The Congress government committed the 'popular' folly of sending troops to Siachin. He must detect something deep, some fundamental perversity in the one who is being so obdurate as not to fall at the believer's feet. And this time, just as predictably, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee is the epitome of it. A short-sighted and pathetically parochial politician whose instincts for political survival are both reactionary and jingoistic. It isn't just information from which Ideology insulates one.
Ideology insulates one from experience just as much.
In free, democratic societies there is incessant self-examination. In authoritarian societies pasting blame on The Other becomes nature. The rout in Bangladesh caused none in Pakistan. We see the same sequence today. Indian forces are rolling back the Pakistanis in Kargil.