The war frenzy of the Indian media can be gauged from the fact that whenever a terrorist act takes place in India, they even before the investigation started blaming Pakistan. The media has never been able to ask its government that when the BJP government was in power from 1998 to 2004, there were eight major attacks in India and Occupied Kashmir. During the ten years of Congress rule from 2004 to 2014, there was only one major attack. But when the BJP government came to power again in 2014, there have been 19 major attacks in occupied Kashmir alone in five years.
The BJP was facing elections in October 1999 when the alliance split in 1998 — a year after the BJP formed the coalition government. To win these elections, the BJP government resorted to the Kargil war and won the votes of extremist Hindus through the media. The next election for the BJP government was in 2004, for which it began efforts to break the anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan vote a year and a half before the election. On February 22, 2002, the Godhra train attack occurred in which 69 people were killed. The incident was followed by anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in which 3,000 Muslims were killed and their properties set on fire. Then, the Chief Minister of Gujarat was Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India. The United States had banned Modi from entering the country for ten years in 2005, declaring him unpopular and a terrorist because of his involvement in the massacre of Muslims. The ban was lifted in 2014 after Modi became the Prime Minister. He became the Chief Minister of Gujarat again in 2007 after winning the Hindu vote on the basis of massacre of Muslims in the state. In 2007, the Samjhauta Express was torched, killing 68 people. After that incident, India started blaming Pakistan. However, when it was investigated, the terrorists of the extremist Hindu organisation, including Major Ramesh of the Indian Army, were found involved. These attacks were also used by the BJP to woo the Hindu vote in the 2008 elections, but without success. When the Indian Army camp was attacked in Uri sector on September 18, 2016, elections were imminent in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa, as well as Indian Punjab. The attack was followed by a barrage of propaganda against Pakistan, and on September 29, India claimed to have carried out a surgical strike in Pakistan. As a result of this propaganda and false claims, India won the elections in four states, including Punjab, in February 2017. In November of the same year, when elections were held in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, one month before these elections, on September 29, India announced the anniversary of the surgical strike. The surgical strike was propagated in the Indian media, showing the performance of the BJP government, which benefited it in the next two months in the shape of a victory. Maintaining the same pattern, when the time came for elections in Kerala on May 12, 2018 and in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in November and December, tourists from Kerala visiting occupied Kashmir were attacked on April 31. Although seven tourists were injured in the attack, the Indian media — at the behest of the BJP government — tried to turn it against Pakistan and spread anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan propaganda.
On February 14, 2019, a car bomb hit an Indian forces bus on the Jammu-Srinagar highway near Pulwama, killing 40 security personnel. India had accused Pakistan immediately after the attack. Prime Minister Imran Khan offered to help New Delhi investigate any actionable information, but India did not share such information. A report in the Indian newspaper The Hindu quoted a senior government official as saying that the ammunition used in the attack was not ordinary but specific material used in wars which is present only in military arms depots. An official with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said the explosives in the car contained ammonium nitrate, nitroglycerin and RDX, while a French report said about 25 kilograms of explosives were used in the attack. The Hindu quoted another government official as saying that it was difficult to reach the masterminds of the attack and that since all the accused had been killed, it was not possible to verify the technical evidence gathered. The madness of Indian media ‘intellectuals’ has resulted in a few Kashmiri people who had a soft spot for India and were doing business peacefully in different states including Bihar. Extremist Hindus know the target and start attacking them. Their property has been set on fire and they have been forced to return in a state of disarray.
However, Modi government can no longer fool the people and hide the facts. Pakistan’s position has proved true, as a former Indian general also revealed that Indian material was used in the Pulwama attack. The attack and all the episodes of the drama are linked to India. Any terrorist attack in Kashmir does not help Pakistan’s narrative of Kashmiris’ right of self-determination, as it only endorses the Indian claim of Pakistan sponsoring terrorism in the region. Indian Army’s atrocities on oppressed Kashmiris should be stopped immediately. India is an extremist country that is playing with the lives and property of minorities, especially Muslims, under the guise of religion.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 14th, 2022.
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