India, on the other hand, has a few basic tenets totally inverted.
National interest, it appears, is a bad word, if it does not measure up to the yardsticks of democracy and morality. This fanciful and, in my view, utterly ridiculous positing is a legacy inherited from Nehru. Unfortunately, protecting the legacy has taken precedence over protecting national interest. This has prevented this huge country from looking at itself as a strong, confident nation which should matter and command respect proportionately at the global stage. That is why, to give one example, even a small country like Bangladesh, which we helped create, can disdainfully show us the middle finger and blatantly permit anti-India activities on its soil. Let us not even talk Pakistan. Will any other large country allow such nonsense in its backyard? But for Independent India, morality has almost always been more important than anything else, no matter what price the nation has had to pay and continues to.
