Foreign Policy Blunder I: Kashmir

There are political leaders and there are statesmen. There is a big difference. Sardar Patel was a statesman. Nehru was a politician. Narsimha Rao and Atalji were statesmen to a minor degree. Indira Gandhi was a politician. Statesmen are blessed with a vision, wisdom to formulate strategies. Politicians are blessed with all kinds of tricks for their survival. Of course one can say that to call someone a statesman based on hindsight is wrong. But that is precisely the point. Statesmen are like chess players who can see a few moves ahead or like a statistician who can extrapolate graphs and make predictions. It's not magic. In India there have been many foreign policy blunders. We elected the leaders. They made mistakes. It is our fault. But since we are paying for it, it is our right to examine and even criticize. Maj Gen Mrinal Suman has written an article where he has examined seven blunders. It is an excellent article in its own right but I am going to examine and add to his analysis of individual blunder. The first in this series is:

The Kashmir Mess

Every hot spot in the world with a territorial dispute has a British hand in it. J&K mess has there grubby paws all over it. When they were leaving, they decided and convinced others in the west that a Muslim Pakistan was going to be a better bulwark against the spread of communism than a Hindu Ind [...]


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