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Journalism of Courage
As Operation Sindoor unfolded, a question that often came up was about the involvement of China and other foreign powers in the conflict between India and Pakistan. At the Pune International Centre on Friday evening, a distinguished panel discussed various aspects of Operation Sindoor and China, inevitably, came up.
“My own feeling is that China will continue to use Pakistan as their proxy. In fact, Pakistan is almost a vassal state of China and gets goodies like JF-17 jets and the China-Pakistan economic corridor. But, China will avoid getting directly involved with us. At this stage, even the Chinese would not like a setback to their economy by getting involved in even a limited war along the Line of Actual Control with us. They are not going to get involved in a hurry unless it becomes apparent that Pakistan is collapsing or is imploding,” said Lt Gen Vinayak Patankar (retd).
The audience heard how the Chinese air force has progressed so rapidly that it has got the US worried. The US Chief of Staff has remarked that, by 2030, the Chinese air force will be bigger than the US Air Force.
Apart from Lt Gen Patankar, the participants at the discussion were Gautam Bambawale, the former High Commissioner to Pakistan and Ambassador to Bhutan and China, Air Marshal Diptendu Choudhury, Captain D K Sharma, former spokesperson of the Navy, Col Vinayak Bhat, a satellite imagery specialist, and Maj Gen Nitin Gadkari, Director of the Pune International Centre. All the panelists have retired from the services. The conversation touched upon the terrorists, the public morale in India and Pakistan and the assessment of the imageries before and after the Indian missile strikes in Pakistan.
The packed hall at PIC for the panel discussion had, only the evening before, watched on television as drones and missiles from Pakistan had targeted Indian cities and were neutralised. While giving details about such operations, the panel reflected on what it meant that the drones were imported from Turkey. “The government of India has had its formal briefing for today and one of the things which were highlighted was that the drones which were used last night by the Pakistanis to target 23 cities in India were all Turkish made. That aspect has now come to the fore. I think it will lead to a deterioration in India-Turkey relations,” Bambawale said.
The question about the role of Bangladesh came at the very end of the session from a member of the audience, Vasanta Ramaswamy. “Bangladesh is becoming close to Pakistan,” she said. Bambawale admitted that there has been a change in the people running Bangladesh and they were not as friendly to India as previous governments “but India has a lot of activity in Bangladesh, such as developmental activity”. “I have a feeling that the relation with Bangladesh will turn full circle and come back to a situation that we are happy with, just as it has done with the Maldives,” he said.
