There is a geometry to poverty that the comfortable never quite grasp. The daan is not picturesque. It is necessity shaped by hands that know cold.

My earliest memory is warmth. Not comfort—warmth. The difference matters. The daan gave us both fire and purpose. Before school, I would watch my mother coax flame from wood gathered the previous afternoon, her breath gentle against kindling that had to catch because there was no alternative. The first chai of the morning tasted of wood smoke and patience.

We cooked everything on that fixed altar of clay. Rice that stuck slightly to the bottom and was relished the next morning with chai. Vegetables that carried the faint char of open flame. Bread that emerged with ash-blessed edges. The soot that sometimes fell into our food was not contamination but communion—we were eating what kept us alive.

In winter, the daan’s secondary gift revealed itself. After the cooking ended, my father would carefully gather the hot coals with iron tongs, placing them in our kangris with the precision of someone handling something precious. Because they were precious. Those embers, nested in their wicker cradles, were the difference between sleep and sleepless shivering. We would tuck the kangris under our pherans, holding captured warmth against our bodies while the wind howled outside.

The daan asked everything of us and gave everything it had. It demanded wood, which meant hours of gathering. It demanded attention, because neglect meant disrespect. It demanded the daily renewal of mud-painting, that ancient contract between earth and need. And in return, it gave heat, sustenance, and the coals that carried us through nights when winter felt like a siege.

There was dignity in this arrangement, though I didn’t understand it then. The dignity of knowing exactly what keeps you alive. Of understanding the relationship between effort and survival. Of being able to trace your warmth back to your own hands gathering wood, your own breath coaxing flame, your own patience waiting for water to boil.

The rich speak of simplicity as a choice. For us, it was the condition of existence. But there was grace in that condition—the grace of sufficiency, of waste being impossible because there was nothing to waste. Every flame mattered. Every coal counted. The daan taught us the arithmetic of survival: that abundance is having enough, and luxury is when the fire catches on the first try.  I remember the faint glint it brought in my mother’s eyes, glimpsed from the corner of the room; I would soothe her with paeans to her mastery, if only to hide the gratitude that pierced my soul.

I live differently now. Gas burners that ignite with a click. Heating that requires no gathering, no tending, no intimate knowledge of how fire breathes. But sometimes, when winter arrives, I remember the specific warmth of kangri coals born from the daan’s heart. That warmth had texture—it was earned, it was known, it was ours.

The daan is still there in my village home, though we use it rarely now. Its mud surface cracks between paintings, its shape settling deeper into the floor it has occupied for generations. But it remains what it always was: a declaration that humans can make warmth from earth and wood, that poverty does not preclude grace, and that sometimes the barest minimum contains everything essential. Our blessed DAAN embodies a whole philosophy, one that our present age of manufactured scarcity and performative minimalism has largely forgotten.

I loved that daan the way you love things that keep you alive. Not sentimentally, but truly. With the knowledge that between its clay walls lay the difference between a family fed and a family hungry, between a night survived and a night suffered.

It was enough. It was everything. It was ours, our beloved DAAN.

The post A Love Letter to the Daan appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

The episode matters less for its choreography than for what it reveals about the moral economy of contemporary Indian politics. Public humiliation—once the by-product of communal violence or bureaucratic indifference—has increasingly become a leadership technique in its own right. The aim is not persuasion but degradation: the conversion of vulnerability into visibility, and visibility into warning.

Power, not accident

To explain the Patna incident as senility, misjudgement or cultural misunderstanding is to misrecognise the nature of political power. Power is most clearly exercised not when it governs neutrally, but when it marks bodies as available for correction. Kumar’s gesture toward the hijab, accompanied by the question ‘What is this?’, was not an inquiry but a declaration: that Muslim difference remains permanently provisional, always subject to the majority’s approval.

Political philosophy offers little ambiguity here. From Aristotle’s insistence that public office requires ethical restraint to Kant’s injunction never to treat persons merely as means, leadership has long been understood as a moral practice before it is a technical one. Modern democratic theory sharpens the obligation further: leaders wield not only institutional authority but symbolic power, shaping what forms of conduct are thinkable, permissible and repeatable.

Measured against even minimal standards of ethical leadership, Kumar’s conduct fails. It contradicts the constitutional promise of equal citizenship, runs counter to the spirit of religious freedom, and violates the expectation—fundamental to any democracy—that the state will not treat its citizens’ bodies as sites of demonstration. Yet the deeper violation lies elsewhere: in the casual ease with which humiliation was enacted, observed and absorbed.

A pattern, not an exception

The Patna episode sits within a longer and increasingly coherent pattern. The 2022 hijab controversy in Karnataka, where Muslim schoolgirls were excluded from classrooms and subjected to organised harassment, established a template: religious observance recoded as defiance, exclusion justified as neutrality, humiliation reframed as discipline. Courts equivocated, administrations complied, and hundreds of girls quietly withdrew from education rather than submit.

Digital spaces have extended the same logic. The ‘Sulli Deals’ and ‘Bulli Bai’ applications, which circulated photographs of Muslim women for mock auctions, translated older fantasies of domination into technological form. Though arrests followed, the episode confirmed how easily Muslim women’s dignity could be converted into a public resource for amusement and intimidation.

These moments do not require equivalence with the mass violence of earlier decades to be politically significant. What distinguishes the present is not the scale of brutality but its routinisation. Humiliation has migrated from the riot to the ceremony, from the mob to the ministry.

Leadership by contempt

Senior political figures have increasingly normalised dehumanising language about Muslims, describing them as demographic threats, cultural infiltrators or conditional citizens. Such rhetoric does not merely reflect prejudice; it performs instruction. Social learning theory reminds us that when leaders model behaviour, it cascades downward, shaping the conduct of institutions and individuals alike.

When a chief minister can publicly interfere with a Muslim woman’s attire without immediate consequence, a message is transmitted far beyond the hall in Patna. It tells police officers, administrators and street-level officials that differential treatment is acceptable; that Muslim dignity is negotiable; that correction may masquerade as concern. This is leadership by example, but the example is contempt.

The response of the surrounding ecosystem only reinforces the point. Ministers laughed. Officials hesitated. The ceremony continued. Dr Parveen was briskly escorted away, her visibility extinguished as efficiently as it had been produced. Silence functioned as consent.

The politics of normalisation

The danger of such episodes lies not in outrage but in repetition. Each unpunished humiliation recalibrates the baseline of acceptable conduct. What would once have provoked institutional crisis becomes background noise. Data on rising hate speech and attacks on religious minorities suggest that this recalibration is already well underway, particularly during electoral cycles.

Opposition reactions that frame incidents like Patna as personal aberrations—questions of age, temperament or decorum—miss the point. This is not about individual pathology but about political design. Humiliation has proved electorally profitable, morally inexpensive and administratively survivable. That is why it persists.

Beyond apology

The question raised by the Patna incident is not whether Nitish Kumar owes an apology, though he does. It is whether a constitutional democracy can endure when its elected leaders treat degradation as a legitimate instrument of rule. When humiliation becomes policy by other means, citizenship itself is hollowed out.

