Indians Seize NY Terror to Peddle anti-Pakistanism
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad , Pakistan
Mr. Sadanand Dhume is a columnist for Wall Street Journal. Last week, he wrote a column on the failed New York City terror attempt. He gave this provocative title to his column, 'Why Pakistan Produces Jihadists'.
His sub-heading was even more interesting. It read:
Carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of British India in 1947, it was the world's first modern nation based solely on Islam.
My gut reaction was: What's that got to do with anything?
How typical. An event offers itself to malign Pakistan and Indians pop up everywhere to offer distortions on history and policy that - in an innocent coincident of course – overlap with long held Indian policy objectives. Most WSJ readers won't know this because most outsiders are not privy to the full history of Indian antagonism toward Pakistan since this small nation's rise in 1947 after an epic and peaceful struggle.
One of the official Indian objectives has always been to question directly and indirectly the rise of Pakistan as an independent nation. That's exactly what Mr. Dhume does here, innocently of course. In lamenting the rise of a Muslim-majority nation, he conveniently forgets that it was Hindu extremism in his country that pushed the ruling Muslim elites of the region - who were a distinct race and culture by all standards - to seek the right to shape their own destiny.
Pakistan is Muslim in the same way that Israel is the world's first and only nation created in the name of Judaism and in the same way that Ireland is Catholic and India is Hindu, even if it presents itself as secular.
Instead of obsessing over Pakistan and seizing opportunities to malign it, Mr. Dhume would do well to explain to us and the world how a secular democracy in India produced 21st century's first genocide against Christians [almost 600 killed in the summer of 2009] and Muslims [2,000 burned alive in 2002].
Pakistan, despite failures of governance and politics and a history of foreign meddling in its affairs by outside powers, remains immune to this rapid and violent deterioration in tolerance that has affected the world's largest democracy.
Why do US newspapers solicit insights on Pakistan from biased, agenda-driven Indians?
Even the US government does it. Recently, Washington sent an Indian to head the USAID office in Islamabad.
This is a sign of prevalent anti-Pakistanism in some corners of US media and government.
Of course, WSJ doesn't hide its bias against Pakistan. It is not interested in offering a balanced perspective. Like most of the mainstream US news organizations, this publication has been at the forefront of demonizing Pakistan and spreading unsubstantiated rumors about Pakistan's nukes and the country's imminent breakup. To be fair to WSJ, most mainstream US news outlets have been peddling these theories as news for the past three years.
This op-ed by Mr. Dhume is also a sobering reminder for Pakistanis that India remains the number one threat to Pakistan's long term security and stability. The Indians won't miss a chance to harm Pakistan, like they did in 1971 when they unilaterally invaded Pakistan when Pakistanis were busy in a post-election domestic squabble.
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