India's stand on Eastern Ukraine conflict

The recent developments in the conflict currently going on in the Eastern Ukraine is a matter that should really concern Indian think-tanks.
Few days back, members of Russian paratroopers were caught by the Ukrainian army.
The paratroopers were clearly at a location they weren't meant to be.
But the serious development came with the sighting of "T-72 BM" tank in the convoy of rebels.
"T-72 BM" is the advanced version of Russian T-72 which hasn't yet been exported to any other country.
This shoots hole in the Russian claim of the rebel tanks being of captured Ukrainian army divisions.
It's clearly evident that Russia is sending military aids to the rebels, but still Russia is denying it's involvement.
It wouldn't be long before Russian army actually moves inside Ukrainian territory to hold positions.

Can you spot a similar pattern??
Remember Crimea?
Last year end, Russia illegally captured Crimea from Ukraine.
After few weeks of consistent denial, Putin accepted that Crimea  is a part of sovereign Russia.
Crimea was part of Russia about 50 years back and Russia justified the accession with the injustice done to it in the past.

Well then, the case was different.
To remind you, India took a neutral stand and stood by Russia against the international boycott.
The world gradually accepted that Crimea is a part of Russia despite the toothless American and European sanctions.

It appears now that Russia is acting like a spoiled kid. With any further accession of Ukraine, the world will no longer be forgiving.
Russia is definitely going to witness larger sanctions, if they further pursued their territorial agendas.
India and every other major nation will  be forced to take a side in that case.


Russia is a time-tested friend of India.
Indians can't forget the Russian help in the 1971 war when Russian submarines stood in the way of American aircraft carriers heading towards India.
Russia has always stood along with us in the Security council and vetoed resolutions against India.
So, India can't and shouldn't be seen on the different side.
But at the same time India can't support Russia.
Supporting Russia in such daring endeavors will mean encouraging foreign accessions in a sovereign country.
Indians will definitely not like Kashmir's accession by Pakistan or Arunachal Pradesh's  accession by China.
Similarly,  China is also having many territorial disputes with it's neighboring countries.
So, it can be assumed that even BRICS nations will not want to be seen standing along with Russia.
Serious international sanctions against Russia will not have a very large impact on Indian exports and imports, but it will affect Indian military procurements.

But again, sanctions are double edged swords.
It boils down to the question that "Are European nations and U.S. ready to bring perils to the Russian economy at the cost of their own?".
Economic sanctions will be the one and only solution left with the international community.
None of the world powers, is in a position to respond militarily against "Nuclear Russia".

Indian think-tanks should keep a close watch on the issue and be ready with the action plans in such a scenario.

The act of "Self-Censorship" on social sites

With the penetration of social media into masses and the internet connected smartphones in every other hand, more and more of our "friends" are online at any particular time.

Some had hoped that this might provide new outlets that encourage more discussions and the exchange of wider range of opinions.
But we see the opposite- a notion called the "spiral of silence" exists online, in which people tend to keep opinions to themselves if they think they are in the minority.
In simpler words, people have self-censored themselves. Self-censorship is the phenomenon of preventing oneself from speaking.

Social media also affords users the ability to type out and review the contents before posting.
Still, people refrain from posting that controversial political argument online that they used to easily express when they hanged out with their friends in the past.

The fear of online bullying as well as the fear of even losing a friend restricts the people to post or express only non controversial views.
This phenomenon recently attracted my attention while talking to one of my friends,
and I realized that it was not just me but most of the people fear to express their views on social sites where they have most of their friends online.
People are more likely to express the same argument offline than online.

Consider the recent Israel-Gaza situation, I found my Facebook news feed flooded by one of my friends with anti-Israel posts and racist posts promoting hatred against Jews.
But, I found that none of the mutual friends commented on the issue, neither I did. Unknowingly, I along with my other friends were self censoring themselves.
Every now and then, I find anti-Pakistan posts on my Facebook news feed, but I ignore those posts because, I fear being labelled as "traitor" by my "patriotic" friends.
I am more comfortable posting my views here on the blog or on my Twitter channel considering that very few of my friends care to visit my blog and I have very small list of Twitter followers.

This can also be attributed to the fact that we as the social media users know more about the depth of disagreement over the issue in our wide circle of contacts.
This makes us hesitant to speak up either online or offline for fear of starting an argument, offending or even losing a friend.
It is just another visible sign of the way, online activities affects a person's life.

May God give me power and will to express my views freely.