Philosophical Time and the Israel-Palestine Stalemate – Note Quote

 

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot treats the notion of time as a traction between change and changelessness scrutinizing human condition in the light of an absurd universe. In exposing the barest of existence, the protagonists undergo a devitalizing process through repetitive actions with slight variations, signaling a passage of time ever so slowly, yet changing without any logic whatsoever in consonance with the absurdity of the universe. The micro-level individuation encounters this change, albeit very slowly, but in relation to the macro-level universality that hardly does, because “nothing ever happens”, Beckett transcribes this temporal circularity of changelessness by means of a stasis. In the 4-dimensional spacetime, Beckett’s Pozzo wanders through space in time only to be trapped in the vicious circle of nowhere-nowhen in congruence with Heidegger’s phenomenologically existential construct of the negativity of transition from transpiring. The traction of change and changelessness is tangible here, with time having become a deadener in its repetitious circularity, and despairing when confronted with the reality of the situation. That there is no escape from this existential prison-house is likened by Javed Malick in his Introduction to Waiting for Godot (Malick, 1989). The play is a philosophical treatise of trying to come to grips with “accursed time” resonating with Hamlet’s angst, “Time is out of joint, O cursed spite/If ever I was born to set it right.” 

If this conception of space and time is angst-ridden philosophically, or even psychologically, the absolutizing of space and time by Isaac Newton; as a priori formats of intuition by Immanuel Kant; as a property of matter dictated by the spacetime continuum of Einsteinian relativistic physics; or, Bergsonian la durée (lived time) of subjectivity or lived experiences, are deep reflectors proposing a unity of empirical, pragmatic, abstracted and rational realities. This, though is achieved in philosophy historically, it mirrors an epistemic synthesis in interactions between the subject and the object in the present, a deviation from the prescribed unification. Kant is apt here, when he says, 

Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without concepts are empty; intuition without concepts are blind…the understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only though union can knowledge arise (Kant, 92: 1929).

But what guarantees slipping against this reductionism generically? This gravitates significantly in the light of space and time, or spacetime  considered philosophically as an array that is continually in flux. Here the boundaries permeate unbeknownst of trying to enforce demarcations and distinctions. Be it spatial when regarded in field theories in physics, architectural spaces, sculpted voids, Cubist positive negative space, the pauses and blanks in Mallarmé’s poetry, and silence in literature and music, such cross-cutting disciplinarian constructions only involve a gerrymandering of traditions (Kern, 7: 1983). Or be it temporal, where the human agency is paramount, especially in Bergson’s la durée and is influenced by subjective and specific memories of the past and shaped by the anticipation of the future. The coming together of the spatial and temporal components is oftentimes distorting as it stretches the fabric of space, time and spacetime in a movement where nothing much happens or even if it does, it does slowly, dragging to a point where the schema appears to be a naturalized real, an external construction superimposing on the lived experience. This distorted sensibility of the Real when imported into the political realm can at best be instantiated from an inter-disciplinary perspective of philosophy and anthropologic psychology. It is here that one of the cardinal focus of Palestinian issue of waiting and in exile could best be thematized. Here, the morphic approach moves towards the psychopathological interpretation of the experience of exile from a phenomenological viewpoint, as highlighted in the philosophies of the Chilean Eduardo Carrasco (2002), the Spaniard María Zambrano (2009), and the psychiatry of the Spaniard José Solanes (1993). 

If José Solanes details the failure of discursive narrative to encompass exile in its definability, Zambrano (2004) thrashes out the problematic nature by stating that exile does not feel like such until one begins to feel abandoned.  This sense of abandonment is a suspension of space and time to which Carrasco alludes as the non-static condition of this exiled and lived experience. The phenomenon is more an issue of feeling alienated rather than differences between places or objects. As Solanes (1993) says, 

Alienness is clearly a response to a qualitative diversity that is overall perceived as a fact of discovering that in some dark way – though sometimes funny, but often disturbing – in exile we are personally related to this larger whole. Being in a qualitatively different world brings the experience of being alien. 

