Despicable Indian response

During the recently-concluded 73rd session of the United Nation General Assembly, India yet again took a U-turn on Pakistan's offer for talks to improve the bilateral ties. Soon after assuming the charge, Prime Minister Imran Khan had suggested a foreign ministers' level meeting of the two countries on the sidelines of the UNGA sessions. Initially India welcomed the proposal, however just a week prior to the event it weirdly backed out lodging terror-related allegations again. Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj during her address at the UNGA spilled out a barrage of concocted statements against Pakistan by equating it with terrorism strictly in line with her country's official policy to isolate Pakistan in the comity of nations. 

This proved that India in fact refused Pakistan’s offer to come to negotiation table because it did not want to deny itself this Pakistan-bashing opportunity at the UNGA. Despite all, Pakistan's FM Shah Mehmood Qureshi during his address on the occasion reiterated his country's resolve to stay unprovoked and give fair chance to all peace initiatives in the region. Swaraj clearly seen trying to prove her credentials as mouthpiece for her sponsor PM Modi who has repeatedly vowed to teach a lesson to Pakistan by isolating it the world over. Quite contrarily, Pakistan itself has been a hapless victim of terrorism, including the one hurled at it by India both overtly and covertly, rather than a sponsor of terror as it is being propagated by India & Co. 

The history of sincere efforts of rapprochement from Pakistan to India is fairly long. Equally lengthy is the account of disappointments that India handed down to Pakistan after every such endeavour. We can recall last December when Pakistan issued visas to the wife and mother of imprisoned RAW agent Kalbushan Jadhav for meeting on purely humanitarian grounds.

The goodwill gesture was extended despite the fact that the serving naval officer Jadhav was sentenced to death by a military court following a trial that proved his involvement in acts of espionage and terrorism in Pakistan. It was also assured that Jadhav’s family would be provided full security during their visit besides agreeing to India’s demand that they may be accompanied by an official from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. But what happened thereafter was nothing less than disgraceful on the part of India. It shifted her Pakistan-bashing to the top-gears not only by lobbying against and brandishing Pakistan as a terror-harboring state but also by killing civilian population of Pakistan through unprovoked ceasefire violations and cross-border shelling.

Despite India’s unconcealed animosities, the repeated offers from Pakistan to India for resuming peace-talks is nothing less than an over-gentlemanly act since Pakistan comes under no moral obligation to do so after repeated Indian betrayals. Moreover, if Pakistan had shown such act of diplomatic courtesy to any other country, it must have been reciprocated with reasonable civility.

Yet India does not feel like returning goodwill gestures in a manner that may present her in relatively healthier picture in terms of statesmanship.  As a bad old habit, India – especially under PM Modi – keeps looking for opportunities to malign Pakistan and hurl unwarranted threats every now and then. For the purpose, the MDR-conglomerate (Modi-Doval-Rawat) employs variety of strategies.

First, the Indian forces brutally kill the protesters in occupied Kashmir during fake encounters and then failing to control the subsequent reprisal there-against, they end up blaming Pakistan for the massive unrest and violence in the valley. Second comes the frequent attacks on the LoC and targeting the innocent Pakistani villagers aimed at putting pressure on Pakistan to stop moral/ diplomatic support for Kashmiris at international forums. 

Ironically whatever happens even inside India such as engineered incidents in Bombay, Pathankot or Uri, all has eventually been sent to Pakistan’s share. Thirdly, to undermine Pakistan, a spy network along the entire Pak-Afghan border has been established by India on the pretext of restructuring Afghanistan. However, their ‘restructuring’ is limited to financing and facilitating the miscreants on both sides of the border to carry out terror acts inside Pakistan. 

As a latest agenda item, India has picked up pace of maligning Pakistan inside as well as outside India. It does not, however, require more-than-ordinary intellect to understand the dilemma India is once again faced with i.e. the oncoming 2019-general elections. RSS-groomed Modi and NSA Doval do not know any other way to fool their voters the second time except through Pakistan-bashing as well as hate-speeches against the cow-eaters i.e. Indian Muslims.

This time Modi-Doval nexus also chose to utilize the services of their Army Chief Bipin Rawat for the purpose. Gen Rawat, who before taking charge used to advocate normalization of ties with Pakistan, has hastily become his master’s voice to mimic spiteful and extremely unprofessional tirade against the very next-door neighbor.

People in India must have understood by now that why radical politicians like Modi resort to malicious practice of Pakistan-bashing, anti-Muslim diatribe and Hindutva sloganeering every time there are elections in India. As a nation, they must not get carried away and hoodwinked by such myopic politicians whose personal gains in fact run counter to communal harmony and better relations with countries neighboring India.