To be a Muslim in contemporary India is increasingly to receive a conditional invitation: tolerated, scrutinised, correctable. The theatre of degradation relies on an audience trained not only to watch but to laugh, or at least to look away. Democracies rarely collapse in a single act; they erode through rehearsed indignities that teach citizens which injuries no longer count.

If there are no consequences—legal, political or moral—this theatre will continue its performances, expanding its cast while narrowing the meaning of equality. The bill will not be paid by its authors, but by the very idea of citizenship they claim to defend, motivational bromides notwithstanding.

Author’s Note

This essay interprets a publicly circulated video and places it within a broader political and ethical context. It does not claim to adjudicate legal guilt, nor does it rely on conjecture about private intent. The argument concerns public conduct, symbolic power and the responsibilities of elected office.

Descriptions of the Patna incident are framed deliberately in terms of interference and humiliation rather than legal characterisation, recognising that visual evidence can be contested while its political meaning remains clear. References to patterns of discrimination and rhetoric draw on widely documented public record, journalistic investigations and human rights reporting.

Criticism of political leaders is not an attack on voters, regions or religious communities. It is an insistence that democratic authority carries ethical obligations, and that violations of dignity—especially when normalised—deserve sustained scrutiny rather than episodic outrage.

The post The Theatre of Degradation appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

Between 1931 and 1945, Japanese militarism claimed tens of millions of lives across Asia, with China bearing the overwhelming brunt. The notorious Unit 731, commanded by General Shiro Ishii, conducted biological warfare experiments on thousands of human subjects, while associated attacks contributed to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. These were not rogue excesses but systematic state policy, sanctioned at the highest levels of the Imperial government.

What followed was no less revealing of great-power cynicism. Rather than face full justice at the Tokyo Trials, Ishii and many subordinates received de facto immunity from the United States in exchange for their research data. Washington’s calculus was brutally simple: biowarfare intelligence was deemed more valuable than accountability to Asian victims. Several Unit 731 personnel later built careers in post-war Japan’s medical and pharmaceutical institutions. That foundational bargain foreshadowed a relationship in which strategic advantage repeatedly outweighed historical reckoning.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Japan’s defense spending is projected at 9.9 trillion yen (roughly 1.8 percent of GDP), continuing a multi-year Defence Buildup Program aimed at reaching 2 percent by 2027. The deployment of F-35B fighters, development of long-range missiles with ranges of several thousand kilometers, and acquisition of 400 U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles mark a decisive shift from a strictly territorial posture toward genuine long-range strike capability.

This transformation is codified in the “three new strategic documents” adopted in December 2022, which explicitly embrace “counterstrike capabilities” allowing Japan to hit targets on an attacking state’s territory. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s framing of a Taiwan contingency as a “survival-threatening situation” signals readiness to treat conflict over what Beijing calls an internal matter as grounds for Japanese military action.

From a South Asian strategic perspective, this trajectory is deeply troubling. The pattern recalls colonial-era practices of external powers manipulating intra-Asian rivalries to maintain primacy—Britain’s “divide and rule” in the subcontinent now echoed in Washington’s efforts to build layered security networks encircling China. The emerging web of arrangements—US-Japan, AUKUS, the Quad, Japan-Philippines and Japan-Australia Reciprocal Access Agreements, and trilateral US-Japan-ROK mechanisms—increasingly functions as a de facto lattice of mini-blocs.

India has been notably cautious about this architecture. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has repeatedly stressed that India has “never been a treaty ally” and does not seek that kind of rigid alliance framework, reflecting deep wariness of being locked into another power’s escalation ladder. For New Delhi, the lesson of twentieth-century history is clear: when Asian states are drawn into formal alliance systems designed elsewhere, they often pay the heaviest price when crises erupt.

The present moment is particularly dangerous because it combines three volatile elements: unresolved historical grievances, rapid military buildups, and intensifying great-power rivalry. China’s response has been predictably sharp: Beijing warns that any Japanese military role in a Taiwan conflict would be met with crushing force and routinely underscores its capacity to strike across the first island chain with ballistic, cruise, and increasingly hypersonic systems.

What should concern the wider region is how quickly Japan’s “exclusively defense-oriented policy” is being stretched. For seven decades, Article 9 of the constitution—renouncing war as a sovereign right—served as both legal and normative brake on military adventurism. Today, without formal constitutional revision, successive reinterpretations and the 2022 strategic documents have normalized capabilities that previous generations would have regarded as incompatible with Article 9’s spirit.

On Yonaguni, the human consequences are visible in microcosm. The island’s roughly 1,500 residents now find themselves living beside an expanded garrison and, soon, batteries of missiles intended to plug gaps in the southwest island chain. Once discussed as a potential bridge for ferry links with Taiwan, Yonaguni is being turned into a forward node in a contested battle-space—its inhabitants repeatedly told that their home is a likely target in any future war.

From New Delhi’s vantage point, the implications extend beyond East Asia. India’s own history with China—most notably the 1962 war and recurring border crises—has created legitimate security concerns, but successive Indian governments have also recognized that great-power confrontation in Asia rarely serves long-term regional prosperity. The temptation to see Japanese remilitarization as a convenient counterweight to China must be weighed against the pattern in which one Asian power is armed and encouraged to confront another, only for resulting conflicts to devastate Asian societies while external patrons remain insulated.

None of this excuses Chinese assertiveness in the South and East China Seas or along the Himalayan frontier. China’s coast guard and maritime militia operations around disputed reefs have fueled deep anxiety across the region. Yet there remains a meaningful distinction between addressing these challenges through diplomatic mechanisms, confidence-building, and adherence to international law—including UNCLOS—and racing toward a heavily militarized first island chain bristling with missile systems.

Historical denial further poisons the well. While individual Japanese citizens, including surviving veterans who later expressed remorse in China, have taken personal steps toward atonement, official statements from Tokyo have remained carefully calibrated around “regret” rather than full acknowledgment of wartime atrocities. This ambiguity makes Chinese and Korean suspicions of Japanese remilitarization more than mere propaganda; against the backdrop of Unit 731’s unpunished crimes, they appear as rational strategic caution.

The path forward demands political courage from all sides. Japan must accept that genuine security cannot rest solely on missile shields and counterstrike doctrine, nor on becoming the tip of an American spear in East Asia; deeper reconciliation with its wartime record is equally a security imperative. China needs to recognize that opaque military modernization and coercive gray-zone tactics directly strengthen the case for the very containment posture it denounces. The United States must rethink a Cold War reflex that defaults to alliance-building and forward deployments, even in a nuclear-armed, deeply interdependent Asia where miscalculation would be catastrophic.

For the rest of Asia—from India and Indonesia to South Korea and ASEAN’s smaller states—the wisest course remains strategic autonomy: resisting pressure to join rigid blocs while engaging with multiple partners on terms that preserve independent decision-making. The spirit of the Non-Aligned Movement, despite its limitations, still offers a useful reminder that Asian security problems require Asian-led solutions rather than imported alliance templates.

