India’s Pak policy has generally attracted much criticism at home for being too ‘soft’. But things have been no different in relation to other foreign countries. Take the case of the US and Australia. The US partiality for Pakistan has been a fact since the 1950s, as a result of which Pakistan enjoys an undeserving militarily parity with India and poses a perpetual danger to India. Yet India aspires to have closer military ties with the US.

For the nth time, evidence has emerged (this time from a letter purportedly written by the nuclear rogue A.Q Khan to his Duch wife in 2003) that the Americans had willingly kept their eyes shut and their mouth sealed as Pakistani went ahead with its nuclear programme. Days earlier, it was made known that the same Americans had taken a benign view of misuse of their arms against India by the Pakistanis. New Delhi took all this as a routine development, though the same Americans want foolproof guarantees from India that it would not use any American equipment against the Pakistanis.

The American pressure on Pakistan to go after the terrorists operating from there against India is at best farcical. With Indian protests being nothing more than mock exercises, there is not even a remote suggestion from the US that Pakistan will suffer in any manner if it fails to curb the activities of terrorists operating from its territories against India. No wonder Pakistan gets away by periodically enacting a charade of taking some cosmetic action against the likes of Hafiz Sayeed.

The premier of the Australian state of Victoria, the most favourite hunting ground of white racists to attack innocent Indians, had planned a trip to India to tell audiences here that Australia is the ‘safest’ place for overseas citizens including Indian students, who apparently constitute the largest foreign contingent in his benighted state. Just ahead of his departure, the man had the gall to cancel a scheduled visit to Mumbai because, according to him, the city was prone to terror attacks! Instead, he decided unilaterally that he would spend all his time in Delhi during his unsolicited Indian visit.

Any nation with a modicum of self-respect would have told the ‘premier’ to stay put in his safe Australian cocoon because chances are that he might discover on the flight to India that Delhi too was terror prone. A snub to the Victorian premier would have served as a warning that Australian visitors, including the prime minister of the country who is said to be ready to inflict a visit here in November, who are so callous and insensitive to Indian concerns, are not welcome.

The regime of Australians has been able to expose the Indian pusillanimity without the usual bluster employed by the Pakistanis, the natural crass aggression of the Chinese and the traditional covert coercion used by the almighty Americans.

For the last several months, racial attacks on Indians in Australia have been mounting. Initially, the Australians pretended as though these incidents were the figments of Indian imagination. When the frequency of attacks increased and the nature of injuries to the Indian victims became more grievous, some notice began to be taken in Australia. But how!

The state apparatus as well as the Australian media shouted from house tops that the Indian media had grossly exaggerated the incidents of attacks on the Indians, which they held were ordinary criminal acts when all the evidence pointed very clearly that the motive behind those attacks was racist. An ‘ordinary’ criminal does not abuse the race and the origin of his victim; nor does he advice the victim to ‘go back.’

The Indian government, from top to bottom, was only too happy to swallow the patently misleading Australian assurances that it would do all in its power to protect the Indians and their properties. The more these ‘assurances’ came from the Australians the larger and more frequent the racist attacks on the Indians. For the Indian government, it appeared, nothing had gone wrong in Australia as it allowed a number of officials to come here to propagate all the falsehood they could. Worse, there was not even an ‘advisory’ to Indians that they should shun Australia, especially the large number of bogus educational ‘institutions’ in that country. The Australians at one time were very nervous that their multi-billion ‘education’ industry that centres round bogus ‘institutions’ would collapse if the Indians decided to boycott them. Any government with concern for the future of its youth and pretending to have some residual self-respect would have immediately announced severe restrictions, if not a totally ban, on enrolment in the so-called Australian educational ‘institutions.’ A few of these bogus Australian ‘institutions’ may have since faced a temporary setback. But there is no move to forewarn unsuspecting Indians in Australia about impending dangers to their life and property after they land there. The apparently well-entrenched and state-protected Ku-Klux Klan in Australia will have no dearth of potential preys.

Of course, all this does not impinge upon the Australian claims to be counted among the most developed and ‘civilised’ nations in the world. The attacks on the Indians are obviously aberrations that escape notice of the normally hyper-active human rights organisations.

As for being ‘soft’ on Pakistan, nothing explains it better than the ease with which India bows to ‘international’ (US) pressure for resuming talks with Pakistan by jettisoning the pain and the humiliation of the nation after the November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. It is incredible that many important Indians have welcomed it as ‘first step’ the latest Pakistani charade relating to the perpetrators of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai, particularly Hafiz Sayeed. Everyone knows that the charges brought against Sayeed (exhorting Pakistanis to wage jihad against ‘infidels) will be thrown out of a Pakistani court since jihad is hardly seen as a crime in that land of the pure.

Pakistan dismisses the massive ‘dossier’ given by India on the Mumbai attack plot as being incomplete or insufficient as though it is the government of India that has to file a charge sheet in a Pakistani court against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks. India is not willing to see that a country can be tough without becoming too haughty.

Do Indian policy makers think that any hint of ‘aggression’ will compromise on the pursuit of dated ‘idealistic’ policies? Why does India fail to tell the world that any dialogue with a nation that adopts terrorism as its state policy will serve no purpose? What harm can come to India if it does some tough talking with Australia in the interest of its citizens? Is India still so unsure of itself that it dare not tell the Americans that closer ties are not possible if they deliberately overlook the dangerous Pakistani shenanigans against India?

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