6-4-02, Danny McBride
Get Mahatma, Get My Coat
By Danny McBride
IPS Features
Leave your worries on the doorstep- -Heck leave EVERYTHING!! Time to slug down a couple of shots of Bombay gin, grab a take-out sandwich at that New Deli, slip into some Madras shorts and take a short cutta- -a Coast Guard Cutter, or, heck, you know it’s coming, a Calcutta, and RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!
At least that’s what the American, British, Canadian, New Zealand, Italian, South Korean, Israeli and a whole slew of other embassies are telling their citizens in India this week, as war, and rumors of war, continue to widen in the northern region of Kashmir.
Foreign nationals were sent packing in Pakistan (by pachyderm?) two months ago. And this time the fear of a war wider than the ongoing border skirmish is being inflamed by talk of a nuclear war. Both India and Pakistan have nuclear capabilities and the rhetoric on both sides is now hotter than a tandoori oven.
You see, this is all overseen by The League of The Bureau of Wars. Just when one area of the world seems to start moving towards resolving its conflicts, say Northern Ireland, another area of the world is designated to take its place on the front pages of newspapers. Recently East Timor became an independent country after years of struggle with its larger neighbor Indonesia, complete with an Opening Ceremony attended by our own Former President, Bill Clinton, to cut the ribbon- -just like a shopping mall.
So by law, since that conflict has simmered down to nothing, another area of the world takes its turn. If they can’t find a new area, they always revisit old tried-and-true conflicts certain to fill the gap. You know the familiar ones- -The Arabs and The Israelis, The North and South Koreans, The Peruvians and The Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) guerilla movement, The Serbs and anybody, plus several others, and, of course, the Indians and the Pakistanis.
The rules of engagement are usually always the same, requiring one or both parties to be of different religions or political systems. Both is always preferable. And here in the fight over Kashmir we have both. India is the world’s largest democracy with over a billion people, mostly Hindu. Pakistan is a military dictatorship with 150 million people, mostly Muslim. Did you notice that during the U S incursion into Afghanistan to play hide-and-seek with Omar-The-Mullah (“and-through-the-woods-to-Grandmullah’s-house-we-go…”) and his evil twin Osama bin Laden (now often Usama- -UBL- -which sounds like a network less popular than the UPN), the American news media have constantly referred to the Pakistani leader as “President” Musharraf, when of course, he is “The-General-Who-Took-Power-In-A-Military-Coup” Musharraf? But it sounds better to call him “President” if he’s on our side, which he more or less has been as we’ve stomped our way through Afghanistan. (When they are not on our side we call them “Strongman” as in “Political Strongman Rafael Trujillo”- -remember him? Hint: Dominican Republic.)
The Times of India, which I have been enjoying this past little while, always calls Musharraf what he is, “a dictator”. Of course I’ve been reading The Pakistan Daily as well, and they refer to the whole situation as “Kashmir’s phony war”.
Ain’t the Internet great? You can point and click your way across the world even as that portion of the world threatens to blow itself up. But don’t worry- -they won’t. All this speculation on CNN, MSNBC and FOX, plus the “Big Network News Shows”, leaves me thinking that what is happening is what is always happening:
See, we’re all sick of the Middle East conflict- -Arafat, suicide bombers, Israeli militancy, The Saudi’s pretend peace plans, Saddam or Not-Saddam, talk and more talk resulting in no substantial changes. It’s time to move this story off the front page. Nothing is any better than it was a month ago, but we have short attention spans and we’re ready for new military conflicts for the new summer season- -sort of like action pictures at the movies. They always come out in summer and what better action can we have than two nuclear powers staring eyeball to eyeball to see who’ll blink first. (Has this been going on long enough that we are up to Blink 182?) After all, this started back in 1947 when the British went home and left India to fend for itself. It immediately broke apart into the countries we have now: India and Pakistan, and also Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon) and Bangladesh, once called East Pakistan. But the two biggies are what concern us this time. Plus this has the special added attraction of being nowhere near us. If they do break out into all-out war, it will be on TV, and that’s as close as we’ll be.
Anyway, here we are at the beginning of summer, and the time many of those who are able to, move northwest out of New Dehli to Srinagar, into the mountain regions, for the summer, where it is cooler, to take their leave of the heat- -it was 122° Fahrenheit in the Indian capitol recently- -hot enough to melt ghee on the sidewalk, if there were a sidewalk. And guess where all the travel brochures and websites point to? Kashmir.
“Kashmir is a legendarily beautiful mountainous region of some seven million people that is located where the borders of India, Pakistan and China meet” says the Kashmir Government’s website, which features pictures so breathtakingly awesome that you want to call your travel agent right now. Well, maybe not right now. Let’s wait this all out first and see what happens.
Soon Russia’s Vlad (I’m-Not-The-Impaler) Putin will be hosting a meeting of area big shots in Kazakhstan which will include Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan’s Musharraf. Maybe they can talk eyeball to eyeball and straighten some of this out. (Don’t you just wonder if George W Bush knows the name Atal Bihari Vajpayee?? Can’t you just hear him now “Ah- -Rupee- -ah- -Slurpee- -ah- -Vajpayee.”)
It’s going to be a hotter-than-usual hot spot this summer, Kashmir is. And this dispute over whose land this is, is going to be a real nail-biter- -a real cliff-hanger- -a real Kashmir sweater. Get Ma Hat Ma, I’m outta here.
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