Bluff game: An Indian recreation

Having relations with Pakistan already at the worst, India has suddenly started behaving like a daredevil to further escalate the situation, both at the Line of Control and the Working Boundary. Amazingly yet predictably, this bravery is not made-in-India but the result of a goading-pat on her crooked shoulder by some newfound friends. Side by side her ceasefire violations and killing of innocent civilians on both sides of the LoC, India chose to intensify enmity through ludicrous bragging and ridiculous outbursts using incumbent Army chief General Bipin Rawat as a mouthpiece. Apparently, the very objective is to make a false show to the world that India has finally overcome the lasting inferiority complex it underwent after conceding abject defeat in the 1965 War by a relatively very small neighbouring country. As a matter of fact, while the national virtues such as courage and valour look utterly alien onto Indian demeanours, the vicious traits like conspiracy and deceit do not find a more befitting habitat to dwell than the current Indian establishment.

While Prime Minister Narendera Modi, under the 'in-thing' of appearing a peace icon of 'global' stature’ (for Indians no more like to be called 'local' even in their idiosyncrasies and boasts) continues ‘Trump’eting India’s fake concerns on terrorism, his ideological offshoots -- Security Adviser Mr Doval and General Rawat -- carried on with Modi's real policy of funding, fanning and spreading terrorism in and around Pakistan. Additionally, the trio has unabashedly jacked up the task of brandishing Pakistan as the country that supports terror; hence needed to be punished, and that too by India through 'hot pursuits'. While the world at large and saner sections of the Indian society believe that any Indian misadventure in the name of 'surgical strikes' into Pakistani territory might force Pakistan to go for nuclear options eventually, Gen Rawat preferred to swank that," We will call their bluff. If given the task, we will not say we cannot cross the border because they have nuclear weapons". Really an uncalled for show of bravery. But the general cannot be blamed much for his inadequacy on learning lessons from history, for the reason that he had just started attending junior school in the year 1965 when intruding forces of his brave homeland were found running back head-over-heels leaving their corpses, tanks and aircraft as a token of their fleeting valour. An adage goes by that, " The wise learns from others' experience, the fool from his own quandaries". Modi-Doval-Rawat nexus has chosen the later to satiate their 'greatness itch' that they not only themselves are sufferers hereditarily but also keep on injecting the same into their under-nourished populace for the last many years.

The Indian establishment takes everything Pakistan says as a bluff, just because the whole lot that India has so far claimed invariably turned out to be an outright lie in the end. India continued bluffing her own as well as foreign audience; be it the indigenous Kashmir movement that India holds Pakistan responsible for, the absurd Uri Army Base drama to accuse Pakistan-based insurgents for killing 18 soldiers, or the non-existent retributive surgical strikes staged on the sets of Bollywood. However, the 2008 Mumbai attacks stand out as their most absurd bluff-game ever, because just for the sake of declaring them 26/11 of India, the episode was staged on the exact footprints of US’ 9/11. The official Indian version came soon after the said Mumbai incident as ”a series of attacks launched on 26 November 2008, when 10 members of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) carried out 12 coordinated shootings and bombings that lasted for four days across Mumbai, killing 164 and wounding 308 people”.

As always feared, the giant Indian media mechanism in no time infected the world that matters and succeeded in drawing global condemnation for the incident in general and for Pakistan in particular for its allegedly vague role in the affair. However, as the dust of disbelief subsided with the passage of time and facts started to unfold, the official Indian version on the attacks turned out to be an absolute farce. While Pakistan as well as LeT denied the veracity of the whole affair right at the outset, the impartial segments of Indian academia also became extrovert with regard to inherent flaws, dichotomies and anomalies present in the execution and follow-up of the four-day long terrorist drama.

Yet, the hardest blow for India’s ‘Deep State’ elements and a shocking revelation for general public in India and rest of the world has come in the form of a book by the renown Jewish writer Elias Davidsson. The book titled,” The Betrayal of India: Revisiting the 26/11 Evidence” draws a closer investigative look at the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, and proves how the attacks immaculately followed the patterns of deception common in the ‘War on Terror’, how by framing the event as an act of war Indian armed forces got an immediate 21% hike in military spendings, how it was ensured that the timing of attacks at Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai should match with the presence of Henry Kissinger, Goldman Sachs and other international celebrities in Taj to help bring India closer to countries claiming to take lead in the war on terror. Whereas the book provides irrevocable proofs against the incident terming it a ‘false flag attack’ by exposing the facts on ‘forged confessions and witness manipulations, the most striking disclosure by writer that lays the Indian official version bare states that, ”of the hundreds of witnesses processed by the court in relation to attacks at various locations in Mumbai, not a single one testified to having observed any of the eight accused killing anyone”. Not a billion dollar riddle to solve that in fact the so-called terrorists were already in custody and were then transported dead or alive to the respective locations of the engineered terror.

The question arises as to what India achieved with the Mumbai attack drama. The answer is simple but painful. By killing 164 of its own innocent people, India secured the undue share in the war-on-terror via irrelevant access in Afghanistan, received billions of dollars defence equipment from the West, succeeded in convincing the WoT sponsors to place Pakistan among terror-sponsor countries, induced the US to allow India’s conspiracy stations along the Pak-Afghan border, and above all confused the world at large about the very legitimate Kashmir liberation movement as an act of terrorism on the part of Kashmiris. Indeed, for achieving the above-said greater national objectives, sacrificing 164 innocent lives was nothing for the Indian strategists.

The world having concerns about terrorism, especially Pakistan being the real victim of terror from its surrounding neighbours, may keep the fingers crossed hoping that such 'Bluff Games' of terror would end sometime in future on their own. However, for the greater good, the conspiracy theories scripted by India and her sponsors are required to be busted by human rights bodies, academia and the media before those are hatched to maturity, jeopardizing the world peace at large.