ON DALĀLĪ AND BAVĀLĪ IN HINDOOSTĀN (ON SIMPING AND CHIMPING IN HINDOOSTĀN).

“We should be America’s manufacturing hub” is a very attractive economic model, including in defense, and serves both countries’ interests very well. It is admirable that our govt tried to make this happen.

Chiefly of course the Left-liberals (who prioritize fighting “Hindutva fascism” and appeasing their Muslim lobby in foreign policy above all else), but also Neocons and MAGAs who big-brain in different ways.

Neocons because they are 95 years old fossils stuck with Cold War era world models in which Pakistan is besht friend, Russia is the biggest enemy and America is superpower enough to take on everyone at once without strong allies.

MAGAs were initially the most promising because Trump was the one who started focus on China in 2016. But China has played it very śāntipūrvak (peacefully) with the West, biding their time, making the China hawks sound crazy—while simultaneously becoming intimidatingly powerful, leading a weak movement like MAGA to focus on softer targets like their European allies (which I honestly get) and India.

That plus random events (nobel peace prize syndrome, online anti-Indian sentiment generated by foreign muslim audiences, Pakistani & Qatari bribery) have also contributed.

The “Tech Right” is our only real ally in the US; unfortunately their bid for power with Musk has not really worked out so far.

If you accept 1 and 2, the natural conclusion is: we should be lobbying them to persuade the US that a good relationship with us is beneficial to them (which it is).

Instead, those who cheerlead the India-US relationship do the opposite: lobbying us, as if we are the cause of tensions! I.e. dalālī.

(In fact, this very dalālī is likely a cause of the broken India-US relationship, because allowing ourselves to be subverted signalled weakness.)

Both with China and the US, the blame for the hostility is largely on the other side (which is natural—they are stronger, and can afford to be that way; life is going to be harder for us).

But unlike with the US, China’s hostility towards us is completely rational. They are at the peak of their power differential against us, they have no plans of outsourcing their manufacturing in the near future, and the US doesn’t seem motivated to fight them.

There is very little we can offer them in a credible deal; unlike Trump, China probably doesn’t take meme alliances like Quad seriously.

American dalālī is much more potent than Chinese dalālī, not because anyone in govt is compromised, but because American dalāls genuinely think they are fighting for a humanist moral cause: for “democracy”, for “the liberal world order”—or that allying with America magically brings prosperity.

Whereas if China hired a dalāl they would just openly be on payroll.

The current developments are not about cozying up to China (which is impossible, and you will inevitably be disappointed if you think it is possible, see pt 4) but about American dalāls getting spanked as the government gets clarity about them.

Things like blocking Chinese investments in India were not done out of national security concerns but lobbying from American dalāls, and that is being reversed.

It is also not good to present this as India cozying up to China, as it will lead to govt paying political costs when China inevitably does something again.

The flip side of dalālī is chimping-out. Even if you cheerlead the India-China relationship, it is very counterproductive to lash out at America—even online, posting that you want America destroyed etc.

The only way India can have a decent relationship with either power is if it has a credible ability to strengthen its relationship with the other power.

If you burn the bridge with one side, the other side has a monopoly over you.

Also published on Twitter

People in the replies have bought too hard into the dumb “lobbying = corruption” meme.

Lobbying is all four: sāma-dāma-daṇḍa-bheda. Any relationship absolutely needs lobbying. The problem is every pro-US Indian became a US lobbyist to India (a dalāl) rather than the reverse.