EDITORIAL: Prime Minister Imran Khan did not disappoint during his address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday and brought the whole world's attention once again to the atrocities New Delhi is committing in Occupied Kashmir as well as its efforts to subjugate, even cleanse, millions of Muslims in mainland India. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has clearly breathed the kind of life into the Kashmir issue that the Indians, at least, were not used to. Everybody knows that the prime minister was also right when he said that the South Asian region would never know durable peace and stability till this particular issue is settled. And since all Pakistan is asking for is movement in accordance with UN resolutions that have just been hanging in the air for more than 70 years, there is no reason for the world body not to help nudge it along.
It is only natural for everybody to be concerned about the direction India is taking as a country because now even the main opposition Congress party has started questioning it quite openly. For all the anti-Muslim sentiment and the enduring hangover of partition, India did stand out all this time for its own kind of secular ideals as a nation. It was unique because it openly accepted people of all faiths and persuasions as equals in the eyes of the government and the people and made efforts to protect this image. But now the ruling party does not even pretend to make any secret of its single-minded obsession with making the Hindutva ideology the main political narrative of the country. And the one thing that binds the extremists that form Prime Minister Modi's main support base more tightly than anything else is their hatred for Pakistan. That is why the government is able to deflect attention from pressing domestic matters whenever something goes wrong by dragging Pakistan into the news cycle for one reason or another. And that is also precisely why Prime Minister Imran Khan once again warned the world about a possible false flag operation by India somewhere in Kashmir.
The last few months must have been Prime Minister Modi's toughest days in office. India is now in the race for becoming number-one in the world when it comes to the highest number of new coronavirus cases and even deaths. Its economy has simply collapsed after shrinking nearly 24 percent over the last quarter. All this has the government in a fix. If it doesn't give the people something else to occupy themselves with very quickly it risks being pushed into a very dark corner because the virus is not going away anytime soon and the pressure on it will only continue to mount. It is somehow at moments just like these that something suddenly happens somewhere that involves an act of terrorism which is then conveniently blamed on Pakistan. From there the rather front-foot Indian media takes over and Pakistan is held responsible all over again even though no evidence is ever produced. That is why Prime Minister Imran Khan was so straight forward when he reminded the General Assembly that Delhi was playing such dangerous and self-destructive games in a "nuclearised environment" and that there should be no doubt that Pakistan would "fight for its freedom to the end."
That must have got at least a few of India's supporters in the organisation, who normally do what they can to make sure that the Kashmir issue never progresses, to wonder whether the money that India's large market brings them is worth helping create a situation that could see a mushroom cloud over South Asia. The PTI's, especially Prime Minister Imran Khan's, efforts must be appreciated. It is only by repeatedly mentioning everything that is wrong in Occupied Kashmir, and just how an extremist government in Delhi is pushing the whole country down a very slippery slope, that the international community will be forced to see just what the BJP government's policies are reducing the whole region to. Pakistan, for its part, continues to do the right thing by asking for the resolution of all outstanding issues in a constructive environment while staying alert and ready to thwart any act of physical aggression.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020