Keeping the Heat on Modi Is Pakistan’s Call
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
A bully’s stock-in-trade is bluff and bluster. The task of a statesman is to call his bluff. That’s exactly how Imran Khan of Pakistan has returned the compliment of India’s bumbling and blustering Narendra Modi.
Imran’s tactful and fine-tuned handling of the crisis Modi precipitated for him—and on his watch for Pakistan—is ample evidence of Imran Khan rising rapidly on the global scene as a mature and cool-headed leader. This must have come as a shock to Modi—as it certainly has been to legions of Imran’s critics and detractors at home—who may have taken a gamble on the supposedly green and novice new leader of Pakistan.
Modi is a wily tactician. But more than being wily and disingenuously ambitious the man has built his entire political career on hate—of Muslims, in particular. Those whose memory isn’t that short can recall his Muslim- blood-stained stint as Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujrat. It was on his watch that a bloodbath of Muslims in Gujrat was perpetrated in 2002. So shameless and utterly insensitive is the man that he brushed off the carnage and justified the pogrom as just ‘reaction’ to an action.
At the fag-end of his innings as India’s PM—during which Muslims have been subjected to worst persecution in India’s minority-blood-stained history—Modi is in trouble. His rhetoric-laced mantra of miracle in India’s socio-economic fortunes of the poor and down-trodden has turned out to be a damp squib. The emperor stands naked in the eyes of millions of India’s poor and indigent; his cliché-laced rhetoric and bombast sound increasingly hollow.
The gory, stage-managed, Pulwama incident of February 14 was a copy-book rehash of what Modi had engineered in Gujrat in 2002. The 40-plus Indian para-military soldiers killed in the suicidal blast were as good as pawns in Modi’s desperate bid to hang on to power at the impending general elections in India only weeks away.
Modi had apparently set out to kill two birds with one stone: keep the Muslims of Indian-Occupied Kashmir under duress as ‘terrorists’ and not as freedom fighters; and use the bloody carnage to implicate Pakistan as the chief sponsor of terrorism in India’s door-step.
Indian leaders have long had a smug confidence that Pakistan could easily be painted into the colors of a state-sponsoring-terrorism. They had grown accustomed to being sympathized with as a ‘victim’ of terrorism because India’s friends in the West unabashedly swallowed the bait of India being in a mean, vicious and tough neighborhood. Pakistan was the rogue, the proverbial bad guy, creating trouble for ‘democratic India.’
This was the backdrop of Modi’s gambit of February 27 when he launched his MiG 21s against Pakistan, harking to his oft-repeated, ‘Bollywood bombast,’ Pakistan kogharmeinghuskarmarengey (will rough up Pakistan inside its own home). But the vigilance of Pakistan’s valiant Air Force pilots exposed Modi’s under-belly. It took the downing of two IAF Migs—with the pilot of one captured and paraded on TV screens—to show the world that the colossus of democracy and secularism had feet of clay.
Imran piled on insult to Modi’s injury by quickly releasing the captured Indian pilot, Wing Commander AbhiNandan. Pakistan didn’t even wait for India to make a plea for its pilot’s release. The noble, dignified, gesture underlined Imran’s cool-headed and savvy reading of the situation. Modi had tied himself into loops and Imran’s largesse could only add to the embarrassment of India’s self-styled ‘macho’ leader.
Now that Modi’s bluff has been called in all its dimensions—with Pakistan having gained both political leverage and moral high ground over India—Pakistan’s work ahead is cut out, graphically.
Modi, initially in his hubris but subsequently through his majestic folly, has done a great service to the cause of liberation of the Kashmiris oppressed under India’s draconian rule in its occupied Kashmir. Up until Modi lit the fuse of the ongoing crisis—and it isn’t over as some might think in their limited reading of the situation—Kashmir had become as good as a lost cause. It was a tragedy that the world had forgotten about, deliberately shunning its responsibility as enshrined in many a UN Security Council resolution on the Kashmir dispute. India, feasting on the post-9/11 mindset that blithely equated an oppressed people’s quest for liberation with ‘terrorism’ let loose a reign of state-sponsored terrorism of its own on the hapless Kashmiris. The world just stood by, with its eyes shut, and gave India a thumbs-up for its terror.