Carrasco (2002) matches the following with an understanding of abstract disposition of distances, geopolitical organization, our memories of the place left behind, “a world that is dwelled from specific meanings, requirements, obstacles, stimuli, possibilities, objects of desire, fear and different feelings, calling for thought, imagination, strangeness, astonishment.” This is the phenomenological perspective that was referenced to above, in that the space left behind must be understood just as it is given in consciousness, while a qualitative geography intervenes in emphasizing the configuration of space as a mode of being. Phenomenologically, consciousness is in essence deterministic when there is a convergence or unification between an individualized consciousness and the contextual circumstance in which the people find themselves in after having been displaced from their origin. This extrapolation of the individual to the people is liable to suffer the symptoms of generality, unless the loci is marked to measure and thus arrest ipseity, which is a kind of explicit self-representation, and used heavily in recent phenomenological literature in attempting to empirically study pathological self-experience (Carruthers & Musholt, 2018).  

If exile is a spatial displacement, then waiting is a temporal displacement. The allotropy of waiting is best summed up by John Milton (1673) in On His Blindness, 

They also serve who only stand and wait. 

Waiting reflects helplessness, an inability to control the pace as well as the course of events, or the dromological aspect of what Bergson means by the disorientation between la durée and objective time. The notion of time in exile or waiting for that matter is a little bit more complex even if the general agreement that time’s experience runs parallel with space’s (Silva Rojas, Nuñez & Nuñez, 2015). Eduardo Carrasco (2002) contends that to “original where”, which determines individuality, there corresponds an “original time” contouring that individual’s location within history. Zombrano (2004), not only is in consonance with Carrasco, but goes a step ahead by differentiating between Solanes’ idea of “un-space” (desespacio) and “un-time” (destiempo), where the exiled is also expulsed from her original time. This is deconstruction in principle where the exiled is frozen in the past and is only presence. This loci of the exiled on the periphery of history is caught between the past and the future through nostalgia and hope, or the stress between the ontic and the ontological. The tension here can be paraphrased from medieval scholasticism as an haecceity that perseveres with the ontic as it continually encounters the strangeness of a new space (exiled to) in its desire for hope. If the ontic were to lose out, it is nostalgic as struggle ensues once a link with the self is severed. Here takes place a consequential substitution in the form of hope, a future of undetermined time, or waiting. In the tradeoff of nostalgia and hope, past and future, the philosophical basis of past, present and future as a linear continuum is broken, and what we have instead is a traction between space and time, where the newness of space proportionates time as standing still for the exiled. 

A combination of such distortions in space, time and/or spacetime for the exiled could lead to psychopathological symptoms. In introducing the phenomenological notions of psychopathology, Karl Jaspers (1997) opened up the avenue for the structures of subjectivity that underpin the experience of a reality, which, when modified determine psychopathological lebenswelt (Fuchs, 2010). There are five dimensions of phenomenological psychopathology that gain significance, and in a way links to the thematic issue of the Palestinian cause, viz. lived time, lived space, lived body, intersubjectivity and selfhood. Lived Time is Bergsonian in import. Lived Space is an embodiment of a relationship between a person and her world as situated. Lived Body is a 3-dimensional experiential self-awareness, object-meaning & meaning-bestowing, and experiences of the other. Intersubjectivity as an emergent phenomenon is the pragmatic constitution of reality as regards other’s behavior and expression. Selfhood is either pre-reflexive or reflexive, primordial acquaintance with oneself or Self’s narrative identity respectively. The permutations of these five dimensions help understand human existence and determines psychopathological experiences. In connecting these rudiments with the exiled population that have distinct memories with its evocation of the past and a future-oriented hope, phenomenology impresses a qualitative rather than a quantitative parametric. For instance, when spatially treated, phenomenological distance supersedes geometric distance because the baggage of temporality is always accompanying the exiled. In itself, exile might not be true to psychopathological experiences, but generates enough conditions where symptoms of psychopathology are realized, be it in the form of melancholia or anguish. This completes the circle back to angst-ridden philosophy we began with. On the other side of the equation, exile could augment socio- and ethnocultural acculturation through a process of miscegenation, which in the words of Sonia Montecinos (1998) occurs through a process where “the purely biological yields to other processes linked to the history of our territories; coupling of people is a coupling of cultures: the acculturation that is the mixture of cultural elements, and assimilation – i.e., the absorption of an individual or a people by another culture.” But, this side of the equation in the considered case of the Palestinian cause is a far cry from being realizable, and does nothing substantial to assuage the fractious intersubjectivity that is the unwritten principle of the day. 

