Donald Trump, Shehbaz Sharif and Abbas Araghchi. In the foreground stands Narendra Modi. Images: PTI, AP and File. Urban Naxals chronically opposed to the Modi dispensation never tire of digging up one fabricated issue or another with which to berate the proud, patriotic government. Their latest anti-national mischief is to ask why it is that an Iran can stand up to the allegedly invincible America and Bharat cannot. (Never mind the Urban Naxals’ claim that this mighty nation has lost all battles it has engaged in, some ignominiously beyond endurance.)

The question they raise – as anyone can see – betrays a characteristic lack of scholarship and grasp of facts, however much these unrepentant troublemakers might flaunt their academic credentials. As if reading and writing had anything to do with political and military success. After all, the capacity of any country to withstand the arrogance of great powers is linked to its demography. So where Iran has a population of a sizeable 98 million people, Bharat is only 14 plus two zeros in comparison. Tell us, which is greater – 98 or 14 – although zero was our own gift to knowledge. That is one. Then our civilisational blending with Zionism prevents such bad manners as to cast any sort of harsh word, adverse vote or, god forbid, reckless bullet against that darling of nations, Israel – America’s unshakeable forward tail. No tiny-weeny tail either, since it wags enormous business conglomerates, powerful media behemoths, most noble senators and congressmen, the mercantile tsars of the Pentagon, the CIA, via the Mossad, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. A spectacle to be envied rather than mocked, would you not say? If only the US of A would grant us the same privileged status. Regrettably, however, it only plays cat-and-mouse with the Vishwaguru of whose wisdom it seems to have little awareness or use. Some coincidence, then, that our honourable prime minister was in that chosen strip of the promised land two days before it unleashed its bombers against those tricky Persians whom, to the best of our knowledge, we have never yet paid a royal visit, Chabahar and petroleum interests notwithstanding. Besides, what of our own billionaires who thrive off the dollar paradise in order – no doubt – to make Bharat truly great again. Iran, on the other hand, feels no such hesitation, believing itself already great enough with some six millennia of martial accomplishments behind it. But the Urban Naxals will not understand any of this, enslaved as they are to pernicious foreign influencers such as the treacherous Soros. Moreover, these Iran-wallahs take foolish pride in sacrificing their lives for the sake of what they believe to be right and proper – a tradition so hostile to the transactional genius of America and of Viksit Bharat – a strategy that makes us so much the frontrunner in the accumulation of private wealth.

After all, the Sanatan faith may be the only one that has enshrined a goddess wholly in charge of enhancing the material opulence (Vaibhav) of the realm, by which we mean the coffers of the haves. By contrast, America may be a money-obsessed nation, yet poor Mammon in their Christian faith is consigned to Hell, where he may be free to pave the streets with gold, as he tells us in Milton’s magnum opus, Paradise Lost. Thirdly – secondly? I may have lost count in the agitation of my disgust towards the position adopted by the Urban Naxals – our military capacities, despite Shri Savarkar’s admonitions – continue to lag behind, while Gigantic Iran has been burrowing underground to prepare an arsenal that has truly astonished Shri Trump and Hegseth, his lively Secretary of War. Word is that whereas Bharat may still be without a nuclear bomb in truth, Iran already has several, tucked away from the likes of the CIA and MI-6 – more reason why mighty America may be fearful of Iran, but indifferent to the Vishwaguru, her domestic bombast notwithstanding. Did we not promptly comply when asked to do so in a recent neighbouring skirmish? Consider also this rumour circulating in anti-Bharat circles: that whereas Iran may not be vulnerable to the Epstein saga, we may have skeletons in the cupboard that advise us toward wiser counsel. That this slander is atrocious and unforgivable may not be denied but, dash it, what do we do with the unrestrained loud mouths both at home and abroad who spawn such speculation out of sheer fear of our approaching greatness, even if the date set for that eventuality is the distant 2047? Then, most of all, Iran has a Strait of Hormuz; we only have sacred rivers that do not cater to international oil trade alas. Petrol has us beaten, however crude its sources. So what leverage may we exercise to impose some instructive check on American hubris? There was indeed a time when we had pride of place in advancing the cause of peace in the world – a clout now cleverly usurped by a wily neighbour known for anything but peaceful habits of foreign engagement.

Last but not least, what government in Bharat may ever ignore the hundreds of thousands of Bharatiyas who inhabit the cities and towns of America, reap rich dividends, even come to our television talk shows as American citizens, justifying American perfidies in Iran or Palestine? By contrast, the Iranians have only such intellectuals as a Professor Marandi, who cares not a fig about annoying Trump and castigates him for the depredations he has wrought worldwide and for having enhanced the gumption of a parvenu – a mere, 250-yearyoung country – to unbearable proportions of neo-imperial vulgarity. Clearly, therefore, our Urban Naxals mightily deserve a lesson or two in historical/diplomatic subtleties and in the sophistications that inform world affairs, quite beyond the humiliations Shri Trump may seem to joyfully visit upon Shri Modi now and again – impertinences that the latter swallows like Lord Shiva did the venom from the churning of the oceans. Even as our hoi polloi, infuriated by Trump's lack of etiquette, wonder what, after all, it is that Trump and Modi-ji know that we do not. But till the time we do, what advice might be more inadvisable than to take up arms, verbal, diplomatic, or of another kind (even if our sailors are easefully murdered on the international high seas without as much as a "sorry") against a misbehaving so-strategic partner? Thus, if a foolhardy Iran is willing to stand on adolescent pride, let us not be persuaded to desert an America that yet has gold in it. Which is why we mark attendance at a G-7 even as we preside over a BRICS. A dodge straight out of Shri Chanakya's bag of invaluable tricks