A tragedy unfolds in the grey waters where the Indian Ocean meets the Persian Gulf. The last words of an Indian sailor, transmitted to his wife moments before a US-led strike silenced him forever, have ignited a diplomatic firestorm. The man, a father of two, reportedly told his wife, 'They are attacking us. I love you. Take care of the children.' Then, silence. The United Kingdom, with its characteristic chutzpah, now calls for an inquiry. But let us not pretend this is about justice. This is about the slow, agonising death of a rules-based order that never truly existed.
We have seen this before. In the dying days of the Roman Republic, when the Senate traded its dignity for military expediency, the bodies of provincials washed up on the Tiber's banks. The patricians called for inquiries too. They held tribunals. They wagged their fingers. And then they returned to their villas and their feasts. The machinery of empire grinds on. The US, like Rome before it, operates on a simple principle: might makes right. The strike that claimed this sailor's life was not a mistake. It was a statement. A message that in the great game of global hegemony, the lives of Indian sailors are merely collateral damage. Or, to use the clinical jargon of the Pentagon, 'unintended consequences.'
Yet the UK's call for an inquiry is a curious thing. Is this the perfidious Albion of old, pretending to hold the moral high ground while its own hands are stained with the blood of Iraq, Afghanistan, and countless other forgotten battlefields? Or is this a genuine recognition that the West's moral authority is crumbling? I suspect the former. The British Empire, in its twilight years, was notorious for such gestures. A commission here, a report there. All designed to give the impression of accountability while the empire's structure remained intact. The Suez Crisis was the last time Britain pretended to be a global policeman. Now it seems they wish to revive the role through the UN Security Council, a body about as effective as a chocolate teapot.
But let us not absolve the Indian government of its own complicity. India, in its zealous pursuit of strategic autonomy, has signed defence pacts with the US, exchanging sovereignty for security. This sailor's blood is on Delhi's hands as much as Washington's. The Indian elite, desperate to be seen as a great power, has forgotten that great powers do not sacrifice their citizens on the altar of military alliances. They protect them. Instead, we have a Foreign Ministry issuing statements of 'deep concern' while the families bury their dead. This is the decadence of the intellectual class writ large: a penchant for words over action, symbolism over substance.
And what of the broader context? This is the same America that bombed a hospital in Kunduz, that killed Iranian general Soleimani without a shred of due process, that has been responsible for the displacement of millions. The pattern is clear. The West, in its senescence, has abandoned all pretence of moral leadership. The rules-based order is nothing more than a set of guidelines that apply to everyone except its creators. When an American sailor dies, there is a congressional hearing, a moment of silence, a grieving nation. When an Indian sailor dies, we get a call for an inquiry from a fading empire.
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not see shadowy cabals in every capital. But I do see the decay of intellectual rigour. We have become so accustomed to the language of 'collateral damage' and 'operational necessity' that we have forgotten the basic dignity of human life. The sailor's last words should haunt us not because they are tragic, but because they are predictable. The machinery of empire grinds on, and we are its grist.
So let us have our inquiry. Let us have our condemnations and our press conferences. But know that this is not about justice. This is about maintaining the illusion of a just order while the blood of innocents stains the marble floors of power. The Indian sailor's final whisper will be lost in the cacophony of geopolitical gamesmanship. And we, the intellectual class, will write our columns and return to our dinner parties, our consciences salved by the fleeting satisfaction of having said something.
Winston Churchill once said, 'History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.' But history is not written by the powerful alone. It is written by the forgotten. And it is written in blood.