The missiles on Yonaguni are more than hardware; they are symbols of a choice between two futures. One is a region organized around competing military blocs, historical grievances left to fester, and young Asians once again asked to bleed for strategies devised elsewhere. The other is an Asia that confronts the ghosts of Unit 731 and Nanjing directly, builds genuine reconciliation, and constructs security through dialogue and restraint rather than an arms race in the shadows of past atrocities. The window for choosing the latter is narrowing—but it has not yet closed.

The post The Ghost of Unit 731 appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

Yet in this moment of civilizational emergency, something curious has been overlooked. More than fourteen centuries ago, a text was preserved with exacting precision that contains a comprehensive environmental philosophy addressing precisely the crises destroying our world today. It is not mystical poetry or abstract theology, but a coherent system of principles that, if enacted, would transform humanity’s relationship to nature from domination to stewardship, from extraction to preservation, from catastrophe to harmony. That text is the Quran, and its ecological vision remains radically relevant.

At the heart of this vision lie five foundational principles, each more urgent than the last.

Tawhid – the Oneness of God – might sound abstract, but its implications are revolutionary. If all creation flows from a single source and operates according to unified order, then humans are not masters standing above nature, but trustees embedded within it. We are not owners authorized to destroy; we are stewards obligated to preserve. The Quran makes this explicit: animals and insects are “communities like you,” not resources to be consumed casually. The Prophet taught that wrongfully killing even a sparrow demands accountability before God. This is not sentiment; it is the foundation of environmental ethics. Until we recognize that all creation has inherent worth independent of human utility, we will continue destroying it.

Khalifah – stewardship – carries equal force. When God establishes humanity as stewards upon the earth, this is not privilege but charge. It means accountability. It means we cannot degrade what is entrusted to us. A steward who returns property in worse condition than received has failed fundamentally. Applied to our planet, this principle is categorical: we must ensure that Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, forests, and wildlife are transmitted to future generations in no worse condition than we inherited them. Industrial civilization has inverted this obligation entirely.

Mizan – balance and equilibrium – speaks directly to our current catastrophe. The universe operates according to carefully calibrated proportions and cycles. Disturb one and you disturb all. This is what modern climate science has validated: carbon emissions create cascading disruptions through interconnected systems. The imbalance is so severe that nature cannot self-correct. Yet the Quranic solution is conceptually simple: restore balance. Consume only what is needed. Allow ecosystems to regenerate. This sounds radical to ears conditioned by consumerism, but it is the only path to survival.

Amanah – sacred trust – invokes the idea that what is entrusted to us must be honoured. The atmosphere is a trust. The oceans are a trust. The forests are a trust. Our civilization has become systematic betrayal of this trust. The top thirty oil and gas companies have generated four hundred billion dollars in free cash flow annually since 2015, knowing full well the catastrophic consequences of their extraction. This is not greed; it is breach of trust so fundamental that it demands accountability.

Finally, Israf – the prohibition of waste and excess – appears repeatedly throughout the Quranic text with unmistakable condemnation. We are commanded: eat and drink, but waste not by excess, for God loves not the wasters. This principle operates at every scale. One-third of global food production is wasted while hundreds of millions starve. Clothing is designed to fail. Electronics are built for obsolescence. Industries exist solely to convince people to discard functional items. This is not commerce; this is organized violation of Quranic ethics. An economy predicated on infinite growth within finite planetary boundaries violates Israf by definition.

Contemporary environmental catastrophe is not incidental to modern civilization; it is the direct result of violating every one of these principles. Climate warming reflects both arrogance (Tawhid denied) and imbalance (Mizan destroyed). Deforestation violates stewardship (Khalifah failed) and wastes what took millennia to create (Israf practiced). Ocean acidification violates the trust (Amanah betrayed). Biodiversity collapse violates the recognition that all creation has dignity (Tawhid abandoned). We have not merely failed environmentally; we have committed spiritual transgression.

The crisis is not primarily technical. We know how to generate renewable energy. We know how to build sustainable agriculture. We know how to reduce consumption. The crisis is spiritual – a failure to recognize creation as sacred, a failure to accept accountability, a failure to resist systems that profit from destruction. This is precisely where the Quranic vision addresses our deepest needs.

Consider what would change if humanity embraced these principles. We would transition away from fossil fuels not from fear of regulation but from conviction that we are accountable stewards. We would restore degraded ecosystems not from calculation but from understanding that stewardship demands repair. We would protect endangered species not from sentiment but from recognizing them as communities worthy of protection. We would restructure economies around sufficiency rather than infinite growth, around meeting needs rather than maximizing profit. We would extend justice to all beings, not merely humans, understanding that all creation possesses worth.

More than 1.8 billion Muslims inhabit the planet. If Islamic environmental teachings were actualized in their lives and societies, the impact on global climate and environmental crises would be transformative. But beyond Islam, these principles speak to universal truths: that creation is sacred, that stewardship demands accountability, that future generations deserve preservation of what we inherited, that moderation is wisdom rather than deprivation, that justice includes the non-human world.

The choice before us is stark: continue the path of exploitation and face civilizational collapse or transform our relationship to nature according to principles that recognize creation as sacred and humans as accountable stewards. The Quran mapped this path fourteen centuries ago. We are only now, as crisis forces our hand, recognizing its wisdom.

The question is whether we will follow it before it is too late.

The post COP30 and Sacred Trust appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

This is not the extraordinary evil of cinematic villains. This is what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”—the ordinary people in ordinary offices making ordinary decisions that cascade into extraordinary suffering. It is the bureaucrat processing deportation orders, the soldier following commands, the citizen who shrugs and says “what can I do?” It is, most dangerously, the mass of us who watch and do nothing.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the American presidency, the already fraying consensus around human rights, international law, and democratic norms has accelerated its unravelling. But to blame one man, or even a handful of authoritarian leaders around the globe is to misunderstand the nature of the crisis. These men are symptoms, not causes. They rose because millions chose them, millions more stayed silent, and the rest of us in democratic nations failed to present compelling alternatives to their promises of strength, simplicity, and someone to blame.

The slaughter in Gaza—with casualties exceeding 70,000 in just over a year—represents a moral catastrophe enabled by layers of complicity. It required not just Netanyahu’s orders, but soldiers willing to execute them, legislators voting for weapons, diplomats crafting justifications, media outlets sanitizing language, and global audiences accepting “collateral damage” as the price of someone else’s security. Each layer involves ordinary people making choices they can rationalize: following orders, pursuing national interests, maintaining objectivity, protecting themselves.

This is how genocides happen. Not through sudden eruptions of inexplicable madness, but through incremental normalizations of the unacceptable. First, we accept the dehumanizing rhetoric—they are “terrorists,” “illegal aliens,” “threats to our way of life.” Then we accept the disproportionate responses—collective punishment, family separation, siege tactics. Finally, we accept the logical conclusion of dehumanization: their lives matter less, their children’s deaths are regrettable but necessary, their extinction is self-defence.

