A reader, commenting on a recent post on Somali piracy, asks “Could the Indian warship destroying a Somali pirate vessel have anything to do with the November attacks in Mumbai?”. My guess is “no”; most evidence, such as it is, either points towards Pakistan, who have plenty of other reasons to cause trouble in India without using anti-piracy efforts as an excuse, or to a long-term, well-planned effort precluding India’s involvement in pirate-hunting… or both.

I have been thinking about the piracy issue, though.
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India, it should be clear to anyone who’s watched the news in recent days, or who followed events in Mumbai on the web, is very, very different from the United States. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s just the way things are. The broad, sweeping social and cultural changes that have taken place in recent decades - and which continue to this day - may be changing India, but in doing so they haven’t made the country “more American”, or “more British”; the country remains - and will probably remain - uniquely Indian… and that’s a good thing.

I get accused of being unpatriotic whenever I say this sort of thing, but I really believe that the United States is not a country that others should aspire to emulate. History, I think, bears this out; out track record on social and cultural exports isn’t exactly earth-shattering. That’s one of the reasons I’m concerned about a recent announcement from India in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
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