This, in fulfilling the main research questions also draws to close the hypothesis of how the ideas of space and time with their multi-dimensional characteristics are ingrained in the lives of the Palestinians. 

Bibliography

Beckett, S. (1989). Waiting For Godot. A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. Introduction and Notes by Javed Malick. New York: Oxford University Press.

Carrasco E. Exilio y universalidad. Interpretación fenomenológica del exilio (Exile and universality. Phenomenological interpretation of exile). In: Carrasco E, editor. Palabra de Hombre. Tractatus de filosofía chilensis (Word of Man. Tractatus of Chilean philosophy). Santiago: RIL; (2002). p. 203–61. 

Carruthers, G. & Musholt, K. (2018). Ipseity at the Intersection of Phenomenology, Psychiatry and Philosophy of Mind: Are we Talking about the Same Thing?. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. 

Fuchs T. Phenomenology and psychopathology. In: Schmicking D, Gallagher S, editors. Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Dordrecht: Springer (2010) 546–73.

Gómez Blesa M. Introducción. In: Zambrano M, Blesa MG, editors. Las palabras del regreso (The Words of Return). Madrid: Cátedra; (2009). p. 11–59.

Jaspers K. (1997). General Psychopathology, Vol. 1, 2. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Kant, I. (1929). Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Smith. Unabridged Edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 

Kern, S. (1983). The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 

Milton, J. (1673) “[On His Blindness] Sonnet 16 .” Poetry for Students. . Retrieved June 21, 2022 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/his-blindness-sonnet-16

Montecinos S. Mestizaje In: Boletín de Filosofía (Bulletin of Philosophy) no. 9. Santiago de Chile: Universidad Católica Blas Cañas; (1998). p. 226–35.

Silva Rojas, M., Armijo Nuñez, J., & Nuñez Erices, G. (2015). Philosophical and Psychopathological Perspective of Exile: On Time and Space Experiences. Frontiers in psychiatry, 6, 78. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00078

Solanes J. Los nombre del exilio (The Names of Exile). Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores; (1993). 

Zambrano M. Los bienaventurados (The Blessed). Madrid: Siruela; (2004).

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Sino-India Doklam Standoff, #BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). How the Resolution Could Have Been Reached?

The National Security Adviser of India, Mr. Ajit Doval was posed with a blunt question by China’s state councillor Yang Jiechi when the two met on July 27 to make a settlement over the disputable patch in the Bhutan-owned Doklam stretch. He was asked: Is it  your territory? However, this tough question failed to faze Doval, who, according to reliable sources, had most calmly replied that the stretch of land in question is not China’s territory either – Does every disputed territory become China’s by default? Doval asked in return. This has the potential to read a lot in between and thus without getting awed by the response, deconstructing what transpired is the imperative. This sharp exchange between the two countries was followed by several rounds of negotiations between the two sides in Beijing, with India’s foreign secretary S Jaishankar and India’s ambassador to China Vijay Gokhale trying to reach out to a mutually acceptable solution. These meetings were also sanctioned by the prime ministers of both the countries, especially when they met in Hamburg on the sidelines of G20 meeting on July 7. In fact, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping also agreed to the fact that the negotiations should be held at the NSA level in order to let the dispute not escalate any more. Modi later asked his diplomatic team to reach to a solution at the earliest as this dispute had been the worst in numerous years and the two countries cannot afford to lose each other’s support any more.

This is Doklam, the tri-junction between India, Bhutan and China.