Pulwama and its aftermath have changed the scenario overnight. India’s narrative of a victim of Pakistan-based terrorism stands fully exposed. The cover has been blown off its ingrained hypocrisy. The episode has shown the world the ugly features of Modi’s hate-driven India in which there’s no room for its own minorities let alone any sympathy for the Muslims of its occupied part of Kashmir.
The world beyond South Asia has been forced to take notice of the threat any armed hostility between India and Pakistan poses to regional and international peace. Modi, in his blind pursuit of power, may not be up to the intelligence level required to comprehend the Holocaust his saber-rattling has the potential to unleash. However, the world is conscious—or has been compelled to become conscious of it—enough to know that two nuclear-armed states flirting with any armed conflict could hasten doom for this planet.
Now that the world’s memory of Kashmir dispute has been revived under force of circumstances, Pakistan’s work is cut out. The battle ahead for Pakistan is none other than a well-honed and pointed diplomatic offensive in world capitals and at global forums where opinions are formed and policies honed. The time to act is now.
The name of the game, from this point on, is keeping the heat on Modi and his policies of hate, both at home and abroad. Within India life for Indian Muslims, in particular, is becoming an increasing nightmare under the assault of the hate-driven Hindutva movement of which Modi is a lynchpin. Modi’s policy with regard to Pakistan is, likewise, a mirror-image of his persecution of Indian Muslims.He boasted of isolating Pakistan in the comity of nations. His monumental folly of taking on Pakistan on trumped up accusation of sponsorship of terrorism, has now made India into an international pariah. Not even his mentors in US can afford to give him a pass on his blunders.
The collective conscience of the world needs to be clearly told that postponing justice for the Indian-oppressed Kashmiris is a gamble not in the interest of global peace and harmony. Unresolved Kashmir dispute is like the Sword of Damocles hanging over international peace.
Imran’s team couldn’t have hoped for a more- friendly wicket to play on and try out their newly-acquired diplomatic skills.
But it isn’t going to be a piece of cake. It will not be all hunky-dory by a long shot. It’s going to test patience and skills. At the same time, Pakistan mustn’t take its eyes off the road blocks that could prop up without advance notice or warning.
The recent experience of the OIC Foreign Ministers’ conclave in Abu Dhabi, UAE, should warn Imran and others in his corner of surprises, lying in store as proverbial trap-doors, that could defy progress to the point where the case of Kashmir should receive its due process of justice.
The host UAE literally stabbed Pakistan in the back when it invited India’s FM, Sushma Swaraj to grace the conference as its honored guest. The invitation to the arch-enemy of Pakistan was extended without Pakistan’s knowledge. Further injury to Pakistan’s open insult was mounted when Pakistan’s demand to revoke the invitation to India was given no consideration.
There couldn’t be a more blatant disregard of the rights of oppressed Kashmiris, groaning under India’s draconian chokehold over their land, than to lend a platform to the oppressor to justify its murder and rape as a crusade against terrorism. Pakistan conceded a walk-over to oppressive India by unwisely staying away from the conclave. This was short-sighted and childish. The mistake must never be repeated. India must not be lent any platform to fulminate against Pakistan with impunity.
The lesson learned from the UAE episode should guide our policy planners to steer clear of controversies but hold on to our traditional policy that OIC isn’t tailored to accommodate a non-Muslim India in any guise, or at any excuse., The timing of UAE’s avoidable invite to the Indian FM was wrong and unfortunate, as far as Pakistan and the oppressed Kashmiris are concerned.
The moral of the episode is that Pakistan can’t take anything for granted. Even the so-called brothers-in-faith can be easily misled, by short-term advantage, to lose sight of justice and flirt with the enemy. It’s regrettable that the final statement issued by the OIC Foreign Ministers at Abu Dhabi made no reference to Kashmir, or to India’s aggressive violation of LoC in Kashmir. It should be a wakeup call for Imran.
We can’t afford to lower our guard against Modi’s unlimited mischief. But there couldn’t be a better time than now to expose him and convince the world of India’s two-faced policy anchored in blatant disregard of international law and norms of justice. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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