Pakistani lawmakers, including those in the supposedly pro-India PMl(N), have joined hands with jihadists and the ISI as they continue to stage a diabolic anti-India drama, now widely broadcast by the mainstream media, writes Jaibans Singh
“There is no scope of Pakistan winning a war against India in my lifetime”, said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a strong response to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s war mongering. During his address to the Budget Session of the puppet Government installed in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Mr Sharif had declared rather grandly, “Kashmir is a flashpoint and can trigger a fourth war” between India and Pakistan; only to retract the statement within hours through official channels.
That Pakistan maintains a multi-faced Kashmir policy is well-known. Pakistani leaders and diplomats are not averse to giving statements that suit the occasion; hence, they speak a different tune in the United Nations, a different one when visiting Western nations especially the United States, a different one when in the Middle East and present a different one at home.
The most devious ploy is, of course, reserved for dialogues held with India at various levels. Here, all effort is directed towards portraying India as rigid and inflexible in its approach.
Beyond the rhetoric, certain events happening within Pakistan point towards a massive anti-India propaganda launched by fundamentalist forces. On December 1, only a few days before Mr Sharif made the war-mongering statement, the Difa-e-Pakistan Council held a rally in lahore to protest US drone strikes.
The DPC is an umbrella coalition of more than 40 political and fundamentalist organisations based in Pakistan that are anti-India, anti-US, and anti-Israel. Notable speakers at the rally were Sami-ul-Haq, chairman of DPC, Hafiz Saeed, an internationally wanted terrorist, and Hamid Gul, the infamous former Inter-Services Intelligence chief who is now the coordinator of fundamentalist activities in Pakistan. Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, former Prime Minister of one of the puppet regimes installed in PoK, was roped in to give legitimacy to the propagandist statements.
The rally was pregnant with anti-India sentiment. Speaker after speaker dwelled on India’s alleged role in creating a rift between Shias and Sunnis in Pakistan as also between the people and the Pakistani Army. Hafiz Saeed categorically blamed India, the US and Israel for sectarian clashes in Balochistan.
Hamid Gul took off from where Hafiz Saeed had left, and went to the extent of declaring that Pakistan was already in a state of war with India and the US. He also said that Prime Minister Sharif should be concerned for the situation.
A surprising speaker in the forum was Mr Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, chairman of the Pakistan Muslim league (Nawaz) and a member of the Pakistani Senate. He categorically blamed India for “destruction of Karachi and Balochistan” and went to the extent of stating that India wished to occupy Pakistan.
On Kashmir, the lawmaker also expressed a feeling that the Governments of the past had failed to make the international community fully aware of the facts of the situation.
More than anything else, it was the wall that India proposes to build along its borders with Pakistan that came up for much criticism and elicited a vitriolic smear campaign. Hafiz Saeed demonstrated his traditional bravado by declaring that Pakistan would pull down the wall with bare hands if India displayed the “temerity” to build the same. Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan put in his penny’s worth by calling upon the Pakistani Government to stop the construction of the wall.
In fact, the wall has become a big topic of discussion in Pakistani media and a propaganda campaign has been put in place to build public sentiment against it. A prominent Urdu writer in Pakistan Mir Afsar Aman has referred to it as a “Brahmin wall” conceived with the intention of enslaving Kashmiris.
The fact that the wall is expected to come up in the Jammu region, where no Kashmiri will be affected, is being conveniently sidelined. Even the terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad has commented on the construction of the wall. It has said that the idea is by itself ‘laughable’ and the mujahideen know how to cross such walls.
Overall, Pakistan remains committed to its agenda of keeping anti-India sentiment alive among its gullible public. Organisations like the DPC are provided with unlimited funds and resources to hold malevolent congregations where venom is spouted at will by wanted criminals and then disseminated by the media over days together to create a wave of hatred against India through misinformation.
The fact that a very senior representative of the PMl(N) was also present in the congregation and went to the extent of making abrasive statements leaves no doubt about complicity of the Pakistani Government in this diabolic drama.