reclaim a mythical glory tarnished by centuries of foreign rule over them.
This Hindi-speaking elite led India to domestic and foreign policy blunders and wars that most other Indians would not have wanted. The Hindi-speaking elite sparked riots against Sikhs, Muslims, Dalits, and Christians. It mishandled Kashmir and turned it into a nuclear flashpoint. It insisted on worsening what started as a small territorial and legal dispute in Kashmir with Pakistan.
Shunning advice from other components of the Indian state, New Delhi turned this dispute that was contested with civility at the United Nations into a blood feud by illegally annexing Kashmir, stuffing the tiny territory with inordinate amount of occupation soldiers, and then toying with proxy warfare with Pakistan first through Afghan badlands during Soviet times and later in Bangladesh.
India’s ruling establishment, deeply entrenched in the northern Hindi-belt, is also responsible for wars and skirmishes with almost all the neighbours: Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Most of the disputes here are petty and could have been long resolved had it not been for the egotistical and history-burdened foreign policy pursued by the Hindi-speaking New Delhi elite.
Most Indians do not have a problem with Pakistan or China, for example. But New Delhi continues to fiddle with Pakistani and Chinese ethnic fabric in Tibet and Balochistan. Even now, we see India going into weaponisation overdrive, causing unease to almost all of India’s immediate neighbours.
India can do better if the burden that the northern Hindi-speaking belt puts on the Indian federation is lessened. The intellectuals of Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Punjab should play an activist role in restraining the wild and delusional historical and religious tendencies that are running berserk today inside the Hindi-speaking belt of northern India.
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