India’s blatant and provocative saber-rattling demands, per se, that Pakistan, in terms of its political cohesion, be on one united platform. What should be of utmost priority to the rulers holding Pakistan captive to their whims is creating a united front of all the major political parties and political leaders. Setting Imran Khan, the most popular and iconic political leader to the people of Pakistan, free from his undue incarceration should be of utmost priority to challenge Modi’s warmongering – Photo CNN

 

Modi’s Dated Anti-Pakistan Script!

By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

Give credit to India’s Narendra Modi: he smells a setback to his Machiavellian policies and sets about finding an anti-dote to forthcoming reverses.

Modi’s fascist BJP suffered reverses in several by-elections in what has been its bastion of support in UP, the largest state of India where his rabid anti-Muslim acolyte, Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath has long been putting Shark teeth to BJP’s anti-Muslim manifesto.

Next to these relatively small, but humiliating setbacks in UP, a more serious threat is staring Modi in the face in the upcoming elections in Bihar, which is India’s second largest state, in terms of population, and matters a great deal to anyone with ambition to rule over a large chunk of India.

Modi, whose survival instinct has served him so well over more than a decade as India’s head honcho, had to come up, from his bag of myriad tricks, with something astounding and dramatic to focus the attention of his people in India to his persona of a leader tethered to the good of India.

Over the years nothing has served Modi’s agenda of remaining at the epicenter of political power than anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan tirades and episodes tailor-made to satiate his hunger for absolute, raw, power.

Hence the gory drama of terrorism at Pahalgam, the most sought-after tourist resort outside Srinagar in the Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IOK), perpetrated to precision last April 22, in which 26 tourists were killed in cold blood by alleged ‘terrorist infiltrators’ from outside the Valley of Kashmir.

The very reference to infiltrators from outside of IOK pointed the finger, unmistakably, at Pakistan, which was blamed within minutes of the ghastly incident. To the Modi outfit, which has thrived on its twin-pillared agenda of anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan narrative of hate, the fact that Pahalgam is nearly 400 km from the Line of Control (LoC) is a matter of little, or absolutely no significance.

However, to any outside and open-minded pundit of the tangled Indo-Pakistan landscape, it should matter a great deal, given the ground reality that IOK is perhaps the most fortified and most-heavily militarized place in the world. There’s an overwhelming concentration of more than 700,000 heavily armed Indian army troops in the Valley. How could the flimsy narrative of terrorist infiltrators from Pakistan going undetected over 400 km, in the midst of such an obtrusive military presence stand the test of scrutiny in the eyes of any unbiased observer?

True to Modi’s game-plan of whipping up anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan frenzy, India’s mainstream news media, especially tele-media went berserk in its anti-Pakistan tirades. Loud mouthed Indian Television anchors shouting to near-rupture of their vocal nerves, rose up to the expectations of Modi and his oligarchs owning these TV channels. The Indian media has since been baying for Pakistani blood.

But there are saner voices, too, although their reasoned arguments aren’t being given the space they deserve; their logical analyses are being drowned in the cacophony of anti-Pakistan hysteria ruling the roost in the Modi Land.

The prestigious Indian newspaper, The Hindu, nevertheless hasn’t been shy of exposing the gaping holes—as big as tennis balls—in the narrative being given currency under official patronage and personal care of Modi. It has questioned why there was no security presence, at all, at the Pahalgam tourist resort despite the fact that there’s a check-post of CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) only 7 km from the resort. On top of it, there's a camp of Rashtriya Rifles (RR) of the Indian army just 5 km from Pehelgam.

It’s obvious that the tragedy at Pahalgam was an inside job of Indian Intelligence as much as was the 2019 Pulwama incident, also in IOK, as well as the Mumbai terrorist episode of November 2008.

It’s a time-tested Indian ploy to perpetrate some act of terrorism and blame it on Pakistan whenever things aren’t looking pretty for the regime of the day.

But this time around Modi—because he may feel the ground at home from slipping under his feet—is sounding more alarmist and jingoistic.

