There is nothing wrong with having to deal with humiliating situations or circumstances as countries or individuals. China experienced and still experiences plenty of them. You got the Yinghuo Incident, 1994 Yellow Sea confrontation, Chinese Embassy bombing, EP-3 Incident... Heck even the U.S., sole super power of the world since 1991, has its fair share. You’ve got the Naval soldier capture by Iran, Drone capture by Iran, killing of Ambassador to Libya... But do you want to know what the difference is between how countries like the U.S. and China handled them vs India? Never once did they attempt to twist what was an obvious humiliation into a victory. Not once. The worst they did is maybe not talking about it.
Imagine how Indians would’ve reported the EP-3 incident: Fighter pilot Wang Way-Singh intercepted an EP-3 near mother China’s borders. The pilot of the EP-3 promptly shat his pants and lost control of the plane, which crashed into Mr. Singh’s aircraft. Before he ejected, however, he managed to shoot down a F-15 tailing his aircraft.
Would that have been better? No!!! It is friggin disrespectful and laughable. But before you laugh read all the Indian accounts of how Abinandan shot down a Pakistanis F-16 and tell me with a straight face how THAT is less stupid than what I just came up with. However, I’m not sure that a lot of the Indians understand that it is disrespectful to their martyrs to come up with BS stories about their exploits.
In fact I don’t even think that Indians are interested in winning or victories. The hardcore Modi fans seem to love the metaphysical representation of winning more than the actual act of winning itself. It is a logical rabbit hole I don’t want to explore.
