Pakistan rejects India’s criticism of FM Bilawal’s Modi remarks

Rejecting Indian Ministry of External Affairs statement on Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s remarks about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pakistan has said that Delhi is desperately using international platforms to advance its agenda to defame and target Islamabad.

In his address at the United Nations, Bilawal had described Modi as the “butcher of Gujarat".

“Narendra Modi was banned from entering this country (the United States). These are the prime minister and foreign minister of RSS, which draws inspiration from Hitler’s SS,” the FM had said.

Following his remarks, the Indian government criticised Bilawal’s statement, saying that Pakistan “lacked the credentials to cast aspersions at India”.

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In a statement issued on Saturday, the Foreign Office (FO) said India's statement is also a reflection of growing frustration over its failure in maligning and isolating Pakistan.

"After being unable to prevent Pakistan’s exit from FATF Grey List in October and international recognition of Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts, India is desperately using international platforms to advance its agenda to defame and target Pakistan," FO said.

“With its statement, the Indian Government has tried to hide behind subterfuge and canard to conceal the realities of the 2002 Gujarat massacre. It is a shameful story of mass killings, lynching, rape, and plunder.

The fact of the matter is that the masterminds of the Gujarat massacre have escaped justice and now hold key government positions in India."

The FO said no verbosity can hide the crimes of the “Saffron terrorists” in India, adding that the culture of impunity is now deeply embedded in Hindutva-driven polity in India.

"The acquittal of the mastermind and perpetrators of the heinous attack on Delhi-Lahore Samjhota Express, that killed 40 Pakistani nationals on Indian soil, demonstrates the massacre of justice under the RSS-BJP dispensation.

Intimidation and demonization of religious minorities receive official patronage in states across India. Hindutva supremacists have been unleashed to exercise cow vigilantism, ransack places of worship, and attack religious congregations," FO said.

FO said that while India peddled a “fictitious narrative of victimhood”, the country itself was a “perpetrator of repression in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and a sponsor and financier of terrorist groups in South Asia”.

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"Only this week, a dossier was released containing irrefutable evidence that substantiated India’s involvement in the 2021 terrorist attack in a peaceful Lahore neighborhood.

The evidence gathered with international support confirms that the Lahore attack was instigated, planned and financed by the Indian state."

The statement added that for a country with a “grandiose vision about itself and its place in the world”, India was following a policy of pettiness towards its neighbours.

“We are confident that the international community would look through this facade and the dream of RSS-BJP to turn South Asia in its image will remain unrealised,” FO added.