It was here that India and China were involved in a three-month standoff with the two largest militaries in the world in a eyeball-to-eyeball contact. While, it was in everybody’s interest that the countries do not spark a conflagration, the suspense over this tiny out-of-bounds area had consequences to speculations trajectory. It all started in June this year, when the Indian troops crossed over the disputed territory claimed by both China and Bhutan as its sovereign territory to halt a road construction at Doklam, which could have given China the surveillance and access mechanism over India’s Chicken Neck, the narrow strip that connects the NE Indian states with the mainland. But, other reason for India’s crossing over the boundary lies in a pact with Bhutan where the country would defend any incursions into Bhutan. The standoff was pretty tense with piling up of the war machinery and the troops from either side in a ready-to-combat stature, but still showed extreme presence of mind from getting involved in anything adventurous. China’s blistering state-owned media attacks from instigating to belligerent to carrying out travel advisories on the one hand, and India’s state-purchased media exhibiting peppered nationalism to inflating the 56″ authoritarianism on the other did not really help matters boil down to what was transpiring on the ground. We had pretty much only these two state-owned-purchased behemoths to rely upon and imagine the busting of the myths. But, this week, much to the respite of citizens from either side of the border and the international community at large keenly observing the developments as they were unfolding, the tensions eased, or rather resolved almost dramatically as they had begun in the first place. The dramatic end was at least passed over in silence in the media, but whatever noises were made were trumpeting victories for their respective sides. Even if this were a biased viewpoint, the news reports were quantitative largely and qualitative-ness was generally found at large. The resolution agreed on the the accelerated withdrawal of troops from the site of the standoff.

China still vociferously insists that the territorial dispute in Sikkim was resolved as long ago as in 1890, when Beijing and the British Empire signed the so-called Convention of Calcutta, which defined Sikkim’s borders. As per Article (1) of Convention of 1890, it was agreed that the boundary of Sikkim and Tibet shall be the crest of the mountain range separating the waters flowing into the Sikkim Teesta and its affluents, from the waters flowing into the Tibetan Mochu and northwards into other rivers of Tibet. The line commences at Mount Gipmochi, on the Bhutan frontier, and follows the above-mentioned water-parting to the point where it meets Nepal territory. However, Tibet refused to recognise the validity of Convention of 1890 and further refused to carry into effect the provisions of the said Convention. In 1904, a treaty known as a Convention between Great Britain and Tibet was signed at Lhasa. As per the Convention, Tibet agreed to respect the Convention of 1890 and to recognise the frontier between Sikkim and Tibet, as defined in Article (1) of the said Convention. On April 27, 1906, a treaty was signed between Great Britain and China at Peking, which confirmed the Convention of 1904 between Great Britain and Tibet. The Convention of 1890 was entered by the King of Great Britain on behalf of India before independence and around the time of independence, the Indian Independence (International Arrangement) Order, 1947 was notified by Secretariat of the Governor-General (Reforms) on August 14, 1947. The Order provided, inter alia, that the rights and obligations under all international agreements to which India is a party immediately before the appointed day will devolve upon the Dominion of India. Therefore, in terms of Order of 1947, the government of India is bound by the said Convention of 1890. However, India’s affirmation of the Convention of 1890 was limited to the alignment of the India-China border in Sikkim, based on watershed, and not with respect to any other aspects. However, India-backed Bhutan is convinced that Beijing’s attempt to extend a road to the Doklam area goes against a China-Bhutan agreement on maintaining peace in the region until the dispute is resolved.

The question then is: how could have the tensions that were simmering just short of an accident resolved? Maybe, for the Indians, these were a result of diplomatic procedures followed through the time of tensions, whereas for the Chinese, it was a victory and yet another lesson learnt by the Indians after their debacle in the 1962 conflict. The victory stood its claim because the Chinese maintained that even if the Indians were withdrawing from the plateau, the Chinese would continue patrolling the area. Surprisingly, there isn’t a convincing counterclaim by the Indians making the resolution a tad more concessionary as regards the Indians. It was often thought that amid tensions over the dispute, there had been growing concerns over whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would skip the upcoming BRICS summit in China as he did in May when Beijing hosted an international event to celebrate the One Belt One Road Initiative championed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Harsh Pant, a professor of International Relations at King’s College, London, and a distinguished fellow at Observer Research Foundation, said,