The pattern repeats across continents. Major democracies, who used to pride themselves on their pluralistic ethos have been steadily sliding toward majoritarian authoritarianism, with Muslims increasingly treated as second-class citizens in their own countries, enabled by a pliant “Godi Media” that speaks only in the official language of schadenfreude. In Russia, a former KGB operative has reconstructed a surveillance state while waging a war of imperial conquest. In China, an entire ethnic group, the Uyghurs, faces cultural erasure through what amounts to a high-tech gulag system. In Turkey, dissent is criminalized and Kurdish populations are perpetually suspect. Across South America and Central Asia, strongmen consolidate power while institutions crumble and journalists disappear.

What unites these diverse situations is not ideology—these leaders span the political spectrum—but a shared contempt for human dignity and democratic accountability, paired with populations willing to trade freedom for the illusion of security and simplicity. Many have cynically cultivated religious constituencies founded entirely on hate, weaving their political survival around the perpetuation of that hate, making reconciliation itself a threat to their power, in the Marxian dictum of “religion is the opium of the people”. These leaders intoxicate their constituencies with this ‘opium’ for perpetual yield thereafter with intermittent brief hate campaigns as fertiliser. Thus for small investments they reap rich political dividends. What Firaq Gorakhpuri Sahib would describe as: “Har zare par ek qaifiate neem shabi hai. Aye saqiye dhuran yeh gunahoon ki gadi hai”.

The technology of our age amplifies this drift. Social media algorithms reward outrage and tribal signalling, making nuanced thought nearly impossible and empathy for the distant “other” even harder. We inhabit information bubbles where our prejudices are confirmed and our opposition dehumanized. The digital town square, which promised to connect humanity, instead fragments us into warring camps, each convinced of its righteousness, each blind to its complicity.

Meanwhile, the existential threats we should be uniting against—climate collapse, pandemic preparedness, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence governance—languish unaddressed because authoritarians excel at immediate spectacle, not long-term stewardship. We are, quite literally, rearranging deck chairs while the ship takes on water, and the gathering darkness suggests we may already be past the point of easy rescue.

Yet Rabbi Heschel’s words remain profoundly true: “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” This is not a counsel of despair but a call to moral clarity. We cannot control Netanyahu’s decisions or Trump’s impulses or Putin’s ambitions. But we control our own choices: what we speak, what we tolerate, what we support, what we resist.

Responsibility means refusing to become numb. It means learning the names of the dead, not as statistics but as persons. It means calling atrocities by their proper names—ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity—not hiding behind euphemisms. It means supporting organizations that document abuses, journalists who report truth at great personal risk, and civil society groups that maintain threads of connection across divides.

Responsibility means recognizing that “I was just following orders” and “I was just doing my job” and “what could I do?” are precisely the phrases that enable horror. Every act of evil requires a thousand acts of complicity, and every refusal to comply—every whistleblower, every conscientious objector, every citizen who says “not in my name”—makes the next atrocity slightly harder.

History will judge this era harshly. Future generations, if there are any, will ask how we watched the descent and did so little. They will study our Facebook posts and news archives and wonder how we could see so clearly and act so timidly. The question is whether we will have anything to offer them beyond excuses.

The banality of evil persists because ordinary people let it. It will continue until ordinary people stop it. Some are guilty of ordering the bombs and signing the laws and pulling the triggers. But all of us are responsible for the world we create through our action or inaction, our courage or cowardice, our solidarity or silence.

The choice, as it has always been, is ours. The question is whether we will make it before it is too late—if it is not already.

The post Our Collective Complicity appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

The Trump administration’s claim to retain rights to a military base in a country it withdrew from four years ago epitomizes what legal scholar Martti Koskenniemi calls “law as spectacle”—dramatic pronouncements that obscure how international law actually operates. In his seminal New Left Review essay “The Politics of International Law,” Koskenniemi illuminates a deeper reality: beneath such visible theatrics lies a vast, largely invisible legal infrastructure that distributes rights, powers, and vulnerabilities across the global economy, quietly determining who prospers and who struggles.

For India, the Bagram dispute crystallizes decades of experience with a legal order that, despite professing neutrality, systematically advantages established powers while constraining developing nations’ sovereignty. What makes this moment significant is Prime Minister Modi’s willingness to stand firm against American pressure—a marked departure from the diffidence that has historically characterized India’s engagement with Western-dominated international institutions.

The Hidden Legal Infrastructure

Beyond headline-grabbing disputes lies what Koskenniemi calls the “legal infrastructure of global capitalism”—a pervasive network of legal techniques that structures the global economy while appearing neutral and technical.

Consider India’s experience with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms. Since the 1990s, India has signed over 80 bilateral investment treaties promising foreign investors “fair and equitable treatment.” Corporations use ISDS tribunals to challenge regulatory decisions—environmental protections, health measures, taxation changes—claiming such policies violate their “legitimate expectations.”

When India attempted compulsory licensing for cancer drugs to ensure affordable access, pharmaceutical companies threatened arbitration. The British company Cairn Energy won a $1.2 billion award against India in 2020 for retrospective tax demands—a sum exceeding India’s annual public health expenditure in several states. These secretive tribunals, staffed by corporate lawyers who rotate between representing companies and judging cases, can enforce awards worldwide against government assets.

Like the Bagram claim—which asserts US rights superseding Afghan sovereignty—ISDS creates legal frameworks treating developing nations’ sovereignty as conditional and revocable.

A Dense Web of Constraints

Investment treaties are merely one strand. Intellectual property rules forced through TRIPS transformed traditional knowledge into commodifiable assets, often benefiting foreign corporations while criminalizing farmers who save seeds. Agricultural biodiversity that sustained Indian communities for millennia is now “protected” by patents held in Silicon Valley.

Financial regulations from Basel meetings—where Indian representation is minimal—constrain development finance. Tax treaties allow multinationals to shift profits offshore, depriving India of revenue. The World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” rankings, discontinued after data irregularities, pressured India to weaken labor and environmental protections.

These rules emerged piecemeal through different forums—WTO, World Bank, bilateral treaties, arbitration centers—each claiming technical neutrality while collectively channeling power toward global capital and away from democratic states in the Global South.

Meanwhile, the dollar’s reserve status allows the US to weaponize financial systems through sanctions and SWIFT controls—power India experienced when US sanctions on Iran disrupted oil imports. India cannot print rupees to fund infrastructure without risking currency collapse, yet the US finances trillion-dollar deficits through dollar creation. This asymmetry, supported by legal architecture from Bretton Woods institutions to debt contracts governed by New York law, is presented as technical necessity rather than political choice.

How Law Frames Reality

Koskenniemi’s subtlest insight concerns how law frames our understanding. When conflicts become legal claims—about property rights, contracts, treaties—certain questions become askable while others disappear. A farmer’s suicide from debt and seed patents becomes a contract dispute. Pharmaceutical profits built on denying affordable medicines become intellectual property protection necessary for innovation.

The Bagram dispute illuminates how sovereignty operates differentially. When the US withdrew from Afghanistan, it retained claims to infrastructure it built—framing American investment as creating permanent rights. This mirrors ISDS logic where foreign capital generates legal protections against sovereign decision-making.

Contrast this with India’s treatment. When India exercises regulatory authority—revoking licenses, issuing compulsory licenses, adjusting tax policy—it faces arbitration claims framing sovereign acts as violations of investor rights. The double standard is stark: established powers claim extraterritorial rights based on past investments; developing nations exercising identical sovereignty face legal challenges and financial penalties.

