EDITORIAL: In a wide ranging interview he recently gave American podcaster, Lex Fridman, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made incredible claims about relations with Pakistan.
Since he became PM in 2014 the old peace process aimed at resolving all outstanding issues of conflict between the two neighbours, including the core issue of Kashmir, has been dead in the water.
Meanwhile, the ultra-right Hindu nationalist leader of India routinely uses hate speech to burnish his anti-Pakistan credentials.
But responding to a question about tensions with this country, he presented himself as a proponent of peaceful coexistence, telling the podcaster, “we expected them [Pakistanis] to live and let live and yet, they chose not to foster a harmonious coexistence. … They have waged a proxy war against us.”
As a matter of fact India does not have harmonious relations with any of its neighbours, with the result that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, established in December 1985, has failed to take off to-date.
Challenging Modi’s “misleading and one-sided” assertions, the Foreign Office in Islamabad rightly averred that peace and stability in South Asia have remained hostage to India’s “rigid approach and hegemonic ambitions.”
The FO also noted that his remarks conveniently omit the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, which remains unresolved for the last seven decades despite India’s solemn assurances to the UN, Pakistan and the Kashmiri people.
Making a bad situation worse, in August 2019 the Modi government scrapped the Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir’s (IIOJ&K’s) special status, unleashing a reign of terror on its people.
And in a complete sham it also tried to alter the disputed region’s demographics. Yet it has failed to quell the Kashmiri people’s struggle to break the yoke of Indian rule. It is pertinent to recall here that a previous BJP government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee had worked with Pakistan’s then president Gen Pervez Musharraf to find an out of box resolution of the Kashmir issue. They are believed to have almost reached an agreement when the hawks in the BJP intervened to undermine it.
Speaking in the IIOJ&K assembly earlier this month, Omar Abdullah also recalled that India and Pakistan had come closer to resolving the Kashmir issue during Dr Manmohan Singh-led government (it lost momentum, though, due to certain extraneous circumstances), adding that he is not expecting a return to that situation in his lifetime – his way of saying there is no hope of peace returning to the region as long as Narendra Modi is at the helm in New Delhi.
As regards his allegation of Pakistan waging a proxy war, the PM must not forget that a RAW operative, Kulbhushan Jadhav, caught red-handed instigating sabotage and terrorism in Baluchistan is on the death row in this country.
There is a lot more India is doing to destabilise this country, as publically acknowledged a while ago by its national security adviser, Ajit Doval. All this vitiates the atmosphere, ratcheting up tensions that impede, at least for the short-term, any prospects of a “harmonious coexistence”.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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