AS USA FALLS INDIA RISES

Last week I wrote about the barbarians at our gates, the international Islamist movement that seeks America’s downfall. If it was just America, some might argue it’s karma. After all, the United States has left a trail of destruction in every country it claims to have helped including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and now, Yemen. After propping up Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two terrorist-producing countries, perhaps America’s downward slide, seen in the context of its farcical presidential election, is nature’s way of settling scores. The trouble is the Islamists do not simply seek the destruction of America. They seek the end of civilization as we know it, and pray for an Armageddon promised in the books of Islamic sharia. But who will pick up the baton from America as the giant falls? It won’t be Europe, as Mark Steyn has correctly predicted, and certainly not the authoritarian regimes of China or Russia. On Tuesday, The Independent reported on just one of the sledgehammer tactics adopted by China to fight rising Islamism among its Muslim minority. Beijing is calling on people to report their neighbours, friends and relatives for “luring minors into religious activities". New education rules coming into force in Xinjiang Nov. 1, threaten to remove children from their parents’ care and send them to “receive rectification” at specialist schools. Notwithstanding the medieval ideology of the Islamists, China’s and Russia’s iron-hand authoritarianism will produce the opposite effect of what we want. The one country that can take a lead in this global endeavour, post-America, is India. Employing its wisdom, patience, iron will and rising military strength in addition to diplomatic prowess, New Delhi can deliver. It was Hu Shih, a Chinese philosopher and ambassador to the U.S. in the early years of World War II, who made a profound observation about India and its power. As he put it: “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries, without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.” Today, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has stood up to Islamic terrorism, with the support of its over 150 million-strong Muslim population. At the United Nations, at the recent BRICS conference of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and at the meeting of the G-20 heads of governments, Modi has aggressively isolated the one country responsible for nurturing most of the world’s jihadi terrorists, India’s neighbour, Pakistan. As an Indophile, my observations may be considered biased towards New Delhi, so here is what three eminent thinkers of the West have said about India. Mark Twain: “India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured ... in India only.” Albert Einstein: “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.” Will Durant: “India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.” Enough said