Good that Sushma Swaraj minced no words
The takeaway from External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's aggressive response to Pakistan in her address at the United Nations General Assembly is that India has discarded the strategy of veiled attacks in the UN on its troublesome western neighbour. Unlike in the past, when Indian leaders including Prime Ministers either made passing references to Pakistan as a terror-exporting nation or couched their criticism in indirect ways, Ms Swaraj named and shamed Islamabad. In what was certainly the most scathing language New Delhi has used at the UN against Pakistan in recent times, she said the repeated attacks on Indian soil by Pakistan-based and Pakistan-supported militants were meant to “destabilise” India and “legitimise Pakistan's illegal occupation of parts of Jammu & Kashmir”. In contemptuously dismissing Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's ‘four-point peace initiative', the External Affairs Minister observed that four points were not needed to establish peace; just one — that Pakistan stop terrorism — would suffice. Ms Swaraj's remark is in keeping with the firm position the Narendra Modi Government has taken: That terror and talks cannot go hand in hand. It may be recalled that Mr Modi had said this during various public meetings and media interactions in the run-up to the 2014 lok Sabha election. After he became Prime Minister and his regime attempted to create a new template in relationships with Pakistan — such as inviting Mr Sharif to his oath-taking ceremony, organising the Foreign Secretary level talks (aborted due to Islamabad's provocation), meeting Mr Sharif at Ufa, and finally inviting Islamabad for National Security Advisor level talks in New Delhi (which too did not happen because Pakistan torpedoed it) — his critics had panned him for those initiatives, holding him to his word on ‘terror and talks'. The fact is that the Modi Government had not swayed an inch from its stated position, and this has become doubly evident in Ms Swaraj's assertion in her UNGA speech that terror and talks cannot go together. The External Affairs Minister'sno-holds-barred rebuttal, taken together with the firm responses from her ministry's officials soon after Mr Sharif raked up the Kashmir issue in his address to the UNGA, clearly indicates the formulation of a new, bold and less defensive strategy to deal with Pakistan.
It is possible that henceforth, if and when talks on Kashmir are held between the two nations, India will insist on discussing the situation prevailing in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir as well. The recent release of an explosive video by a television news channel, showing massive uprising among the people of PoK against the Pakistani regime and the resultant brutal methods the security forces used to suppress it, has already resulted in Islamabad scampering for explanations. Nobody in the world community will buy its claim that the visuals have been engineered by India. There cannot be any real movement forward in New Delhi-Islamabad relations if Pakistan remains fixated on Kashmir. The strategy has already been costing that country dear. Pakistan's economy is in shambles and infrastructure critical because the Government there is so occupied with India-bashing that it has no time to address the core domestic issues.