FO rejects India’s ‘frustrated’ criticism of Bilawal's remarks

Islamabad calls statement ‘a reflection of India’s growing frustration’

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan on Saturday rejected the statement issued by India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s 'butcher of Gujarat' remark about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling it a “reflection of India’s growing frustration”.

Responding to the media, Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said that with its statement the Indian government had tried to hide behind subterfuge and canard to conceal the realities of the 2002 Gujarat massacre.

The rejection came as the Indian government strongly criticised Bilawal’s remarks. According to the Indian media, the External Affairs Ministry said that Pakistan “lacked the credentials to cast aspersions at India”.

Meanwhile, furious workers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched a nationwide protest against FM Bilawal across India. The demonstrators took to the streets and burnt effigies of Pakistan’s top diplomat whose remark was a response to the Indian minister.

“It is a shameful story of mass killings, lynching, rape and plunder. The fact of the matter is that the masterminds of the Gujarat massacre have escaped justice and now hold key government positions in India,” the FO spokesperson added.

Bilawal had called Modi “Butcher of Gujarat”, a nickname he had earned for overseeing a pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 when he was the state chief minister. Bilawal’s denunciation of Modi outraged India and triggered a call for a nationwide protest by the BJP.

“I would like to remind the Minister of External Affairs of India that Osama Bin Laden is dead but the Butcher of Gujarat lives and he is the prime minister of India. He was banned from entering this country until he became prime minister,” Bilawal said on Friday after India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar accused Pakistan of being the “epicentre of terrorism” for “harbouring Osama bin Laden”.

“This is the prime minister of the RSS and the foreign minister of the RSS. What is the RSS? The RSS draws its inspiration from Hitler’s SS,” he added during the verbal slugfest.

‘Reflection of growing frustration’

The FO spokesperson went on to say that the statement was also a "reflection of India's growing frustration over its failure to malign and isolate Pakistan.

She said after being unable to prevent Pakistan's exit from the FATF grey list in October and the international recognition of Pakistan's counterterrorism efforts, India is desperately using international platforms to advance its agenda to defame and target Pakistan.

The spokesperson said that with its statement, the Indian government is trying to "hide behind subterfuge and canard to conceal the realities of the 2002 Gujarat massacre", which she called a shameful story of mass killings, lynching, rape, and plunder.

Further, Baloch said that the "masterminds" of the Gujarat massacre have escaped justice and now hold key government positions in India.

She said no "verbosity can hide the crimes of the 'Saffron terrorists' in India". Hindutva, the political ideology of the ruling party, has given rise to a climate of hate, divisiveness and impunity.

The spokesperson further said the culture of impunity is now deeply embedded in Hindutva-driven polity in India. The acquittal of the perpetrators of the heinous attack on the Delhi-Lahore Samjhota Express, that killed 40 Pakistani nationals on Indian soil, demonstrates the massacre of justice under the RSS-BJP dispensation.

"Intimidation and demonization of religious minorities receive official patronage in states across India."

She added that Hindutva supremacists have been unleashed to exercise cow vigilantism, ransack places of worship, and attack religious congregations.

Baloch also said as India peddles a fictitious narrative of victimhood, it is itself a perpetrator of repression in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) and a sponsor and financier of terrorist groups in South Asia.

She noted that just this week, a dossier was released containing irrefutable evidence that substantiated India's involvement in the 2021 terrorist attack in a peaceful Lahore neighbourhood. The evidence gathered with international support confirms that the Lahore attack was instigated, planned and financed by the Indian state.

The spokesperson said that for a "country with a grandiose vision about itself and its place in the world, India is following a policy of pettiness towards its neighbours".

The spokesperson concluded that Pakistan is confident that the international community would look through this facade and the dream of RSS-BJP to turn South Asia into its image will remain unrealized.

India's statement came following Bilawal's blistering riposte to India’s renewed terror mantra against Pakistan at the sidelines of an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council in New York.

Bilawal also spotlighted the “saffron terror” of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu supremacist paramilitary volunteers group that has inspired Prime Minister Narendra Modi and shaped his political ideology.

Stung by Bilawal’s criticism, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson said it was a “new low even for Pakistan” while quipping that “Made in Pakistan’ terrorism had to stop”. The BJP said it would stage a nationwide protest on Saturday against the “shameful and insulting” statement of the Pakistani foreign minister.