MADRASTAN TO JOIN RCO, SAYS PRIME MINISTER
“Our struggle is on behalf of the whole developing world”
Sunita Patel, Chief Correspondent in Madras
21st November 2015
Madrastan is slated to become the sixth full member of the Romula Cooperation Organisation by the end of November, revealed Prime Minister Chandrasekar Bose at a press conference today. The decision to do so was apparently taken early in the year, during the course of the Bogoria crisis, and gained momentum during the CDI intervention during the rebel offensive. Provided the Romula Cooperation Organisation Bill passes in the Lok Sabha, generally speaking a rubber-stamping process these days with the complete dominance of the Madrastan National Party and its allies, it is more than likely that Madrastan’s swift integration into the organisation will go without a hitch.
Addressing the assembled MNP faithful at a rally after the press conference, Bose proclaimed that “since we came to power, the National Movement has one, primary, eternal goal – to untie the disparate, sundered parts of the greater Hindu nation, to right the historical injustices imposed by imperialists. In order to do so, we must ensure that imperialism’s modern descendants – global capital and their lackey national enforcers are kept out of our natural sphere of influence. Their interference in Bogoria, their attempt to suppress a people’s right to their sovereign national and cultural home on behalf of their financial paymasters is merely the latest in their crimes against oppressed peoples worldwide. Our struggle is not merely that of Madrastan. Our struggle is on behalf of the whole developing world who continue to suffer oppression under the neo-colonial yoke, and it is time we join our nationalist brothers around the world in a worldwide struggle to fight for our national dignity!”
The announcement was accompanied by an agreement between the Bose government and Patriarch –Cardinal John Seringapatam of the Madrastan Malabar Catholic Church, designating the latter as an ‘native faith’. The Major Archepiscopal catholic church, which is in full communion with Romula but features its own liturgical language and rites, was recognised by the government as predating the colonial era and thus exempt from the increasingly harsh restrictions imposed on other varieties of Christianity in Madrastan, which the nationalist government considers to be the vestiges of colonialism.
Geopolitical storm
Madrastan’s accession into the RCO came as a complete bombshell to most geopolitical analysts, as it creates a break in the country’s most cherished foreign policy doctrine – that of non-alignment. During the Cold War, when Madrastani politics was dominated by the centre-left Congress Party, Madrastan was the informal leader of the worldwide Non-Alignment Movement, enjoying friendly relations with capitalist powers such as former suzerain Arthurista, as well as communist nations such as the DSRA.
The collapse of Madrastani democracy under its own weight of corruption and economic inefficiency, together with the spectacular recovery it has enjoyed under the Madrastan National Party, which since winning the 1996 general election has ruthlessly cut down on corruption, put a halt to runaway inflation, carefully exploited the bounties of the Takur Desert Gas Field and, in the process, leveraged economic success into enough political power to suppress opposition parties using legal and extra-legal means and create the foundations for a de facto, if not de jure, authoritarian police state, has led to increased assertiveness in the foreign policy field. The MNP positioned itself in complete opposition to the old Congress Party’s dull pragmatism run by a middle class technocratic elite, and instead employed colourful, simple ‘slogan politics’ designed to captivate the uneducated masses. Much of its appeal lay with its aggressive rhetorics towards Madrastan’s smaller neighbours, which many among the Madrastani far right consider to be their historical territory, which they were unjustly deprived of as a result of colonialism. It has made the neighbours uneasy, but generated immense popularity domestically, which translated into more political leverage in the MNP’s continuing program to curb the mainly middle class liberal opposition.
With increasing prosperity, too, was an increasing military budget. While much of the armed forces’ equipment remain of 80s-vintage, a great deal of money has been invested into the importation and development of long range offensive systems, from heavy tactical fighters to ballistic missiles. Indeed, defence cooperation with Rodarion has been very much on the agenda in recent years. Over the past four years, the Madrastan Air Force has received a total of 60 RE-7 as a cheaper supplement to the very modern Anikatian Myl-24MX as the core of the MAF’s long range strike force. Even more significantly, it was announced during the press conference that a San Gennaro Class will be leased to the Madrastan Navy over the next five years, with an option for another five – the first nuclear-powered vessel in the fleet and a significant boost towards its offensive capabilities.
Fretful neighbours
This latest development is likely to cause a great deal of discomfiture in the region in the coming weeks. Squarely in the path of Madrastan’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy is Keralam – an ex-Nijdelandish colony but, like Madrastan, part of the historical ‘Hindu-sphere’ of east Ashizwe and considered part of the ‘greater motherland’ by irredentists’. With a much smaller population and economy, it is difficult to envisage how Keralam independence can survive for much longer without external assistance.
Further afield is Lion’s Rock, the Arthuristan island dominion just off the shore of Ashizwe. The city state has a fraction of the population of even Keralam but, unlike the latter, enjoys a spectacularly successful high tech economy, as well as a government which has repeatedly shown itself willing to fight for its corner both using its own resources and by calling for assistance from its ultimate suzerain. How it will react in the immediate future is anyone’s guess, but expect long hours of frantic lobbying by the First Minister for the return of substantial Arthuristan naval assets into the Far East, as well as further increase in the dominion’s own military budget.
Overall, the RCO has scored a major coup in drawing Madrastan into the fold. For the first time, the organisation has just established a major foothold in the far east in the form of a major rising power and, perhaps more importantly, diverted CDI attention and resources away from central Lusankya at a critical juncture. If the Bogorian campaign marked the beginning of a new Cold War, the battle for dominance has just gone global.