India’s Emerging Assertiveness

For years, India’s response to these structural constraints has been tentative and fragmented. The government has renegotiated some investment treaties and used TRIPS flexibilities for compulsory licensing, but always cautiously, under constant industry pressure and Western diplomatic censure.

The Bagram stance marks a departure. Prime Minister Modi’s willingness to publicly align with Pakistan, China, and the Taliban against American extraterritorial claims—particularly Trump’s bullying posture—signals a new assertiveness. This is not mere tactical positioning but a principled rejection of the double standards Koskenniemi exposes: where Western powers claim permanent rights based on historical investments while treating developing nations’ sovereignty as conditional.

Modi deserves credit for this courage. Resisting American pressure, especially from a Trump administration known for economic coercion, requires political will that previous Indian governments often lacked. The optics may be uncomfortable—standing alongside traditional adversaries—but the underlying principle is sound: sovereignty cannot mean different things for different nations.

However, this boldness on Bagram must evolve into systematic engagement with the broader legal infrastructure. Indian legal education still treats international law as neutral rules rather than power relationships to be challenged. Policy debates remain trapped in technocratic language—growth rates, credit ratings—obscuring fundamental questions about who benefits. Civil society organizations fighting specific battles—farmers opposing seed patents, patients demanding drug access—rarely connect their struggles to this larger architecture.

The challenge is to transform tactical defiance into strategic restructuring.

A Pivotal Moment

The Bagram controversy offers a teaching moment, and Modi has seized it. By making visible how international law creates asymmetric rights—treating sovereignty as absolute for some and conditional for others—India’s stance demonstrates that even rivals can recognize shared interests when fundamental principles are at stake.

Building on this momentum requires deepening our engagement with Koskenniemi’s insights. We need broader legal literacy about how international economic law actually functions, beyond nationalist rhetoric. We must connect domestic struggles to global structures, recognizing that farmer suicides, pharmaceutical pricing, and extraterritorial military claims are symptoms of deeper legal arrangements.

India’s legal talent—currently deployed largely in corporate service—could be mobilized for systematic documentation and critique of these mechanisms. Coalition-building with other Global South nations becomes essential, extending beyond elite diplomacy to popular movements demanding democratic control over rules structuring economic life.

The current moment is pivotal. American hegemony faces unprecedented strain. China’s Belt and Road offers alternative infrastructure financing. BRICS nations explore payment systems bypassing dollar dominance. The legal infrastructure Koskenniemi describes now faces challenges it wasn’t designed to withstand.

Modi’s willingness to stand against Trump’s bullying shows India can chart an independent course. The question is whether we can transform this tactical boldness into strategic vision—not merely resisting specific American overreach but systematically reimagining international law on more equitable terms.

That requires first seeing clearly what exists—the laws that rule us, operating beneath spectacle, quietly distributing sovereign rights and life chances across borders. The Bagram controversy, seemingly about a single military base, actually illuminates the entire architecture. Only by understanding how this system elevates certain property rights over democratic sovereignty, treats nations differentially while claiming universality, and channels resources systematically upward, can we begin changing it.

India’s Bagram stance is significant precisely because it refuses the false choice between accepting subordination and isolated nationalism. By building coalitions around shared structural disadvantages, we can work toward genuinely more equitable structures for global governance. Modi has shown the political courage to take this stand. Now we must build the intellectual and institutional capacity to sustain it.

The post The Hidden Architecture appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

A Pact Born of Desperation and Opportunity

This agreement did not emerge in a vacuum. The catalyst was Israel’s brazen September 9 attack on Qatar’s capital, targeting Hamas leaders during ceasefire negotiations. That a key U.S. ally hosting America’s largest Middle Eastern air base could be struck with apparent impunity sent shockwaves through Gulf capitals. If Qatar—with its strategic importance and American protection—wasn’t safe, who was?

The answer Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has chosen is telling: not the United States, despite maintaining 40,000-50,000 troops across the region, but Pakistan, with its 170 nuclear warheads and desperate need for financial salvation.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s blunt confirmation that nuclear capabilities will be “absolutely available” under this pact strips away any diplomatic ambiguity. Saudi Arabia has effectively acquired nuclear deterrence without the diplomatic costs of domestic development or the scrutiny of international oversight.

The China Factor Cannot Be Ignored

Behind Pakistan’s newfound strategic value lies an uncomfortable truth: this is as much about Beijing’s influence as Islamabad’s capabilities. With Pakistan owing China over $26 billion and the $65 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor binding their economies, this defence pact indirectly extends Chinese strategic reach into the heart of the Gulf.

Chinese analysts have been remarkably candid about viewing this development as a strategic opportunity to pressure both India and Israel while demonstrating the effectiveness of Chinese-supplied military technology—validation that came during Pakistan’s May 2025 conflict with India.

For Washington, this represents a strategic nightmare: a key Gulf partner hedging its bets by aligning with China’s closest regional ally, potentially creating a Beijing-Islamabad-Riyadh axis that could fundamentally alter Middle Eastern dynamics.

India’s Moment of Truth

For New Delhi, this development demands immediate and comprehensive strategic recalibration. India has spent years cultivating Saudi Arabia as both an energy partner and potential counterweight to Pakistan. That investment now faces serious jeopardy.

The economic stakes are enormous: $43 billion in bilateral trade, 18% of India’s crude oil imports, and millions of Indian expatriates in the Kingdom. Yet the strategic implications may be even more significant. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, launched with great fanfare as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, suddenly appears far more vulnerable to geopolitical headwinds.

India’s response thus far—studying “implications for national security and regional stability”—sounds measured but inadequate to the magnitude of the challenge. This is not a development that can be managed through diplomatic protests or economic leverage alone.

The Broader Unraveling

This pact reflects broader trends that should alarm policymakers worldwide. Traditional alliance structures, built around superpower guarantees and ideological alignments, are giving way to more transactional, interest-based partnerships.

Iran and Egypt’s calls for an “Islamic NATO,” Pakistan’s expressed interest in similar agreements with other Gulf states, and the general erosion of U.S. credibility as a security guarantor all point toward a more fragmented, unpredictable international order.

The implications extend beyond security. Global supply chains, energy markets, and technological cooperation networks all face potential disruption as countries prioritise immediate strategic needs over established relationships.

What Must Be Done

The international community cannot afford to treat this as merely another bilateral defence agreement. The nuclear implications alone demand serious attention from the International Atomic Energy Agency and nuclear non-proliferation advocates.

For India specifically, several urgent steps are necessary:

Immediate Actions: Accelerate defence modernisation, deepen partnerships with Israel and France, and explore alternative energy sources to reduce dependence on Saudi oil.

Medium-term Strategy: Strengthen ties with UAE, Oman, and other Gulf states not bound by similar pacts, while using economic leverage to demonstrate India’s value as a long-term partner.

Long-term Vision: Build counter-partnerships that offer Gulf states genuine alternatives to this Pakistan-China-Saudi triangle.

