By Brig (Retd) Asif Haroon Raja
Anti-India feeling in Pakistan and anti-Pakistan feeling in India have always been rampant in both countries. Unabated revulsion for each other since the inception of two countries as independent countries has earned them the title of arch rivals. Leaders of India whip up animus against Pakistan out of political expediency while Pakistan does the same out of genuine security fears since India is several times bigger in size and resources and has wicked designs against Pakistan. Indian habit of harming its neighbors is akin to a scorpion, which by habit cannot help biting. In contrast to India’s immoral conduct, all South Asian states believe in living in peace and harmony and none has ever tried to harm the interests of other. Of all the countries in South Asia, Pakistan has suffered the most at the hands of India and continues to endure its never ending machinations.
Harking back into the history of the subcontinent, it becomes apparent that the reason for unabated antagonism is old wounds which time has not been able to heal. Occupation of India by Muslim rulers starting 712 AD heightened Hindus antagonism against Muslims. Although the Hindus never picked up arms against the Muslim rulers during their almost 1000 years glorious rule over Indian subcontinent, the Brahman Hindus never reconciled with benign Muslim rule and continued with their intrigues to undermine Islam.
They took their revenge when the British occupied India in 1858 and made Hindus as their natural partners. Both systematically undermined Indian Muslims heritage, education system and their social status. While the Hindus grieved over real and unreal excesses of Muslim rulers, the Muslims lamented over the pernicious behavior of Hindu political leaders wanting to Hinduise Islam and to deny the Muslims their constitutional rights. Grievances against each other are so deep rooted that the age old adage of ‘time is the biggest healer’ has proven wrong. The French, the Germans and the British overcame their centuries old enmity and have become friends but India is a unique case which keeps burning in the cauldron of hatred against Pakistan. The only fault of Pakistan was to opt for independence since the Indian Muslims having lived together with Hindus for centuries had come to the conclusion that co-existence was not possible since Hindus considered the Muslims as impure and inferior.
India under Nehru inflicted deep wounds to Pakistan at the time of partition. Not only the border between India and Pakistan was unjustly demarcated to make rich lands belonging to Pakistan become part of India, India gobbled all the 535 princely states including Muslim majority Junagadh, Hyderabad Deccan, Manavadar and Kashmir wanting to accede to Pakistan. Corridor to Kashmir via Gurdaspur and Pathankot was allotted to India to allow it access to Kashmir. Bengal and Punjab were unfairly halved; no land corridor was provided to Pakistan to link eastern and western parts placed 1000 miles apart with a sea in between. All these injustices were made possible with the help of conniving Mountbatten-Radcliff combine. Having got the major share and leaving crumbs for Pakistan, Hindu and Sikh leaders still didn’t reconcile to the partition plan, they unleashed Hindu RSS thugs and Sikh marauders to carryout massive slaughter of migrating Muslims from East Punjab to West Punjab and from Bihar and Orissa to East Pakistan in 1947.
Even after butchering millions of Muslims to give vent to their anger, Indian leaders never gave up the hope of reabsorbing Pakistan and kept scheming to undermine it. Instead of helping the toddling state to stand upon its feet by extending assistance and earning its undying gratitude, India even denied Pakistan’s rightful share of finances, assets and defence material. It waged a war in Kashmir in 1947 to annex it by force at a time when Pakistan had nothing in hand and was struggling for its survival. It stopped flow of river waters in 1948 and imposed economic war on Pakistan. In 1951, India deployed all its troops along Pakistan’s border and threatened to go to war.
When India failed to undo or browbeat Pakistan, it started regarding Pakistan as a stumbling block in her drive towards attaining big power status. Pakistan has irritated India the most since no other country in South Asia has challenged India. Pakistan is the only country which has gone to war with India several times and refused to accept her hegemony. India has employed all possible tactics starting from political, diplomatic, economic coercion to psychological war, secret war and full-fledged war but failed to cow down Pakistan, which is ten times smaller in size, population, resources and military strength. Pakistan stood on its principled stance of equality even when it had not acquired nuclear capability.
India played a role in keeping Pak-Soviet and Pak-Afghan relations frosty. It instigated Afghanistan to keep Pashtunistan issue alive. In order to retain its illegal hold over occupied Kashmir in defiance of UN resolutions, India went to war with Pakistan in 1965. With the active help of USSR, India broke Pakistan into two in 1971 and then kept plotting how to further balkanize truncated Pakistan.Besides RAW which had played a key role in dismembering Pakistan, seven other related Indian agencies went about supporting and spreading the idea of secessionist bodies in Pakistan to keep Pakistan politically unstable and economically weak under the wings of India. It has used psychological operations and secret war as tools to keep Pakistan politically unstable and economically weak.
Once India warmed up with USA after 1990, it tirelessly worked to further strain Pak-US relations and succeeded in making the US take a u-turn on Kashmir issue by siding with India and ignoring the cries of hapless Kashmiris. While India did manage to fray Pak-US relations, it couldn’t take it to the pitch of making it declare that Pakistan was a terrorist state, or agreeing to come to assist Indian military in humbling Pakistan. Despite its reservations over nuclear issue, the US still saw Pakistan as a bridge to Afghanistan and Central Asia where it was eying to acquire its rich natural resources and as such didn’t sever its relationship.
9/11 provided a golden opportunity to India to fulfill all its hidden motives against Pakistan. Its motives of destabilization, denuclearization, and settlement of Kashmir dispute in accordance with its wishes and balkanization of Pakistan or reducing it to an acquiescent state were to be accomplished under the garb of friendship. An eight-year covert plan was chalked out which was to be implemented by RAW, CIA, FBI, MI6, Mossad and RAAM using Afghan soil. CIA and FBI were to consolidate initial outposts inside Pakistan and to facilitate entry of other agents. USA dangled the bait and Musharraf greedily took it and the hook got stuck in the throat of Pakistan. India is fully engaged in this vile game in collusion with its strategic partners and has achieved considerable progress but is unhappy that it has so far not been able to floor Pakistan.
