catalyst of development; to his detractors in Indian politics he could be still a divisive figure.
To the Hindutva camp - he could be a man not living up to their expectations; but it is also true Prime Minister Modi at the end of 11-year-and half in the hot seat has emerged with his clout in the global scene.
Bowing to PM Modi’s maiden address to the UN General Assembly on Sept 27, 2014, the United Nations declared June 21 as the International Yoga Day
Though Modi was new to diplomatic protocols in 2014, with robust Vladimir Putin and other world leaders, Namo mirrored an image of a confident man.
He seemed to have stuck a good personal rapport with leaders like the US President Barack Obama, who also graced the 2015 Republic Day parade on January 26.
With others his handshakes were ‘firm’ as if he had rehearsed the events pretty well and typical to his characteristic -- the Prime Minister took note of minutest things like German Chancellor Merkel’s birthday.
Thus when he spoke to her over phone during a stopover at Berlin, he did extend the birthday greetings.
His carefully tailored oneliners with each leaders at every bilateral meetings went off well.
With China too, he declined to be bogged down by any bitterness of the past. There were setbacks like the 2020 clash.
But prior to that Modi had walked an extra mile when without naming Beijing he made a veiled attack on ‘expansionist” designs of the 18th century. The reference to “encroachment” and “entry into the seas” were largely interpreted as a reference to China’s spats with Japan over the Senkaku Islands.
But now the new world order means ... time to be assertive and more cautious. Bangladesh has offered that challenge and New Delhi has done pretty well so far.
Walk-the-talk would also mean discharging the responsibility as the price of arrival in the global scene.
Idealism should be tailored and made "adequate" to its power of influence.
ends
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