For the United States, this development should serve as a wake-up call about the costs of perceived disengagement and the risks of taking allies for granted.

The Stakes Could Not Be Higher

The Saudi-Pakistan defence pact is not just about two countries formalising military cooperation. It represents a test case for whether the international system can adapt to multipolar realities without descending into dangerous fragmentation.

The emergence of new nuclear arrangements outside established frameworks, the weakening of traditional alliance structures, and the growing influence of revisionist powers all threaten the stability that has enabled unprecedented global prosperity.

Yet this challenge also presents opportunities. Countries that adapt quickly to these new realities, building flexible partnerships while maintaining core principles, may find themselves better positioned in an increasingly complex world.

The old certainties are gone. The question now is whether responsible powers can shape this transition toward greater stability or whether we are witnessing the early stages of a more dangerous, fragmented international order.

The clock is ticking, and the stakes could not be higher. The international community’s response to this watershed moment will shape regional stability for decades to come.

The post Nuclear Alliances and Shifting Sands appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

The most telling moment wasn’t the display of hypersonic missiles or nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, impressive as they were. It was the sight of Xi Jinping standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un—three authoritarian leaders publicly united for the first time, sending an unmistakable message to Washington and its allies: the era of unchallenged American hegemony is over.

The Arsenal on Display: Substance Behind the Spectacle

What China revealed was both magnificent and deeply concerning. For the first time, Beijing displayed its complete nuclear triad—land, sea, and air-based nuclear delivery systems—including the debut of the DF-61 intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of reaching any target on Earth. The parade featured advanced hypersonic weapons like the YJ-19 anti-ship missiles, and the new CJ-1000 cruise missile, designed specifically to penetrate American naval defences.

Yet the most fearsome developments weren’t on parade but in the data. China’s nuclear arsenal has more than doubled from 300 warheads in 2020 to approximately 600 today, with Pentagon projections showing it could reach 1,500 by 2035—approaching parity with the United States and Russia. This represents the largest nuclear buildup in Chinese history, supported by 350 new missile silos and multiple mobile launcher bases.

The implications are staggering. For decades, nuclear deterrence operated on a bilateral U.S.-Russia framework. America now faces the prospect of managing a three-way nuclear competition—a fundamentally different and more complex strategic environment.

The “Axis of Upheaval”: More Than Symbolism

The parade crystallized what foreign policy analysts call the “Axis of Upheaval”—the growing alignment between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This isn’t merely symbolic cooperation; it represents a fundamental challenge to the Western-led international order that has prevailed since 1945.

The numbers tell the story. Combined, the Russia-China-North Korea nuclear arsenal comprises approximately 6,735 warheads, surpassing NATO’s 6,305. Economically, China’s defence spending has grown from one-sixth of America’s in 2012 to one-third today, with actual expenditures potentially reaching $471 billion annually. Meanwhile, intra-axis trade has kept sanctioned economies like Russia and Iran afloat, demonstrating the bloc’s economic resilience.

More critically, military cooperation has accelerated dramatically since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. North Korea has provided artillery shells and troops to Moscow, Iran supplies advanced drone technology, and China offers dual-use goods and economic lifelines. What began as bilateral partnerships is evolving into multilateral coordination that amplifies each member’s capabilities.

Strategic Implications: The End of Unipolar Dominance

This axis represents more than military cooperation—it’s an ideological alternative to Western liberalism. United by opposition to U.S. global leadership, these nations are constructing parallel institutions, alternative payment systems, and competing governance models. Xi Jinping’s call for “a more just and reasonable global governance system” isn’t diplomatic rhetoric; it’s a blueprint for reshaping international relations.

The strategic implications are profound. American defence planners can no longer assume they’ll face individual adversaries. Future conflicts may involve coordinated support from multiple axis members, complicating military planning and resource allocation. The recent parade demonstrated that China has moved beyond seeking accommodation within the existing system to actively building an alternative one.

The Constraints: Why This Isn’t the New Warsaw Pact

Yet this axis faces significant limitations. Unlike the ideologically coherent Soviet bloc, these nations are bound primarily by opposition rather than shared vision. China and Russia compete for influence in Central Asia, while historical tensions between Beijing and Pyongyang persist despite their alliance. Each member maintains different levels of integration with the global economy, creating vulnerabilities to coordinated Western pressure.

Moreover, none of China’s advanced weapons have been tested in actual combat, unlike Western systems proven in Iraq, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Technological advancement doesn’t automatically translate to military effectiveness, and China’s rapid modernization may mask underlying operational challenges.

America’s Response: Adapting to Multipolarity

The United States cannot respond to this challenge with Cold War-era thinking. The new axis operates in a globalized world where economic interdependence creates both vulnerabilities and constraints. Rather than seeking to contain China as it did the Soviet Union, America must adapt to managing competition within an interconnected international system.

This requires strengthening existing alliances while building new partnerships. The QUAD, AUKUS, and enhanced NATO cooperation represent important steps, but America must also engage the Global South—nations that increasingly see themselves as stakeholders in a multipolar rather than Western-dominated world.

Militarily, the Pentagon must prioritize technologies that counter China’s specific advantages: hypersonic weapons, anti-satellite capabilities, and integrated air defences. Economically, America must offer compelling alternatives to Chinese Belt and Road initiatives while reducing critical supply chain dependencies.

The Historical Moment

We are witnessing a transformation as significant as the end of the Cold War, but in reverse. Instead of unipolarity emerging from bipolarity, we’re seeing multipolarity emerge from American dominance. China’s military parade wasn’t just displaying weapons—it was announcing Beijing’s readiness to lead this transition.

The sight of Xi hosting not just Putin and Kim, but also Iran’s President Pezeshkian, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Sharif, and Field Marshal Munir alongside leaders from across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, represents more than authoritarian solidarity—it demonstrates China’s success in building a genuinely global alternative to Western leadership. The inclusion of Pakistan’s military leadership particularly signals Beijing’s confidence in expanding this coalition into South Asia, directly challenging India’s regional position and America’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

Looking Ahead: Managing the New Reality

The world order that emerged from World War II served humanity well for eight decades, delivering unprecedented prosperity and technological advancement. But that order was always dependent on American power and willingness to maintain it. As China challenges that dominance with military capability, economic heft, and diplomatic skill, the international community must adapt to a more complex reality.

The September 2025 military parade will be remembered as the moment China announced its arrival as a true global superpower—not merely economically, but militarily and diplomatically. The weapons on display were impressive, but the real message was political: China is no longer rising; it has risen, and it’s prepared to reshape the world accordingly.

For India, this represents a moment of strategic reckoning. New Delhi must urgently assess the evolving scenarios this new axis presents and develop comprehensive response mechanisms to safeguard its national interests. A detailed scenario-building exercise examining India’s strategic options in this transformed landscape will be essential to navigate the challenges ahead.

The question isn’t whether this multipolar world will emerge—it’s already here. The question is whether it will be managed peacefully or through the kind of great power competition that defined the early 20th century. China’s parade offered a glimpse of the stakes involved, and the world would do well to take notice.

