EDITORIAL: On display during a recent Indian Armed Forces Veterans’ Day celebrations at Akhnoor in the Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIJ&K) was the BJP’s brand of balderdash.
Speaking on the occasion, defence minister Rajnath Singh accused Pakistan of using Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) “to run dangerous and treacherous business of terrorism” which, he said, should stop, “otherwise ... dot, dot, dot”.
He also reiterated New Delhi’s usual stance that occupied Jammu and Kashmir is not complete without AJK, thereby inadvertently acknowledging that Kashmir is a disputed territory, as is the position of Pakistan and recognised by the UN resolutions.
Predictably, whilst taking exception to the minister’s remarks the Foreign Office in Islamabad asserted that it is an internationally recognised disputed territory whose final status must be resolved in accordance with the UN Security Council’s resolutions.
For his part, the Indian army chief, Gen Upendra Dwivedi, called Pakistan “the epicentre of terrorism”, adding that 80 percent of ‘terrorists’ active in IIOJ&K are Pakistani — a claim which flies in the face of what some within that country such as a veteran BJP leader and former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha have been saying for quite some time.
Sinha, who made several visits to the troubled valley at the head of civil society delegations, told this to an interviewer: “I am looking at the alienation of the masses of people in Jammu and Kashmir. That is something which bothers me the most… . We have lost the people emotionally... You just have to visit the valley to realise that they have lost faith in us.”
As regards Gen Dwivedi’s other allegation, he has been reminded by the ISPR, Pakistan military’s media wing, of the “sobering fact” that a senior Indian military officer, Kulbhushan Yadhav, caught red-handed orchestrating acts of terror against innocent civilians is in Pakistan’s custody.
The General surely is also aware of his country’s national security adviser Ajit Doval’s publicly stated “offensive defence strategy” aimed at what he had described as Pakistan’s vulnerabilities. India is known to have played a role in bringing Baloch insurgent groups together under the umbrella of the so-called Baloch Liberation Army, and supplying them with strategic support.
Its intelligence operatives use the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) terrorists as well for acts of terrorism inside this country. What’s more; New Delhi has been involved in extraterritorial assassinations in Canada, Pakistan, and an abortive one in the US.
All these undeniable facts are proof positive that India under its ultra-right Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become the epicenter of terrorism.
The incendiary rhetoric that country’s defence minister and army chief delivered inside the troubled region clearly is meant to deflect international attention from its relentless oppression against the Kashmiri people.
It is also an exercise, as pointed out by the ISPR, in futility to beat the dead horse of India’s default position, i.e., blaming Pakistan for indigenous reaction to state-sponsored brutalities. This can only escalate tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, leading to unanticipated dangerous consequences for the region and beyond.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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