> only major country/culture that has never been aggressive towards it's neighbors is India
I have Indian heritage, and I heard this take growing up, and I'll concede that India is on the peaceful side of the international median. That said, the folks in Sri Lanka [1][2] and Bangladesh [3] would aggressively disagree. (Book recommendation: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida [4]. Also, anything by Assamese authors.)
And this thesis really only applies to modern India. Pre-EIC India was a subcontinent of warring states. And even for the "modern India" designation, we have to ignore the violence of political integration [5][6].
India saved Bangladesh from genocide at the hands of Pakistan. Those ungrateful bastards still stand with Pakistan on everything against India. I don't know why you would bring that up. India could have easily took over Bangladesh after Pakistani forces surrendered, but they chose to let them be independent.
Sri Lanka is more complicated, but India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces it sent, and those too targeted the Indian Tamils, which was the reason they assassinated Rajeev Gandhi.
Well yes, we turned them into a suzerainty. The Iranians didn't like it when America did it through the Shah. The Bangladeshis don't like it when Indians think they should be a supplicant sovereign. (Sheikh Hassina was to New Delhi what the Shah was to D.C.)
Like, America rescued Japan from a ruinous autocracy. It would still be mean and violent to demand their gratitude for us nuking them.
> India could have easily took over Bangladesh
And it would have had another Kashmir. In practice, buffer state was the only correct play. (Arguably, it's what China should have done with Tibet.)
> India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces
Yeah. The entire American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was done with "peacekeeping" forces. The peacekeepers in both cases committed documented atrocities.
> The peacekeepers in both cases committed documented atrocities.
The huge part you are missing is, India did the atrocities against it's own people. LTTE were Tamils of Indian origin. My original comment said India has never been an aggressor to it's neighbors.
> India did the atrocities against it's own people
Everyone always says this. Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese. Ukrainians aren't real. And India wasn't subjugated by the British, it was part of the British Empire and thus a domestic concern.
> LTTE were Tamils of Indian origin. My original comment said India has never been an aggressor to it's neighbors
If you redefine neighbors to being inside India, and then excuse atrocities inside India, sure. By that definition, nobody has ever been an aggresor to its neighbors.
I dunno, I've been reading for hours, I might play some games.
So the Mughals defeated and assimilated the Sultanate of Delhi ruled by the Afghan Lodi dynasty. Then they defeated and assimilated the Rajput Kingdom of Mewar ... who were Hindu ... ah, I've got it, you must mean Hindus. So excluding Shah Jahan and the Taj Mahal from being Indian I guess. I'll figure this out eventually.
Right then: Rana Sanga (the Rajput Maharana of Mewar) invaded and captured lots of territory belonging to the Malwa Sultanate, the Gujurat Sultanate, and the Lodi dynasty (again). So there you go. You can't say that those places were India at the time, and you can't say he was from the wrong culture, checkmate.
Rana sangha took back his territory. And the other conflicts you mention were against fellow "Indians". I put it in quotes, because as you mention there was no India back then. But there was a shared culture and off course religion. I never said Indians were never violent. My original comment was that India (as a whole) has never been the aggressor against it's neighbors. And you still haven't disproved that. I don't know what you are checkmating.
But we agree there was no India to ascribe this non-invasive nature to, before unification. With the result that India-as-a-whole is the product of aggression against neighbors, where all those neighbors became India, but only quite recently, meaning that there hasn't been much time for India as a whole to be aggressive against further neighbors.
It's like saying that the English never invaded anywhere before 927. Of course they didn't, because the first English king was crowned in 927, and before that the English were the West Saxons, South Saxons, East Angles, Middle Angles, South Angles, Men of Kent, two flavors of Northumbrians and a few stray Welsh, and they were all busy invading one another.
China doesn't belong on this list. Nehru's government was aggressively pro China. China returned the favour by invading Tibet and then attacking India [1].
If Mao hadn't done that, we'd probably be living in a Sino-Indian world order today. (India and China have surprisingly few fundamental geopolitical overlaps, the Himalayas neatly partitioning their spheres.)
China's invasion and annexation of Tibet (versus making it a bufffer state) set the geopolitical board. There was a world in which China and India could have peacefully co-existed, and the historical record shows India trying for that before China attacked.
India never attacked Pakistan. Every war was started by Pakistan. India took over vast swathes of Pakistan in 1971 but unilaterally returned all the land. Kashmir is integral part of India. India didn't attack china, China attacked it.
Returning the land doesn't make 1971 ok. There are no excuses for sri lanka and sikkim. The 2019 strikes on Pakistan seem unwarranted from the outside. I'll conceed China's claims India was the aggressor are very questionable.
