India with a backbone

Piracy off the coast of Somalia is only beginning to emerge as a news story in the mainstream media (MSM). Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden cripples international trade: one tenth of world’s seaborne petroleum and 16,000 vessels pass through the Gulf of Aden. Insurance premiums for commercial shipping have increased tenfold this year. Some shipping companies have already decided to go around the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) instead of going through the Gulf of Aden, thereby adding weeks to the voyage and increasing the costs of raw materials and manufactured goods.



A recurring theme of Mera Bharat Mahan has been the need for India to project assertiveness on the world stage. In the last two weeks, the Indian navy has flexed its muscle and successfully defeated Somali pirates.

According to this Associated Press report dated Wednesday, November 19, 2008:
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The ship… was crewed by heavily armed men, some carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Behind it were a pair of speedboats — the sort pirates often use when they launch attacks on merchant ships in these violent seas.

What followed, officials said Wednesday, was a rare victory in a sea war against Somalia-based piracy that has become increasingly more violent, and where the pirates are ever more bold.

A patrolling Indian navy frigate [INS Tabar] quickly identified the vessel as a "mother ship" — a mobile attack base used to take gangs of pirates and smaller speedboats into deep water — and ordered it to stop and be searched.


In this Nov. 11, 2008 file photo made available by Indian Navy, Indian warship INS Tabar, right, escorts the MV Jag Arnav ship to safety after rescuing it from a hijack attempt by Somali pirates. The Indian navy says the INS Tabar dedicated to fighting pirates has successfully fought off an attempted pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden, sparking explosions and a fire on the suspected pirate ship late Tuesday, Nov. 18. (AP Photo/Indian Navy, HO, File)

"They responded on the offensive and said that they would blow up the Indian naval ship," Commander Nirad Sinha, a navy press officer, told reporters in New Delhi. Then the pirates opened fire.

… By the time the battle was over, the mother ship had sunk — the Indian gunfire sparked fires and a series of onboard blasts, possibly due to exploding ammunition — and the speedboats were racing into the darkness.

One was later found abandoned. The other escaped. An unknown number of people died on the mother ship, a navy statement said.

It's not the first success. Last week, Indian navy commandos operating from a warship foiled a pirate attempt to hijack a ship in the Gulf of Aden. The navy said an armed helicopter with marine commandos prevented the pirates from boarding and hijacking the Indian merchant vessel.
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Mera Bharat Mahan congratulates the Indian navy for taking on the Somali pirates - and winning!

Jihad in India: an interview with Moorthy Muthuswamy

Moorthy Muthuswamy

Terrorism in India has been a recurring theme on Mera Bharat Mahan. I have mapped terrorist attacks in India at Tagzania and have presented views of Sadanand Dhume and others about India's susceptability to terrorism. From FrontPage Magazine via Jihad Watch, here is an interview with Moorthy Muthuswamy, Ph.D., author of The Art of War on Terror: Triumphing over Political Islam and the Axis of Jihad.

Salient points from the interview:

• Terrorism is a humanitarian issue. According to Dr. Muthuswamy, "millions of Indian children are going hungry and getting malnourished due to economic bleeding imposed in the name of Islam."

• Political Islam is the enemy. It is based on the trilogy of the Qu'ran, Hadith (documented sayings and actions of Muhammad), and Sira (biography of Muhammad). Dr. Muthuswamy elaborates, "We are now further identifying the enemy: a political ideology of conquest that inspires terror, mosques as the nodes that spawn jihad and axis of jihad [Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan] as the main backer nations of the ideology and the nodes."

• Jihad has forced out non-Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Kashmir. This pattern has been re-enacted in Muslim majority areas of India itself.

• "… Sonia Gandhi’s Congress party, according to Indian intelligence, has been infiltrated by jihadists. Due to the policies enacted by Manmohan Singh’s government, jihadi infiltration into Indian institutions is escalating, including its paramilitary forces.…"

• "It is a matter of time India is hit in a major way … Strikes on India’s nuclear reactors, oil refineries or call-center infrastructure, for instance, is bound to make devastating economic impact and make hundrends of milions more of its children go hungry, and destitute and set the stage for India’s ireversible destruction andeventual Islamization."

Dr. Muthuswamy notes that India has the right under international law to take pre-emptive strikes when faced with a "blatant and long-pattern of genocide by an enemy." Don't hold your breath for that to happen. Israel had the political will to bomb Saddam's nuclear reactor, as it expected that Saddam would unleash nuclear weapons on Israel (Col. Ilan Ramon, who perished in the Space Shuttle Discovery mission with Kalpana Chawla, was one of the pilots on the mission to take out Saddam's nuclear reactor). India's current leaders do not have that political will.