The South Asia Politics, News, and Analysis Thread

The bribe isn't working? I mean sure it's not working long term and is just making the situation in Pakistan worse for the people living there, but the nukes haven't gone walk about, so I'd say the bribe is working.

We bribe North Korea not to collapse and nuke Soul, we bribe Pakistan not to collapse and have a nuke 'slip' into the hands of ISIS, AQ or Hamas.

edited 22nd Oct '15 2:43:08 PM by Silasw

They won't do that even without a bribe, since they know that if there was a loose nuke found or detonated, it wouldn't be too hard to determine who built that nuke. It would invite a Curb-Stomp Battle of such size, Pakistan would cease to exist in a unified fashion. If at all.

Most of that bribery is actually to allow access to Afghanistan. Now that Obama has extended the stay there, Pakistan is comfortable making demands again.

But they will come to rue the day eventually. Their economy is only doing okay right now because of low oil prices. It's making them complacent. Couple that with China's problems, and Pakistan isn't going to do too well once they get hit with any sort of shock.

edited 22nd Oct '15 4:16:13 PM by FFShinra

I'm not suggest that the actual government would 'lose' a nuke deliberately, more that the Pakistani state would collapse completely and end up similar to Afganistan, then whoever was left with the nukes would 'lose' them and high tail it to somewhere nice with the money.

You may be right about it being a bribe for Afganistan access though.

edited 22nd Oct '15 4:24:30 PM by Silasw

Perhaps it is meant to prevent collapse, but all its doing is allowing its problems to fester. They have no incentive to be better on their own.

I have likened it, and continue to liken it, to Yugoslavia. Just give them nukes and replace the League of Communists with political Islam or the Army, depending on the area.

Allowing problems to fester as long as they don't blow up is pretty much the entire of US foreign policy for the region from Pakistan to Morocco.

edited 22nd Oct '15 4:34:43 PM by Silasw

Hopefully this sale doesn't disrupt our ties with India so much. From the prospective of US interests, not India's or the world's, it is vital they end up aligned with us, not Russia, and certainly not China. And while they may distrust China,though even then it is one of their largest trading partners, they are close to Russia, and US arms sales to Pakistan, and the rest of our relationship with that country are the reason why.

India won't ally with China. They have mutual dislike for each other.

India ain't gonna throw Russia under the bus though. Best you can hope for is they act as a bridge between Washington and Moscow.

EDIT-

And India could care less about the sale. They aren't afraid of F-16s.

edited 22nd Oct '15 4:40:43 PM by FFShinra

India doesn't want to be part of anyone's camp, it's looking to make its own team.

I said from the perspective of US interests. India's interests are indeed to remain nonaligned indefinitely, or if that proves impossible, wait until the last possible moment before becoming aligned. But I find it is impossible for large powerful countries with large economies and militaries to remain neutral forever. The US managed a good run, but we were sucked in, and we had an Ocean separating us from the other great powers.

There's a difference between being neutral and being an Independant actor.

Indian is not going to align with the US, Russia or China power blocks, it's going to make it so that other countries choose who to align with out of the US, Russia, China or India.

Indeed.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake has hit Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yeah, I heard. Apparently tremors were felt as far as Delhi (by friends' accounts).

Sure, because neither of those countries had enough problems to deal with already.

For fuck's sakes, the universe! Get your shit together!

So...did someone piss off Indra with all these thunder strikes and earthquakes?

edited 26th Oct '15 11:28:23 AM by TerminusEst

Bangladeshi secular publisher hacked to death Fucking Hell.

Again? Oy vey man...

An Indian man was killed when police in Nepal fired on hundreds of protesters blocking a border crossing with India.

Pakistani forces have killed two Indian soldiers in Kashmir.

THE PINK FLAMINGO ON THE SUBCONTINENT: NUCLEAR WAR BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Afghan woman accused of adultery is stoned to death

Sikh jokes are under threat yet again

edited 4th Nov '15 4:07:06 AM by JackOLantern1337

Can somebody explain to me the Indian caste system and how it works in mdoern times? this is awfully complicated to understand

its complicated because the system changes depending on the state/region.

My folks were upper caste for example, but when the system was abolished by Nehru, we moved on without much thought, as a people. Whereas elsewhere there remain places even now that judge by one type of caste system or another.

In short, it's too broad to give a succinct explanation.

It... depends on where you are - honestly, the variance of the caste system is the reason why I believe 'Hinduism' is one of the laziest words ever coined. To elaborate:

• Your caste is seen in your surname, kind of like how many surnames are trades (Smith, Porter, Carpenter). Your surname can also pretty much uniquely identify where you or at least your paternal ancestors are from, with varying degrees of accuracy (Tendulkar is a Marathi surname, for instance, and Ganguly (short for Gangopadhyay) is Bengali).
• Some castes forbid intermarriage with other castes, because it is seen as a 'pollution of the bloodline'. Others forbid intramarriage, because it is seen as similar to incest. (Both cases have people willing to kill the offending couple)
• Tamilians (IIRC) relinquished their caste system, which is why a number of them don't have surnames per se - their last name is their father's name (not universal, but significant).
• How important your caste is depends on where you are. In a city like Bombay, members of a higher-caste family will typically have few problems interacting with people of lower castes for business and the like, while in villages (IIRC) there is still a tendency to discriminate during even basic social interaction. Marriage among castes is still thorny, with parental opposition and 'what will people say' - however, intercaste marriage, as long as the castes are both somewhat equal if different, is typically not an issue (I speak from my sister's experience), and there are a number of people for whom caste is not an issue at all - however, if you're going in for an arranged marriage, your parents will typically search for partners within the same caste.

Again, these are one person's observations.

Though Malayali, my family has taken on the Tamilian practice, but its muddled by Kerala nomenclature. In the good old days, it was the name of the House, the father, the given name, and then the caste name. By cutting off the caste name, my dad's given name became, in the US, his last name, while people think the House name is his given name.

With me, at least, it was made a bit simpler, since I was born here, I was given American naming conventions. So I have my given name, followed by the House name (which is basically a universal middle name for all the men of the family), followed by my father's name as my last name.

Soudns fucking weird and complicated.

So I imagine that in India, it also depends on where you are if people introduce themselves with just their first name, or their full name with all of their surnames?

I imagine only the royalty ever use the full names. Most people in the south just go by their given name or, if they are a professional of some kind, initials of the first few names followed by caste name. Indeed, kids these days just refer to their full names as their "school names" since thats the only time they ever have to use it all to differentiate themselves.

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