If the road is not being built, it’s legal enough for India to pullback, because the boundary dispute is not the problem and has been going on for ages. The real issue was China’s desire to construct a concrete road in this trijunction under dispute. If the Chinese made the concession to not build the road, the whole problem went away.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman said on Tuesday that China would adjust its road building plans in the disputed area taking into account of various factors such as the weather. In his turn, Prime Minister Modi would not have gone ahead with the visit to China if the border dispute remains unresolved, according to the expert. Following the resolution of the border dispute, India’s MEA said that Modi plans to visit Xiamen in China’s Fujian province during September 3-5, 2017 to attend the 9th BRICS Summit. But, the weather angle refused to go, as in the words of Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences,

The weather condition is still the main reason. We all know that heavy snowfall is expected in the Donglang region by late September. The snow will block off the mountain completely, making it impossible to continue road construction. This incident has allowed China to clearly understand potential threat from India. I would call India an ‘incompetent bungler.’ That’s because India always is a spoiler in all the international organizations it becomes a part of. It always takes outrageous and irrational actions. After this incident, China realized that India is not a friendly partner, but a trouble-maker.

The Shanghai-based expert pointed out that the recent standoff has helped China better understand the potential harm India can cause. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Beijing hopes that New Delhi will remember the lessons of latest border confrontation and will avoid such incidents in the future. Despite both China and India agreeing to deescalate the border dispute for the sake of the BRICS summit, the temporary compromise may not last long, as tensions could quickly flare again. In the words of Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research,

The standoff has ended without resolving the dispute over the Doklam plateau. The Indian forces have retreated 500 meters to their ridge-top post at Doka La and can quickly intervene if the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attempts to restart work on the military road – a construction that triggered the face-off. As for China, it has withdrawn its troops and equipment from the face-off site, but strongly asserts the right to send in armed patrols. A fresh crisis could flare if the PLA tries again to build the controversial road to the Indian border.

Hu, the Shanghai-based Chinese professor, asserted that the recent standoff has allowed China to better prepare for future border disputes with India. The Chinese Defense Ministry said that China will maintain a high combat readiness level in the disputed area near the border with India and Bhutan and will decisively protect China’s territorial sovereignty.

So, where does Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) fit in here?

With India and Pakistan as newly installed members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, China is likely to face an increasing amount of divisiveness within a regional economic and security organization accustomed to extreme comity and cooperative discussions. India’s entry could especially frustrate Beijing because of rising geopolitical competition between the Asian giants and different approaches to counterterrorism. Beijing may not have even wanted India to join the SCO. Russia first proposed India as a member, likely in part to complement bilateral economic and security engagement, but mainly to constrain China’s growing influence in the organization. Russia is increasingly concerned that post-Soviet SCO members  –  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – are drifting too far into China’s geostrategic orbit. Moscow had long delayed implementing Chinese initiatives that would enable Beijing to reap greater benefits from regional trade, including establishing an SCO regional trade agreement and bank. As China gains more clout in Central Asia, Moscow may welcome New Delhi by its side to occasionally strengthen Russia’s hand at slowing or opposing Chinese initiatives. Indeed, during a visit to Moscow, Modi said, “India and Russia have always been together on international issues.”

Going forward, this strategy is likely to pay big dividends. New Delhi has a major hang-up related to the activities of its archrival Pakistan – sponsored by Beijing at the 2015 SCO summit to balance Moscow’s support of India – and continues to be highly critical of China’s so-called “all-weather friendship” with Islamabad. In May, New Delhi refused to send a delegation to Beijing’s widely publicized Belt and Road Initiative summit, which was aimed at increasing trade and infrastructure connectivity between China and Eurasian countries. According to an official Indian statement, the flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative – the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor – was not being “pursued in a manner that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Indian opposition stems from the plan to build the corridor through the disputed Kashmir region and to link it to the strategically positioned Pakistani port of Gwadar, prompting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to raise the issue again during his acceptance speech at the SCO summit last month. New Delhi likely will continue to criticize the corridor in the context of the SCO because, as a full member, India has the right to protest developments that do not serve the interests of all SCO members. The SCO also offers another public stage for India to constantly question the intent behind China’s exceptionally close ties to Pakistan.