From Wikipedia on 1971 war: "The war began with Pakistan's Operation Chengiz Khan, consisting of preemptive aerial strikes on eight Indian air stations." India has never started a war. Period. In 2019 again Pakistan attacked first through it's terrorist proxies. In Sri Lanka Indian forces only killed LTTE who were Tamils of Indian origin. Nothing ever happened in sikkim.
The conflicts with Pakistan always do start with Pakistan, but the response is always disproportionate, and seeds future similar conflicts. Its not starting a war. The Sri lanka conflict is not so simple. If you invade a country that doesn't consent to you being there, but only kill a non-governmental group while there, and then leave, I think that is essentially a war. Likewise when you set up fake referendums to annex Sikkim that is just conquest by other means. India has not behaved as badly as many other powers, but that foes not mean we shouldn't point out where it missteps.
Cannot reply to the comment below, so I'll comment here.
I see you had shifted the goal posts from being aggressor to "disproportionate response". My original comment said India has never been the aggressor and thanks for finally agreeing to that. I will not comment on the response being disproportionate or not, because that is just an attempt to derail the original conversation.
Yeah after reading more on each of the Pakistani conflicts it does seem that the immediate cause in each case was Pakistan. You made me change my mind on that one. I'm sure the whole thing is far more complicated than anyone who didn't live through the split could understand, but it does seem India is not the aggressor in any of those cases. Sri lanka seems like India's equivalent to Afghanistan or at worst Gaza, so relatively speaking it isn't on par with Ukraine for instance. Sikkim I don't fully understand, but it seems analogous to conquest.
> only major country/culture that has never been aggressive towards it's neighbors is India
I have Indian heritage, and I heard this take growing up, and I'll concede that India is on the peaceful side of the international median. That said, the folks in Sri Lanka [1][2] and Bangladesh [3] would aggressively disagree. (Book recommendation: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida [4]. Also, anything by Assamese authors.)
And this thesis really only applies to modern India. Pre-EIC India was a subcontinent of warring states. And even for the "modern India" designation, we have to ignore the violence of political integration [5][6].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_intervention_in_the_Sri...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffna_hospital_massacre
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Moons_of_Maali_Almei...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_India
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Hyderabad
India saved Bangladesh from genocide at the hands of Pakistan. Those ungrateful bastards still stand with Pakistan on everything against India. I don't know why you would bring that up. India could have easily took over Bangladesh after Pakistani forces surrendered, but they chose to let them be independent.
Sri Lanka is more complicated, but India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces it sent, and those too targeted the Indian Tamils, which was the reason they assassinated Rajeev Gandhi.
> Those ungrateful bastards
Well yes, we turned them into a suzerainty. The Iranians didn't like it when America did it through the Shah. The Bangladeshis don't like it when Indians think they should be a supplicant sovereign. (Sheikh Hassina was to New Delhi what the Shah was to D.C.)
Like, America rescued Japan from a ruinous autocracy. It would still be mean and violent to demand their gratitude for us nuking them.
> India could have easily took over Bangladesh
And it would have had another Kashmir. In practice, buffer state was the only correct play. (Arguably, it's what China should have done with Tibet.)
> India was never directly involved in the conflict. Except for the peace keeping forces
Yeah. The entire American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was done with "peacekeeping" forces. The peacekeepers in both cases committed documented atrocities.
> The peacekeepers in both cases committed documented atrocities.
The huge part you are missing is, India did the atrocities against it's own people. LTTE were Tamils of Indian origin. My original comment said India has never been an aggressor to it's neighbors.
> India did the atrocities against it's own people
Everyone always says this. Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese. Ukrainians aren't real. And India wasn't subjugated by the British, it was part of the British Empire and thus a domestic concern.
> LTTE were Tamils of Indian origin. My original comment said India has never been an aggressor to it's neighbors
If you redefine neighbors to being inside India, and then excuse atrocities inside India, sure. By that definition, nobody has ever been an aggresor to its neighbors.
1971: India intervened militarily in East Pakistan, leading to the creation of Bangladesh.
1987–1990: India deployed ~70,000 troops to Sri Lanka and engaged in combat during the civil war.
1971: India saved Bangladesh from absolute genocide.
1987-1990: Indian peace keeping troops only targeted Indian Tamils, which was the primary reason they assassinated Rajeev Gandhi.
Sure:
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Pakistan_wars_an...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy6w6507wqo
In which one of these India was the aggressor?
All of them. It turns out there's plenty of blame to go around.
That's always been the nature of partition.
Because it's only existed since 1947?
Indian culture is over 5000 years old. It was a British colony for only about a century.
