BIG BREAKING 🚨
Indonesia to be first foreign customer of India’s Astra Mk1 air-to-air missile. Deal to be discussed during PM @NarendraModi’s ongoing visit. https://t.co/9mK1wl8LXx
Today India signed a deal to sell supersonic missiles to the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.
In the same set of agreements: India will restore their 1,170-year-old Shiva temple.
If that surprises you, you don’t yet understand how India plays. Let me explain.
Indonesia is India’s largest maritime neighbour. Indira Point, our southernmost tip, sits closer to Aceh than to mainland India.
We don’t share a border. We share a sea.
And we’ve been crossing it for 2,000 years.
Kalinga traders sailed to Java before Christ; Odisha still celebrates Bali Jatra for those voyages. In 1025 CE, Rajendra Chola sent a war fleet across these exact waters.
The Ramayana travelled with the traders. It never left.
Indonesia’s national airline is Garuda. Every full moon at Prambanan, the Ramayana is performed as ballet.
Mostly by Muslim artists.
Indonesians say it themselves: we changed our religion, not our culture.
1947: The Dutch are trying to recolonise Indonesia. Biju Patnaik flies a Dakota into occupied Java and smuggles out their Prime Minister.
Jakarta never forgot. The story goes Sukarno asked Patnaik to name his newborn daughter: Megawati, later President of Indonesia.
And when India held its first ever Republic Day parade in 1950, the chief guest was Sukarno.
1955, Bandung: the same two giants co-wrote non-alignment itself. The instinct: nobody’s junior partner.
Then both drifted for decades.
The last decade rebuilt the bridge. Act East. MAHASAGAR. The 2018 partnership that quietly got India access to Sabang. Prabowo as Republic Day chief guest in 2025, exactly 75 years after Sukarno.
That was the runway. Today was the takeoff.
What got signed:
The port. India and Indonesia will jointly develop Sabang, at the northern mouth of the Malacca Strait, 160 km from India’s own Great Nicobar project.
A fifth of global trade and a third of the world’s seaborne oil passes through that strait. Most of China’s energy too. Beijing has called it the “Malacca Dilemma” for 20 years.
India now sits at both ends of the entrance.
Nobody needs to choke anything. Sitting at the gate is the position.
The missiles. Indonesia becomes the FIRST foreign buyer of India’s Astra missile, and is expanding its BrahMos arsenal.
ASEAN’s largest military, spending its own money, after watching Indian systems perform in May 2025.
India’s defence exports this year: Rs 38,424 crore, up 62% (official MoD numbers).
Meanwhile, our western neighbour spent months planting anonymous stories about JF-17 sales. To Libya (under a UN arms embargo). To Sudan (in a civil war). Even to Indonesia.
And the country actually named in those stories? It just signed with India, President in the room.
Markets are the one audience propaganda cannot capture.
The minerals. India will build nickel, steel and rare earth magnet manufacturing inside Indonesia, where Chinese firms dominate processing today.
Remember Indian automakers panicking within weeks of China’s magnet export curbs?
This is the answer.
The trust layer. UPI integrates with Indonesia’s payments. IIM Bangalore opens a campus there. India helps build their voting machines. And Indian archaeologists will restore Prambanan.
A country lets you touch its elections and its temples only when the trust is total.
Now zoom out.
The world is hardening into two blocs. Every middle power wants a third option: capability without allegiance.
That is India’s entire product. Missiles without bases. Investment without debt traps. Rails without surveillance.
India isn’t building a bloc. It’s building the alternative to blocs.
The two countries that wrote non-alignment in 1955 just wrote its 2026 edition.
A thousand years ago, a Chola fleet crossed these waters and the world took note.
Today India returned. Not with a fleet. With ports, missiles, payment rails and archaeologists.
Empires announce themselves.
Civilisations just resume 🇮🇳 🇮🇩
a person from the shang caste being made to shit in the streets because toilet privileges during the adverse weather are reserved for high caste shi people
The barricade outside US Embassy was removed due to pressure from IFS lobby to shield one of their own
Former President APJ Abdul Kalam was stopped twice by US and humiliated around the same time, no outrage, no barricades were removed
Possibly because he was an NDA President
Between 2006-2012 there were several cases of Indian Sikhs and elderly Indians being singled out by US immigration and humiliated, no barricades were removed then
The diplomat for whom the barricades were removed participated in Adarsh housing scam meant for Kargil war widows, while no outrage for a distinguished Ex President
NEET ka paper Lakshadweep ke jungle mein baith kar IIT ke professors banayenge, RBI usse print karega, Air Force Rafale se centres tak pahunchayegi, BSF commandos AK-47 le kar invigilation karenge, aur bacche bas innerwear mein aayenge. Tab ja kr fair conduct hoga.
This afternoon, went to the L&T complex at Hazira. Witnessed some of their pioneering innovations across different sectors. The role played by L&T in furthering self-reliance in the defence sector is commendable.
@larsentoubro
Rubio's Kolkata visit had no links with visit to US consulate in the city, which is the old US mission in Asia & 2nd oldest in World. The visit only focused on 2 stopovers- tour of Mother House & Children’s Home.
Govt Sources Clarify on Fuel Price Hike
- Govt Sources: Lowest price hike in India
- Govt Sources: India absorbed global shocks
- 'Just Rs 4.74 price hike post 76 days of war'
- 'India held prices steady for 76 days'
- 'India protected consumers during crisis'
- 'Sources cite global data on fuel prices'
- Sources: Rs30,000 cr absorbed by exchequer'
- 'Opposition-ruled states levy highest VAT'