India-Pakistan tensions occasionally flare up, and Beijing may have to brace for either side to use the SCO as a platform to criticize the other. In the absence of a major incident, Beijing has admirably handled the delicacy of this situation. When asked in early June whether SCO membership would positively impact India-Pakistan relations, China spokesperson Hua Chunying said: “I see the journalist from Pakistan sit[s] right here, while journalists from India sit over there. Maybe someday you can sit closer to each other.” Additionally, the Chinese military’s unofficial mouthpiece, Global Times, published an op-ed suggesting that SCO membership for India and Pakistan would lead to positive bilateral developments. Even if that is overly optimistic, it would set the right tone as the organization forges ahead. But the odds are against China’s desired outcome. Beijing needs to look no farther than South Asia for a cautionary tale. In this region, both India and Pakistan are members of the multilateral grouping known as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. New Delhi, along with Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan, boycotted last year’s summit in Islamabad because it believed Pakistan was behind a terrorist attack on an Indian army base. Even with an official ban on discussing bilateral issues in its proceedings, SAARC has been perennially hobbled by the intrusion of India-Pakistan grievances. Beijing can probably keep its close friend Islamabad in line at the SCO, but this likely won’t be the case with New Delhi. Another major issue for the SCO to contend with is the security of Afghanistan. An integral component of the organization is the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, aimed at combating China’s “three evils” – terrorism, extremism, and separatism. India, however, is likely to reliably and reasonably highlight the contradiction between China’s stated anti-terrorism goals and the reality of its policy. Most notably, Beijing has consistently looked the other way as Pakistani intelligence services continue to support terrorist groups in Afghanistan, including the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network. Moreover, because India is particularly close to the Afghan government, it could seek to sponsor Afghanistan to move from observer status toward full SCO membership. This would give India even greater strength in the group and could bolster Russia’s position as well.

Lingering border disputes and fierce geostrategic competition in South Asia between China and India is likely to temper any cooperation Beijing might hope to achieve with New Delhi in the SCO. Mutual suspicions in the maritime domain persist as well, with the Indian government recently shoring up its position in the strategically important Andaman and Nicobar island chain to counter the perceived Chinese “string of pearls” strategy – aimed at establishing access to naval ports throughout the Indian Ocean that could be militarily advantageous in a conflict. Such mutual suspicions will likely impact SCO discussions, perhaps in unpredictable ways. Although India may be an unwelcome addition and irritant to Beijing at the SCO, China does not necessarily need the SCO to achieve its regional objectives. From its announcement in 2001, the SCO gave Beijing a productive way to engage neighbors still dominated by Moscow. But today, China’s economic and military strength makes it far more formidable on its own – a point that is only magnified as Russian influence simultaneously recedes, or rather more aptly fluctuates. For instance, even though India rejected Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative overture, China remains India’s top trading partner and a critical market for all Central and South Asian states, leaving them with few other appealing options. India’s entry into the SCO, however, could put Beijing in the awkward position of highlighting the organization’s value, while increasingly working around or outside of it. Outright failure of the SCO would be unacceptable for China because of its central role in establishing the forum. Regardless of the bickering between countries that may break out, Beijing can be expected to make yet another show of the importance of the SCO, with all of the usual pomp and circumstance, at the next summit in June 2018. China as host makes this outcome even more likely.

Taking on the imagination to flight, I am of the opinion that its the banks/financial institutions, more specifically the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the upcoming BRICS Summit that have played majorly into this so-called resolution. India’s move to enter Doklam/Donglang was always brazen as India, along with Pakistan entered the Shanghai Cooperation Organisations (SCO) shortly before India entered Chinese territory. In this sense, India was almost mocking the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation by refusing to utilise the SCO as a proper forum in which to settle such disputes diplomatically. So, even if diplomatically it is a victory for #BRICS, materially it is #China‘s. Whatever, two nuclear-powered states in a stand-off is a cold-threat to….whatever the propaganda machine wants us to believe, the truth is laid bare. This so-called diplomatic victory has yielded a lot of positive, and in the process have snatched the vitality of what economic proponents in the country like to express solemnly of late, growth paradigm, wherein the decision is rested with how accelerated your rate of growth is, and thus proportionally how much of a political clout you can exercise on the international scenario. India’s restraint is not to be taken as how the Indian media projects it in the form of a victory, for that would indeed mean leading the nation blindly at the helm of proto-fascism. This could get scary.