Sir — This refers to the editorial, “Fake emotion” (December 27). The way the wife and mother of Kulbhushan Jadhav were treated in Pakistan went beyond the boundaries of decency and met with a scathing attack from India. Forcing ladies to change attire, erase the bindi and remove their ornaments, stopping them from speaking in their mother tongue, strip-searching and heckling them and subjecting them to a biometric examination were not worthy of a civilised country.
The choreographed meeting was far from a humanitarian gesture and a confidence-building measure. It was used for propaganda purpose and was nothing short of a PR stunt that backfired. At the same time, the rhetoric that Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price for ‘defilement’ of ‘two Hindu women’ won’t be helpful for resumption of peace talks.
Continued hostility does no good to either India or Pakistan. looking at the deplorable incident through communal prism is eminently avoidable. India cannot claim high moral ground — it denied Afzal Guru’s kin an opportunity to meet him before he was sent to the gallows on flimsy grounds. It is wrong to seize the outrageous Pakistani behaviour to accentuate religious fault-lines and the divide between communities in the sub-continent.