Instead of being grateful to Pakistan for allowing India to undertake development works in Afghanistan at a large scale without making any fuss, India misused this gesture by misusing Afghan soil to destabilize Pakistan. Rather than Pakistan making hue and cry over Indian efforts to gain complete influence over Afghanistan and to undermine Pakistan, ironically it is India which is howling like a frightened child that instability along Pak-Afghan border pose a direct threat to it. Unstable Afghanistan doesn’t affect India since the two countries are not contiguous. Pakistan being the next door neighbor, sharing 2500 km long porous border with Afghanistan and with deep cultural, religious and ethnic ties does get affected.
Whenever India becomes soft and nice towards Pakistan, the change in demeanor is never without a sinister purpose. Guile, deceit and lies are in its blood. After maintaining a stubborn stance for about 14 months, India all of a sudden expressed its willingness to restart talks in February 2010 and simultaneously launched a deceptive campaign titled ‘Aman ki Asha’ to show its soft face to the world. This change of heart occurred because of US increased pressure and dramatic turn of events in Afghanistan detrimental to Indian interests. India got disturbed when Obama announced pull out date from July 2011 onwards. India got another shock when USA declared its intentions to open dialogue with Taliban and to work for a negotiated political settlement to Afghan imbroglio.
Renewal of warmth in Pak-US relations on account of its leverage in Afghan affairs vexed India. Tehran meeting between leaders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan followed by Istanbul meeting between the three leaders flabbergasted India. When London Conference attended by representatives of over 65 countries approved US plan of reintegration of Taliban, treated Pakistan with newfound respect and cold shouldered India, it panicked Indian leaders. Seeing this as a paradigm shift and not knowing how to stem the downslide, India stepped up its efforts to normalize relations with Pakistan and agreed to discuss all issues including Kashmir.
As the Aman ki Asha preachers were celebrating the thaw in Indo-Pak relations, the incident of 02 May took place which nose dived Pak-US relations. Instead of helping Pakistan come out of difficult situation, India exploited it by further instigating USA. It saw it as an opportunity to regain lost ground in Afghanistan, completely marginalize Pakistan as well as nail ISI and lower the image of Pak Army.
It renewed its program of Pakistan bashing by first playing up OBL card by saying, ‘see we had been all long saying that Pakistan is the nursery of terrorism and it has now been proven beyond any doubt’. In order to offset the damage done on account of startling revelations that Hindu extremists and Indian military officers were involved in all the terrorist attacks in India between 2003 and 2008 which were lumped on Pakistan, its spin doctors have come out with a bizarre story that Pakistani Army officers are involved in terrorist activities in India.
Names of fifty persons were made public which included five serving Majors of Army. Others were Dawood Ibrahim, described as the 2nd most wanted terrorist after OBL, Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, Ilyas Kashmiri, Hizbul Mujahideen chief Salahuddin, JKLF head Amanullah, Maualna Azhar of Jaish Muhammad, Lakhbir Singh, Paramjit Singh and several others. They are accused in carrying out 1993 bombings in Mumbai, 2001 Parliament attack in Delhi and Mumbai attacks in 2008 and allegedly hiding in Pakistan. Islamabad was pressed to hand over most wanted fugitives for trial on terror charges. India had handed the list to Pakistan in March but made it public last week as it sought to ratchet up pressure on its neighbor in the wake of death of OBL at the hands of US Navy SEALs who was found living in Abbottabad.
Within a week of airing of this ridiculous story, India’s Home Minister had to admit that a mistake had been made in a list of most wanted fugitives thought to be hiding in Pakistan. This admission was made after one of the terror suspect named in the list was found living in Mumbai. He is out on bail after his arrest by local police over his apparent role in 2003 train blasts.
The list was prepared by the Indian Home Ministry in consultation with investigating agencies and included the name of Wazhul Qamar Khan, who was wanted for his alleged role in bombing of trains in Mumbai in 2003. But Khan has since been found in the outskirt of Mumbai where he is out on bail after being arrested by local police over his apparent role in the blast, local report say. Indian Home Secretary GK Pillai giving his interview on the ND TV News channel on Tuesday acknowledged the blunder. He stated, ‘The ministry takes responsibility for mistakenly including the name of Khan’. ‘We deeply regret the blunder of including his name in the most wanted list and a probe has been ordered’.
This is not the first time that its lie has been exposed. India never owns up its crimes and puts up an innocent face after each crime. It is for the first time it has hastened to tender an apology since it could not hide its slipup. It resorts to lies and deceits as a policy to let down its neighbors and to get away with its crimes. It had been willfully blaming ISI for the terrorist act on Indian parliament in 2001, for terrorist acts in Malegaon (2006, 2008); Samjhota Train, Dargah in Ajmer Sharif, Mecca mosque in Hyderabad in 2007, Mumbai attacks in 2008 and German Bakery in Pune. Ultimately it was confessed by Hindu RSS leader Aseemanand in January 2011 that most of these terror attacks had been carried out by him and Hindu extremist groups in connivance with Indian military officers to target Indian Muslims. RAW in collusion with Mossad and CIA had made up Mumbai drama to kill investigation officer Hemant Karkare who was all set to unveil the big racket of terrorism of Hindu terrorist groups in cahoots with Indian military officers’, and also to implicate Pakistan by blaming Lashkar-e-Taiba. India needs to make apologies to all its neighbors specially Pakistan which it has brutalized so many times.
0 comments:
Post a Comment