Not content to confining himself in his bombastic to ‘follow the terrorists to the end of the earth,’ Modi is getting out of his skin to serve an indirect warning to his nemesis, Pakistan, by his hype to also punish the terrorists’ ‘facilitators,’ a vague, yet undisguised, finger pointed at Pakistan.

Modi going ballistic on the heels of the terrorist episode is as transparent as daylight. He’s falling back on his usual ploy to heap scorn on Pakistan in the wake of any act of terrorism perpetrated on the Indian soil. Never mind that IOK is an internationally disputed land which Modi has arrogated to his captured Indian land through an arbitrary act of doing away, back in 2019, with Article 370 of Indian Constitution which had recognized the insular nature of IOK.

Modi is waxing jingoistic because he thinks India has as much right to regard itself above, and beyond, any reach of international law and convention, given the unalloyed support and patronage of the Global Sheriff, US, not losing a minute in assuring Modi that it stands by his side.

Modi’s disregard of any room for international law has also been augmented and exacerbated by its bosom friend’s contempt of international law in regard to Gaza and the Occupied West Bank of Palestine. The two fast friends feel themselves absolutely immune to any ingress of international law as long as they have assurance of the US standing four squares behind them.

No wonder that Modi—and India’s hostage news media—are threatening Pakistan with doomsday scenario to exact revenge for its alleged involvement in the Pahalgam incident.

In near-total contrast to the rising crescendo of drums of war in India, the incumbent hybrid regime—of Bonapartes and their chosen political acolytes and minions—has thus far reacted with utmost restraint and circumspection.

It does make sense that Pakistan need not be as shrill and alarming as India, given the high stakes of any potential clash of the armed forces of the two countries. Pakistan’s moves have, so far, been reactive to India’s blatant provocations. In reply to India’s uncalled for moves on the diplomatic front and ground, Pakistan has paid India back in its own coin.

In fact, it has tried to make the neighboring Afghanistan aware of the negative fallout on it of the Indian move to close the land border at Attari-Wagah, forcing Pakistan to suspend transit facilities for India’s trade with Afghanistan through the land corridor of Pakistan.

India may also come to rue the folly of denying Pakistani aircraft the use of its air space, given the Pakistani retaliation to deny Indian airlines the facility of using Pakistani air space.

Pakistan has also served notice on India—and to the world, too—that any move on India’s part to divert the flow of waters of Indus and its tributaries to Pakistan—guaranteed under the World Bank-supervised Indus Waters Treaty—would be an act of war, triggering a befitting Pakistani response to safeguard its territorial integrity.

However, there’s no move on part of the Pakistani Bonapartes to heal the fissures inflicted by their fascist control of the political landscape of the country.

There seems to be no recognition, on part of the generals holding the country to their incorrigible appetite for over-lordship of every aspect of the nation’s life, that the nation is more divided than ever at this critical juncture, with a warmongering India threatening Pakistan with its hectoring moves.

The Bonapartes, used to having their diktat ruling the roost over any and every aspect of Pakistani lives, seem to have ossified in a time-capsule. Their mental vegetation is open to omnibus scrutiny in regard, particularly, to the agitation and outcry of the people of Baluchistan for their political and fundamental rights.

This is a carbon copy of how they reacted, boorishly, to the entirely peaceful and civilized demands of the people of then East Pakistan, which resulted in the truncation of the country and baptized the birth of Bangladesh.

India’s blatant and provocative saber-rattling demands, per se, that Pakistan, in terms of its political cohesion, be on one united platform. What should be of utmost priority to the rulers holding Pakistan captive to their whims is creating a united front of all the major political parties and political leaders. Setting Imran Khan, the most popular and iconic political leader to the people of Pakistan, free from his undue incarceration should be of utmost priority to challenge Modi’s lunatic warmongering.

(The writer is a retired Pakistani ambassador who served the country as a career diplomat for 36 long years. He can be reached at  K_K_ghori@hotmail.com )