You said country/culture. If you're counting the Mughal empire, the Mughals were warlike.
Mughals were not Indian. They were invaders from central Asia. Do some reading.
I dunno, I've been reading for hours, I might play some games.
So the Mughals defeated and assimilated the Sultanate of Delhi ruled by the Afghan Lodi dynasty. Then they defeated and assimilated the Rajput Kingdom of Mewar ... who were Hindu ... ah, I've got it, you must mean Hindus. So excluding Shah Jahan and the Taj Mahal from being Indian I guess. I'll figure this out eventually.
Right then: Rana Sanga (the Rajput Maharana of Mewar) invaded and captured lots of territory belonging to the Malwa Sultanate, the Gujurat Sultanate, and the Lodi dynasty (again). So there you go. You can't say that those places were India at the time, and you can't say he was from the wrong culture, checkmate.
Rana sangha took back his territory. And the other conflicts you mention were against fellow "Indians". I put it in quotes, because as you mention there was no India back then. But there was a shared culture and off course religion. I never said Indians were never violent. My original comment was that India (as a whole) has never been the aggressor against it's neighbors. And you still haven't disproved that. I don't know what you are checkmating.
But we agree there was no India to ascribe this non-invasive nature to, before unification. With the result that India-as-a-whole is the product of aggression against neighbors, where all those neighbors became India, but only quite recently, meaning that there hasn't been much time for India as a whole to be aggressive against further neighbors.
It's like saying that the English never invaded anywhere before 927. Of course they didn't, because the first English king was crowned in 927, and before that the English were the West Saxons, South Saxons, East Angles, Middle Angles, South Angles, Men of Kent, two flavors of Northumbrians and a few stray Welsh, and they were all busy invading one another.
What? Kashmir, Pakistan, China, Sri lanka... I don't think has any neighbors it hasn't been aggressive towards. Was this sarcasm and I missed it?
> Kashmir, Pakistan, China, Sri lanka
China doesn't belong on this list. Nehru's government was aggressively pro China. China returned the favour by invading Tibet and then attacking India [1].
If Mao hadn't done that, we'd probably be living in a Sino-Indian world order today. (India and China have surprisingly few fundamental geopolitical overlaps, the Himalayas neatly partitioning their spheres.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
They had some recent border scuffles, I think, on the level of pulling faces at the foreigners or something like that. Yeah, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...
Hmm, so in eastern Kashmir, in fact. Versus Tibet!
China's invasion and annexation of Tibet (versus making it a bufffer state) set the geopolitical board. There was a world in which China and India could have peacefully co-existed, and the historical record shows India trying for that before China attacked.
India never attacked Pakistan. Every war was started by Pakistan. India took over vast swathes of Pakistan in 1971 but unilaterally returned all the land. Kashmir is integral part of India. India didn't attack china, China attacked it.
Your turn.
Returning the land doesn't make 1971 ok. There are no excuses for sri lanka and sikkim. The 2019 strikes on Pakistan seem unwarranted from the outside. I'll conceed China's claims India was the aggressor are very questionable.
From Wikipedia on 1971 war: "The war began with Pakistan's Operation Chengiz Khan, consisting of preemptive aerial strikes on eight Indian air stations." India has never started a war. Period. In 2019 again Pakistan attacked first through it's terrorist proxies. In Sri Lanka Indian forces only killed LTTE who were Tamils of Indian origin. Nothing ever happened in sikkim.
The conflicts with Pakistan always do start with Pakistan, but the response is always disproportionate, and seeds future similar conflicts. Its not starting a war. The Sri lanka conflict is not so simple. If you invade a country that doesn't consent to you being there, but only kill a non-governmental group while there, and then leave, I think that is essentially a war. Likewise when you set up fake referendums to annex Sikkim that is just conquest by other means. India has not behaved as badly as many other powers, but that foes not mean we shouldn't point out where it missteps.
Cannot reply to the comment below, so I'll comment here.
I see you had shifted the goal posts from being aggressor to "disproportionate response". My original comment said India has never been the aggressor and thanks for finally agreeing to that. I will not comment on the response being disproportionate or not, because that is just an attempt to derail the original conversation.
Yeah after reading more on each of the Pakistani conflicts it does seem that the immediate cause in each case was Pakistan. You made me change my mind on that one. I'm sure the whole thing is far more complicated than anyone who didn't live through the split could understand, but it does seem India is not the aggressor in any of those cases. Sri lanka seems like India's equivalent to Afghanistan or at worst Gaza, so relatively speaking it isn't on par with Ukraine for instance. Sikkim I don't fully understand, but it seems analogous to conquest.