India’s bash Pakistan season

Elections are around the corner in India — which is the bash-Pakistan season for the far right. The suicide attack on a military convoy in Pulwama district of India-Occupied Kashmir was just what the doctor ordered for the hawks of India.

They are now playing politics on, at least, 43 dead soldiers, threatening a ‘strong reply’ to further amp up efforts to isolate Pakistan by withdrawing its Most-Favoured Nation status, even though they have offered no proof of a Pakistani connection to the attack.

There was once a time that such vitriol was largely meaningless, as the most fanatical of right-wingers were still largely unelectable in India, but then we got the RSS thoroughbred Narendra Modi.

Sane voices in India are now drowned out by the chest thumping of a man who, ironically, has lied about the size of his chest. Even Farooq Abdullah — a much-reviled figure in Pakistan — has tried to draw Modi’s attention to India’s excesses in IOK.

The former chief minister of the occupied state told a reporter that while the Pulwama attack is saddening, IOK is in a state of war and India cannot keep thinking that more violence will solve it.

He also slammed the Indian media for linking the uprising with Pakistan, saying that local people are joining the movement without any backing from Pakistan, and calling out the knee-jerk references to Pakistan by politicians and journalists too lazy to speak to actual Kashmiris.

The BJP — Modi’s party — has never been strangers to anti-Pakistan rhetoric, but in the past, the party has still put forward leaders who, though not necessarily friends of Pakistan, were intelligent enough to understand that improved ties with their neighbour were not only in the interest of both countries, or even the region, but the whole world.

Modi, Amit Shah, and the latest generation of chickenhawks — none of the most aggressive cabinet members have any military service — are hell-bent on war with Pakistan, at least until the elections. This is because, to chickenhawks, the lives of Indian soldiers and civilians are forfeit when it comes to winning reelection.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2019.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.