The post The Dawn of a New World Order appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

The partnership under siege

What began as Trump’s second honeymoon with Modi has rapidly deteriorated into the most serious crisis in modern U.S.-India relations. Trump has “halted trade negotiations with India and imposed a baseline 25 percent tariff while giving China another extension,” announced secondary penalties on India’s oil purchases from Russia, and “threatened still more tariffs on India for its participation in the BRICS grouping”.

The scope of deterioration is unprecedented. As one analysis notes, Trump’s “sudden, inexplicable hostility toward India reverses policies pursued under five administrations, including his own previous one”. For the first time in two decades, “Trump’s actions, statements, and coercive tone have made relations with the United States a combustible domestic political issue in India”.

China’s unintended victory

Perhaps the most strategic consequence is how Trump’s India policy inadvertently advances Chinese interests. Without clear U.S. support, “the cost of resisting Beijing is too high” for India, leading to a “pragmatic acceptance of Chinese dominance in key areas of trade and security”.

The shift is already visible. Modi plans to visit China later this month “for the first time in seven years,” with Chinese state media citing a “warming” of ties. Since Trump took office, “National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar have all visited China,” with each trip culminating in pledges to normalize relations.

Trump has achieved what “years of salami-slicing along its disputed border with India in the Himalayas could not: He has made pragmatic submission appear cheaper” than continued resistance to Beijing.

The energy security dilemma

At the heart of the crisis lies India’s energy security. Russia accounts for around 35% of India’s oil imports, which India purchases at a discount, making replacement both “difficult and expensive”. India argues that its purchases from Russia have “kept global oil prices lower, as it’s not competing with Western nations for Middle Eastern oil”—a position previously understood by Western nations.

The paradox is glaring. While Trump targets India over Russian oil purchases, “China—which buys even more Russian oil than India—has received a reprieve from high US tariffs for now”. This differential treatment has prompted questions about Trump’s strategic coherence.

The Russia hedge deepens

Rather than bowing to pressure, India has doubled down on its Russia relationship. Modi has invited Putin to visit India later this year, with both leaders reaffirming their “commitment to further deepen the India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership”. For Russia, Putin’s engagement with India “signals that the West’s efforts to diplomatically and politically isolate Russia have seemingly failed”.

This relationship extends beyond traditional defence cooperation to include “increasing bilateral trade and cooperation in the Russian Far East, the Arctic, the Northern Sea Route and increasing traffic along the Chennai-Vladivostok economic corridor”.

BRICS as alternative architecture

The crisis has accelerated India’s engagement with alternative multilateral frameworks. With Indonesia’s addition as the 11th member and thirteen countries becoming “partner countries,” BRICS now represents “over 40% of the world’s population” and “37.3% of global GDP”.

While Trump has declared BRICS “dead” and threatened 100% tariffs on countries pursuing de-dollarization, the expansion continues. For India, BRICS offers potential alternatives to Western-dominated institutions, though it must navigate China’s growing influence within the grouping.

Strategic autonomy under pressure

India’s traditional multialignment strategy faces unprecedented strain. “To protect itself from the capriciousness of the Trump administration, India will not abandon multialignment but pursue it all the more forcefully”. However, “From India’s perspective, strategic autonomy now means choosing which dependency hurts less”.

The response includes efforts to “strengthen partnerships with European countries and major Asian powers, such as Japan and South Korea, who face their own balancing dilemmas because of the unreliability of the Trump administration”.

Border Tensions Remain

Despite diplomatic progress with China, fundamental challenges persist. While recent agreements have led to military disengagement in eastern Ladakh, “over 100,000 troops remain deployed on both sides, and rebuilding political trust will take time”. Intelligence assessments suggest “sporadic border clashes likely into 2025”, indicating that territorial disputes remain unresolved.

This ongoing tension limits how far India can pivot toward China, even under American pressure.

Domestic political implications

The crisis has profound domestic ramifications. “The opposition, the media, and the Indian public have put the government on notice to avoid showing weakness in the face of Trump’s threats”. Most significantly, “the domestic factors in the United States that appeared to guarantee good relations with India have not slowed their precipitous decline: the influential Indian diaspora in the United States seems powerless”.

Future pathways

India faces three potential strategic pathways:

Tactical accommodation: Gradual reduction of Russian oil imports while diversifying energy sources and deepening partnerships with Europe, Japan, and other middle powers to maintain strategic space.

BRICS-plus pivot: Embracing the expanded BRICS framework more enthusiastically while working to prevent Chinese dominance within the grouping.

Enhanced strategic autonomy: Developing a more sophisticated form of non-alignment based on middle power coalitions, technological self-reliance, and economic diversification.

Global order implications

The broader consequences extend far beyond bilateral relations. As one analysis warns, “The destruction of the liberal international order does not presage multipolarity but rather consolidates the bipolarity that will subsist amid increasing entropy in global politics”. Trump’s approach may inadvertently accelerate China’s rise while undermining democratic coalitions.

This raises fundamental questions about America’s pivot to Asia, as “successive governments in New Delhi have embraced closer ties with Washington” over the past two decades.

The path forward

While “India will survive this geopolitical whirlwind with some deft diplomacy and patience,” the “turbulent period is likely to have several long-term consequences for New Delhi’s foreign policy and strategic outlook”.

India’s challenge echoes Cold War-era predicaments but with far greater complexity. Unlike the bipolar world of the 1950s-60s, today’s multipolar environment offers both more opportunities and greater risks. The current crisis may ultimately strengthen India’s strategic autonomy by forcing diversified partnerships, but the immediate risk is that Trump’s approach could create the very multipolar world dominated by authoritarian powers that American strategy sought to prevent.

India’s response will shape not only its own future but the broader trajectory of global order. The choices made in New Delhi over the coming months may determine whether the 21st century witnesses genuine multipolarity with space for democratic middle powers, or new bipolarity forcing nations to choose sides. This is indeed a great reset—but one whose ultimate beneficiary may be neither America nor China, but rather a new form of strategic autonomy that transcends great power constraints.

The post India at the Geopolitical Crossroads appeared first on Greater Kashmir.

 Bottom Line Up Front: China’s approval of the world’s largest hydropower dam at the Yarlung Tsangpo’s Great Bend represents a paradigm shift in geopolitical competition, transforming water infrastructure from economic development tool to strategic weapon. This $137 billion project fundamentally alters the balance of power in South Asia, forcing India into reactive dam-building while creating unprecedented risks for 42 million people downstream.

The Strategic Masterstroke

On December 25, 2024—a date chosen with unmistakable symbolism—China officially approved construction of the Medog Hydropower Station at the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet. This $137 billion mega-project, generating 300 billion kilowatt-hours annually, dwarfs the Three Gorges Dam by a factor of three and represents more than just an engineering marvel. It is, in the words of geostrategist Brahma Chellaney, potentially “a ticking water bomb” for downstream communities and a calculated geopolitical manoeuvre disguised as climate action.

The timing is hardly coincidental. As noted by Neely Haby in her Australian Strategic Policy Institute analysis, this announcement came during a period of tentative China-India border rapprochement, yet the project’s location—mere kilometres from the disputed Line of Actual Control—suggests Beijing’s true intentions extend far beyond clean energy generation.

