“At the Stroke of the Midnight Hour…”
Pandit Nehru spoke of ancient India being born again on August 15, 1947, and promised a “tryst with destiny.” The unanswered question for Nehru and India, as for any individual or nation, is always: what’s my destiny? For decades India asserted its non-aligned stance and became its leader, while becoming “inseparable” from the USSR during the Cold War. Not until PM Modi took charge of the Indian Republic did the age-old Greek wisdom of “order is beauty, and beauty is order” get real traction in India (even as the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi never did).
Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi flirted with America’s Charmer, Ronald Reagan.
While Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi flirted with the United States during POTUS Reagan’s tenure, no small feat since it was after Indira and India had been subjected to Richard Nixon’s one of two structural flaws, love and hate, in his dealings with China and India, respectively, and as to India, he was profane, naturally ignoble, while engaging in wholesale denigration of the largest democracy – and there I was, as member of Speaker Tip O’Neill’s Speaker’s Club and a then-member of National Advisory Council on South Asian Affairs, along with our ambassador to Delhi, Harry Barnes, at the South Portico of Congress to receive then-Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao while PM Rajiv Gandhi came to address a Joint Session of Congress – it is not until PM Narendra Modi, who in his joint address to Congress on June 9, 2016, which Ranju and I joyously attended, did India declare that her destiny was “Indivisible” for both, her and us.
July 4, 1776 is August 15, 1947, Anew; the American Dream, is the Indian Dream.
No sweeter declaration has been uttered – save the one penned by the late great Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1776 memorializing that Government is answerable to the Citizenry – as indivisibility means the “oldest” and “largest” democracies are going to rock & roll together!
Vedic & Western Values Honor Transparency vs Sun Tzu’s Recipe of “Deception” to Win.
So, thank you Pandit Nehru – whose lap I sat in as a 5 year old kid thanks to my late great Dad, Hon. S.N. Batra – for India’s “tryst with destiny”; and, thanks to PM Modi, it has resulted in an awesome combination of ancient Vedic wisdom and core Western Values of a Government “of, by and for” the people. Both the Vedic and Western Values honor and cherish “transparency” to deliver Freedoms to the individual. Contrasted with the un-matched wisdom of general Sun Tzu, the foundational military genius of great Chinese empires and dynasties through the millennia: “deception,” as in basis for winning.
The Quad in the South China Sea to Maintain UNCLOS’ Goal of Maritime Security.
Hence, it is in the natural turn of events that India is a critical part of The Quad, and since Freedom of Navigation on the high seas is a high priority in perpetuity – especially in the South China Seas where China’s wistful 9-Dashes, imposed by psychedelic domination in violation of UNCLOS and EEZ, irritate (and sometimes kill) – PM Modi on August 9th served as President of the UNSC to enhance global peace and security, by seeking to enhance maritime security. While Pakistan is an eternal and honest ally of the People’s Republic of China since her birth in 1947, thanks to Chairman Mao’s century long-vision, and party to the secret bilateral 1949 Karachi Agreement to start creating China’s Golan Heights, it was impressive to me as an un-conflicted American that the only UNSC “P5” head of state to attend Modi’s Security Council historic participation was Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
India Aids US, Europe and Democracy by Bringing Russia to Our Side vs Wolf Warriors.
In time, we in the United States will see this durable Russia-India relationship to be our operative asset, to solve many an insolvable dispute of territorial integrity of sovereign states in Europe and Middle East, let alone the primary issue now facing us all: how to keep the world free from becoming a collection of vassal states of an un-elected dominating nation, that likes sinking fishing boats of neighboring states, and has repudiated her own core wisdom, from her statecraft-master Confucius, “may you live in boring times” by weaponizing not just SARS-Cov2 viruses, with un-natural gain-of-function that threaten the ecosystem more than Climate Crisis does our survival, but even abandoning diplomatic protocols in favor of Wolf Warrior-commando’s: diplomat-Wolf Warriors in mortal combat. One recent appreciable change has taken place – that reflects President Xi’s appreciation that general Sun TZU violates the wisdom of Confucius – China’s new ambassador Qin Gang
since his arrival on American soil has reverted to warm diplomacy, and rejected the prior Wolf Warrior mandate, visible in Anchorage and Wendy Sherman’s recent visit to Beijing, as it stunningly violates the wisdom of both general Sun Tzu and Confucius. I hope this change is real, and not merely deceptively warm and fuzzy in honor of the greatest Chinese General.
Even Benjamin Franklin wishes India Happy 75th Independence Day.
Ben Franklin in 1787 famously answered a lady after having achieved our hallowed Constitution, “It’s a republic madam, if you can keep it.” Thanks to India’s PM Modi’s Washington Declaration of “Indivisibility,” the largest democracy will help the oldest democracy to stay one, and hence, Ben Franklin wishes India “Happy 75th!” Indeed, all of us – Democrats and Republicans, President Biden and former President Trump – wish India well, with peace and security for all her citizens. The land of Mahatma Gandhi deserves no less.
Ravi Batra, Esq.
Ravi Batra, starting September 11, 2021, is a publisher of The America Times Company Ltd., and since January 2022, is the Editor-in-Chief. He is a member of the National Press Club, in Washington D.C., and a member of its "Freedom of the Press" and "International Correspondents" Teams/Committees.
A member of the bar since 1981, he is the head of a boutique law firm in Manhattan, The Law Firm of Ravi Batra, P.C., that handles complex constitutional, sovereignty, torture, civil and criminal cases, representing governments, corporates and individuals, with landmark legal victories, including, libel in fiction, in “Batra v. Dick Wolf.” He is Chairman & CEO, Greenstar Global Energy Corp., King Danylo of Galicia International Ltd., Mars & Pax Advisors, Ltd., Chairman of National Advisory Council on South Asian Affairs, and since September 2021, Advisor for Legal and Humanitarian Affairs to the Permanent Mission of Georgia to the United Nations. He is invited by various governments to address High Level Ministerial events, including, on Counter-Terrorism, including, Astana (Nur-Sultan), Dushanbe, Minsk and Delhi. He has testified in Congress as an invitee of the Chair, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, and interacted with U.S. Department of State from 1984 -1990, and then again, from 2006, during the tenures of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo and Antony Blinken.
He has served as Commissioner of New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), Trustee on New York State IOLA Board, New York State Judicial Screening Committee for the Second Judicial Department, City Bar’s Judicial Committee, Vice-Chair of Kings County Democratic County Committee’s Independent Judicial Screening Committee for the then-2nd Judicial Department of Brooklyn and Staten Island, Chair of NYSTLA’ Judicial Independence Committee, with many more bar leadership roles, including, NYSBA’s House of Delegates for four years. He has served as Advisor for Legal & Human Rights Affairs to the Permanent Mission of Ukraine post-annexation of Crimea till 2021, and Legal Advisor to numerous nations’ permanent missions to the U. N. since 2009, including, India, Pakistan, Honduras and Malta. He has served: as Global Special Counsel to The Antonov Company in Ukraine, a state-owned company, and was registered with the Justice Dept pursuant to FARA; and as Special Global Advisor to Rector/President of both - National Aviation University of Ukraine and National Technical University of Ukraine/KPI. He remains involved in geopolitics and public policy since the mid-1980's, starting with being on House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s Speaker’s Club and appointed member of NACSAA during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure. In 1988, he was part of U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese’s Delegation to Japan to resolve bilateral trade imbalance. He regularly interacts with the multilateral diplomatic community, and during the High Level UNGA Debate, with heads of State/Government. He is sought for his views as a speaker and writer.