the greycat blog

Yes, it’s called Bombay. That’s the established English name for the place, and no-one in India or anywhere else has the right to insist that it be dropped, particularly when their demand is rooted in chauvinistic religio-nationalism. Christopher Hitchens makes that point and many others in this excellent article in Slate: ‘Our friends in Bombay’.

… what’s at stake is the whole concept of a cosmopolitan city open to its own citizens and to the world—a city on the model of Sarajevo or London or Beirut or Manhattan. There is, of course, a reason they attract the ire and loathing of the religious fanatics. To the pure and godly, the very existence of such places is a profanity.

The importance of Bombay is more than symbolic, as is the importance of India. As Hitchens observes, ‘India is emerging in many ways as our most important ally. It is a strong regional counterweight to Russia and China. Not to romanticize it overmuch, it is a huge and officially secular federal democracy that is based, like the United States, on ethnic and confessional pluralism’.

India is indeed our natural ally in the fight against the jihadists, yet it has been sidelined by skewed Western geopolitics that rest on obsession with China, fear of Russia and faith in Pakistan. All three elements are disastrously misconceived: China is a mirage, Russia a paper tiger and Pakistan a terror cell masquerading, barely, as a state. India is a counterweight to all three and a firm foundation for a Western geostrategy that really is committed to the things the West says it cares about: democracy, freedom, economic and social progress. Hitchens is right, we must stand by our friends in Bombay.

Sad to see Wikipedia references in a serious piece of writing, though.

(Found via Alan Sullivan’s Fresh Bilge blog.)