The Hydro-Hegemony Playbook

China’s Yarlung Tsangpo project follows a well-established pattern of what experts term “hydro-hegemony”—the use of water infrastructure to gain leverage over downstream nations. As documented in multiple sources, China has already deployed this strategy along the Mekong River, where 11 giant dams have created what researchers describe as a “fait accompli” approach: construct in secrecy, reveal only when satellite imagery makes concealment impossible, then present the project as irreversible.

The pattern is chillingly consistent. Fan Xiao, the renowned Chinese geologist whose analysis has been translated by Probe International, reveals that the Great Bend Dam isn’t even needed for Tibet’s energy requirements. Sichuan and Yunnan provinces already release excess hydropower due to oversupply. The real driver, as Fan notes, appears to be “the allure of increased GDP, investment, and tax revenue”—and, though unstated, strategic leverage.

Four Pillars of Coercive Potential

Drawing from Haby’s comprehensive analysis, the Great Bend Dam creates four distinct vectors of strategic coercion:

Political Control Through Infrastructure: As demonstrated by China’s construction of 100-home civilian villages in disputed territories, major infrastructure projects serve to consolidate Beijing’s claims. The Great Bend Dam extends this salami-slicing strategy to a new scale, creating irreversible facts on the ground just before water enters Indian territory.

Strategic Flooding as Warfare: The Kakhovka Dam’s destruction in Ukraine demonstrated water infrastructure’s potential as a weapon of war. China’s capacity to release massive water volumes during monsoon seasons—or withhold them during droughts—gives Beijing the ability to cause humanitarian disasters downstream. As documented, China has already weaponized this capability, suspending data-sharing during the 2017 and 2020 border crises.

Population Manipulation Through Scarcity: The Mekong experience provides a blueprint. Chinese upstream damming permanently altered agricultural viability and forced population migration from traditional farming lands to urban areas. With 42 million Indians residing in the Brahmaputra basin, similar demographic manipulation could destabilise India’s politically sensitive northeastern states.

Bargaining Leverage: Perhaps most insidiously, China’s pattern of selective cooperation—offering water data to Bangladesh while withholding it from India, or funding tributary restoration in one nation while building mega-dams affecting another—demonstrates how water becomes diplomatic currency. As multiple sources note, “conversation is currency when it comes to the Chinese Government.”

India’s Reactive Dilemma

India’s response reflects the strategic bind created by China’s upstream advantage. The proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP)—an 11,000 MW dam in Arunachal Pradesh costing $13.2 billion—represents New Delhi’s attempt to create defensive capacity against Chinese water manipulation. Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein’s stark assessment that “the Siang dam will be our counter to the Chinese mega-dam. This is a matter of national security” captures the zero-sum nature of this competition.

Yet India’s reactive positioning creates multiple vulnerabilities. Local opposition to SUMP from indigenous Adi communities—who consider the Siang sacred—highlights the political costs of defensive dam-building. As protesters demand “No dam over Ane Siang [Mother Siang],” the Indian government finds itself caught between geopolitical necessity and domestic resistance.

Moreover, as environmental experts warn, India’s defensive dam could prove “potentially more dangerous” than China’s project, given the region’s seismic activity and engineering challenges. The December 2024 7.1-magnitude earthquake near Shigatse, causing structural deformations in nearby dams, underscores these risks.

The Broader Strategic Context

This water competition occurs within a larger framework of Sino-Indian rivalry that extends across domains from border disputes to technological competition. The Great Bend Dam’s proximity to Arunachal Pradesh—which China labels “South Tibet”—adds territorial dimensions to water conflicts. As recent analysis indicates, China’s dam-building effectively creates “chokehold leverage” over India’s economy if tensions escalate.

The environmental implications compound strategic concerns. Chinese ecologist Fan Xiao’s detailed analysis reveals the project threatens one of Asia’s most precious biodiversity hotspots, containing ancient forests and the world’s richest assemblage of large carnivores. The canyon’s role in triggering Asia’s annual monsoons means ecological disruption could have continent-wide climate consequences.

International Law and Accountability Gaps

The absence of robust international frameworks governing transboundary river development becomes starkly evident in this case. Neither India nor China has signed the UN’s international watercourses convention, while their 2002 water data-sharing agreement lacks legal binding power and has already proven fragile during crisis periods.

As Haby’s analysis suggests, this regulatory vacuum enables China’s unilateral approach. Beijing’s claims of having “indisputable sovereignty” over waters within its borders fundamentally challenges international water law principles requiring upstream nations to consider downstream impacts.

Strategic Recommendations: Beyond Reactive Responses

The gravity of this challenge demands responses that transcend traditional diplomatic protests. Three strategic imperatives emerge:

Technology-Enabled Transparency: Following the successful Mekong Dam Monitor model, establishing satellite-based monitoring systems for the Brahmaputra basin could replace bilateral cooperation with technological verification. Open-source data repositories would expose Chinese manipulation while providing early warning capabilities for downstream communities.

Legal-Diplomatic Coordination: International pressure based on customary law—particularly the 1968 Helsinki Rules and 1997 UN Convention principles requiring prior consultation and harm mitigation—could constrain Chinese unilateralism. However, this requires coordinated multilateral action extending beyond bilateral India-China frameworks.

Quad Framework Integration: Incorporating water security into the Quad’s humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) guidelines would create multilateral capacity for dam-related contingencies while sending political signals about international concern over China’s hydro-hegemony.

The Precedent’s Implications

The Great Bend Dam’s approval establishes dangerous precedents extending far beyond the Himalayan region. If successful, China’s model of unilateral mega-dam construction on transboundary rivers could be replicated across Asia’s major river systems. The project demonstrates how infrastructure development can be weaponized while maintaining plausible cover as climate action.

For India, this represents a fundamental test of strategic adaptability. Moving beyond reactive dam-building to proactive international coalition-building and technological solutions could transform a defensive position into leadership on transboundary water governance.

 Conclusion: Water as the New Battlefield

China’s Great Bend Dam project marks water’s emergence as a primary domain of strategic competition in the 21st century. As climate change intensifies resource scarcity and population pressures mount, control over transboundary water flows becomes increasingly valuable strategic currency.

The project’s $137 billion investment demonstrates Beijing’s commitment to hydro-hegemony as a tool of statecraft. India’s response—and the international community’s willingness to address this challenge—will determine whether water infrastructure becomes normalized as a coercive instrument or constrained through effective international governance.

The stakes extend far beyond bilateral China-India relations. The 1.35 billion people dependent on Tibetan Plateau water sources face an uncertain future where their water security depends not on climate patterns or economic development, but on the geopolitical calculations of upstream powers. In this new era of competition, water has become both the battlefield and the weapon—a reality that demands urgent international attention and coordinated response mechanisms before it’s too late.

(The author draws on recent analyses by Brahma Chellaney, Neely Haby (Australian Strategic Policy Institute), Fan Xiao (Chinese geologist), and Y. Nithiyanandam, alongside current reporting on China’s December 2024 project approval and India’s responsive measures.)

The post The Weaponisation of Water appeared first on Greater Kashmir.