India’s carte blanche

The Arthashastra, Chanakya’s 4BCE Sanskrit exposition, is a book on statecraft that introduced an empire-running module expounding upon Chanakya’s theory of conquer or be conquered.

As against the age old adage of preparing for war but hoping for peace, he propagated battle readiness with plans to conquer. Using dogmas to whip up sentiments, disinformation, making treaties that could be broken, contriving revolts against unsuspecting kings and using secret agents to kill enemies were some of the crucial means to this end.

Displaying these traits, Chanakya helped 19-year-old Chandragupta Maurya become emperor, and in the creation of the pan-Indian Mauryan Empire.

India, a prisoner of history more so under Narendra Modi, has been a hotbed of Chanakyan machinations. Based on reports from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau held India responsible for Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s murder. Subsequently, Pavan Kumar Rai, the RAW station head in Canada was expelled from the country.

India’s brazen mindset had Foreign Minister Jaishankar calling it an “atmosphere of violence and intimidation against Indian ‘diplomats’ in Canada”. Viral videos show Indian commentators threatening PM Trudeau and Canada while Indian media citing ‘sources’ accused Pakistan of Nijjar’s murder.

Pakistan has, since Independence, borne the brunt of India’s overt and covert aggression; India openly gloats about dismembering Pakistan. It has, apart from fomenting terrorism, also undertaken a spate of killings targeting Sikh and Kashmiri leaders here. Given its ignominious track record, India should have been reined in decades ago.

In July 2009, the then PM Yusuf Raza Gilani handed over a dossier to his Indian counterpart. It contained call transcripts of Indian handlers with the attackers of the Sri Lankan cricket team and the Manawan Police Academy at Lahore. Locations of RAW-operated terrorist camps in Afghanistan and evidence of its aiding and arming Baloch insurgents were also enclosed.

Pakistan stood vindicated when Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian naval officer, was arrested in Balochistan’s Mashkel area and admitted to acts of terrorism. In 2017, Col (r) Habib Zahir was lured from Rawalpindi into Nepal with a job offer. He was kidnapped by Indian operatives and taken to India as a bargaining chip to get Jadhav released. He remains in Indian captivity.

In November 2020, another dossier was presented to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Western capitals. It contained evidence of India conducting assassinations in Pakistan and RAW merging splinter TTP groups with Baloch insurgents and arming them. The dossier also carried specifics of a RAW-operated 700 member group “working under the direct supervision of the PM” to target CPEC projects and personnel in Pakistan.

Details of 21 RAW-operated terrorist camps in India and 66 in Afghanistan along with a new group called Daesh-Pakistan were also provided. Like the previous one, this dossier was also stonewalled. EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based NGO, unearthed India’s 15-year-long subterfuge of undermining Pakistan through 500 fake media outlets operating in 95 countries.

Run by the New Delhi-based Srivastava Group, the dubious group that took some far-right EU parliament members to a completely locked down Occupied Kashmir, the clandestine operation also impersonated the EU with forged documents while feeding the UN with false information.

ANI, the largest Indian news agency, created reports based on this feed disseminating it to a global audience. Indian media outlets, reusing ANI content, became amplifiers of this fake barrage. Despite these criminal revelations, it was Pakistan that remained in the crosshairs. Punitive measures like placement on the FATF’s grey list were imposed as Modi revealed in his unbridled Chanakyan power.

It is the quirkiest of dichotomies that the BJP has the RSS – an ardent and declared admirer of Hitler – as its torchbearer and mentor. Despite this, India has remained enamored with Israel since its creation. It has replicated Israel’s genocidal template of subjugating Palestinians in Occupied Kashmir and its hegemony towards its neighbours.

‘The kill list’, a Frederick Forsyth novel, has a US secret agency going around the globe eliminating people considered dangerous to the country. India, accused of a Mossad-style assassination spree in Canada, the US, Britain and Pakistan, has taken up ticking names off its kill list beyond its borders too.

In his memoir ‘A life in the shadows’, former Indian spymaster AS Dulat describes Modi and India’s NSA Ajit Doval, as being “made for each other – a match made in heaven”. Doval has crafted a ruthless operational policy under the tutelage of Modi, his “heaven mate”.

RAW recently got 59-year-old Ravi Sinha, a 1988-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer as its new chief. Deputed to RAW for the last two decades, Sinha was its operational head for the last seven years. Described as tech savvy, his forte is Pakistan, Kashmir (having served as RAW commissioner in Occupied Kashmir) and the Khalistan issue. Despite his deceptive corporate executive demeanor, Sinha’s ample experience guarantees an uptick in black operations.

Nijjar had been repeatedly threatened because of his political views. In a May 18 interview with Vancouver’s Burnaby Spice Radio, he claimed his name was on RAW’s kill list. Elaborating, he said: “The people raising their voices about human rights can be murdered and India has the ability to do it”. Prophetic words; a fusillade of 50 bullets of which 34 hit him, Nijjar’s murder was not simply an assassination, it was a chilling message to the Sikh diaspora that raising their voice against India meant the same macabre end.

The recent G20 summit in New Delhi saw only PM Trudeau taking up Nijjar’s murder with Modi; the rest remained enthralled by the dance and camaraderie show. “Non vedo, non sento, non parlo” – I see nothing, I hear nothing, I say nothing, is not a motto espousing serenity; it is Omerta, the code of silence enforced by the Mafia. With the West’s Omerta, India’s carte blanche remains ever in hand.

The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: miradnanaziz@gmail.com