Rajiv Chopra

“The late defence analyst K. Subrahmanyam wrote, ‘Politicians enjoy power without any responsibility, bureaucrats wield power without any accountability, and the military assumes responsibility without any direction.”
― Pravin Sawhney, Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power

“Afghanistan was not an end in itself; the jewel was India which had to be protected from the lusting Russian eyes. As J.R. Seeley noted, …we have the possession of India, and a leading interest in the affairs of all those countries which lie upon the route to India. This and this only involves us in that permanent rivalry with Russia. Two of the world’s greatest powers then, Victorian Britain and Czarist Russia, were engaged in this tournament of shadows; the so-called permanent rivalry which profited neither country. When they started in the beginning of nineteenth century they were 2,000 miles apart. Within a hundred years they were within sniffing distance of each other; some Russian positions were just about 20 miles away from India.”
― Rajiv Dogra, Durand's Curse: A Line Across the Pathan Heart

“M.C.A. Henniker. 1951. Memoirs of a Junior Officer. HMSO, p. 235. M.C.A. Henniker’s company was engaged in building a blockhouse on a hilltop overlooking the Khyber Pass. Pathans could have, but they did not stop the life-giving water supply to the British, yet the British army used poison gas on the Frontier Pathans in the early twentieth century. This was only to be expected because the British Manual of Military Law stated that the rules of war applied only to conflict ‘between civilized nations’. In fact, the Manual of 1914 clarified that ‘they do not apply in wars with uncivilized States and tribes’.”
― Rajiv Dogra, Durand's Curse: A Line Across the Pathan Heart

“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon