Many like to take sides, express preferences, and judge as armchair generals, especially Western gen-me sycophant snowflakes in glass houses of relative luxury. Some are under the "Christian dogma" thumb of "do not defend nor stand up for yourself, your family, nor your principles", a sad and lame twist on "turn the other cheek", instead cowtowing to politically correct "dogma nartsees" with no insight into the tyranny and slavery under their own feet. India no more denies her right to stand up for her own people, having faced down China in a months long border standoff, and the USA's sanction threats for ponying up for Russia's S400s, doubled down with French Rafaale fighters, and has in just recent years begun to deliver some serious eye for an eye responses to her Muslim neighbour's "message by mass murder" zealotry (see extract below). India's message is being heard, the USA has backed down, and dignity and partnerships are on the rise. "Nice to see dignity on the rise." New India lauds Mahatma Gandhi on all but one important matter https://www.rt.com/op-ed/471539-india-modi-gandhi-pakistan/ ... Gandhi was the “apostle” of peace and non-violence who offered the other cheek when slapped but the India of today would rather leave a black eye on its aggressor as it did on Pakistan with retaliatory heavy shelling in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) on Sunday, which left at least 6-10 Pakistani soldiers dead and blew up three terrorist camps into thin air. It was a grim fresh reminder to Pakistan that India has the doctrine of an eye-for-an-eye in its new rulebook and the “surgical strikes” and “Balakot airstrikes” which followed the terrorist attacks in Uri (2016) and Pulwama (2019) are the new philosophy and not an exception. India is still an adherent to “non-violence” and has an unbroken history of peaceful coexistence, never eyeing others’ territory but the painful lessons of the past demand it puts a premium on the integrity of its Union. India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval often reminds his audience that India was overrun by invaders despite being arguably the most advanced civilization of its time. It never protected its seas even though they straddle three of its four corners. It led to the servitude of almost a thousand years. It faced wars imposed by Pakistan on three of four occasions: 1947-48, 1965 and 1999. It didn't use 90,000 prisoners-of-war as a bargaining chip nor did it advance deep inside Pakistan after winning a conclusive war in 1971 which led to the creation of Bangladesh. India was seen as the epitome of a “soft” nation as terrorists kept crossing the Line of Control (LoC) through Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir and cost tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers’ lives since 1990. The horrific attack in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, when terrorists from across the border sprayed machine guns on civilians on the streets and five-star hotels, known as 26/11 in the nation's damaged psyche, evoked no retaliatory response from India. Worse, the very next year in 2009, the same United Progressive Alliance (UPA), returned to power without any retribution from its masses. All this has changed for good. India today is driven in its bid to modernize its army: It has only recently ceded its top spot to Saudi Arabia as the biggest arms importer of the world — the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reckons India accounted for 12 percent of the total global arms imports for the 2013-2017 period. It has lapped up Russia's S-400 advanced missile system defying the threat of sanctions from the United States. It has gone ahead with its purchase of France's Rafale fighter jets even though the move threatened to derail Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bid for a second term on unfounded charges of corruption this year. India today is literally taking the fight into the enemy camp: It raked up the issue of Balochistan and its independence from Pakistan; it has vowed to wrest back the control of PoK for a unified Kashmir and its Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has already debunked the ‘No-First-Use’ nuclear doctrine. India stood up for its ally Bhutan and stared down China in a face-to-face standoff between the two armed forces in Doklam in 2017 which lasted months. ...