Pulwama spillover

It has come from the horses’ mouth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi surely has skeletons in the cupboard, as the plot on Pulwama attack thickens. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi spilled the beans, and that too on a personal account, as he said that Modi was responsible for grabbing the tragedy to his benefit and making it an election winning stunt. But what made his disclosure startling was the submission that Modi and his defence sleuths slept on an SOS from military personnel besieged in the snow-capped terrain for four months, and did not comply with airlift requisition. This compelled the stranded soldiers to opt for a land route, which was ‘supposed to be dangerous’. The rest is history.

Gandhi and former Governor Jammu & Kashmir Satya Pal Malik are of the firm conviction that the BJP leadership used the Pulwama attack of 2019 as a ploy. But later on the same was blamed on Pakistan, which had sent both the countries to the brink of a showdown. What is more disgusting to hear is that Modi was obsessed with being photographed with the dead soldiers that Gandhi describes as “…with scarcely any thought for the somber moment”. This goes on to establish that the consequences of the fatal attack were being choreographed for a political script, and the subsequent playing to the gallery of the pro-Hindutva tiers makes it an open and shut case of connivance.

Gandhi and Malik see from the same prism as they claim without any qualms that the Pulwama attack, the destruction of Manipur and deceiving the farmers are all part of crony capitalism that was there at work on the part of pro-BJP business conglomerates. Perhaps, this is why no investigative account was probed on Pulwama and even the governor’s testimony was brushed under the carpet.

It makes a comparison to what happened in 1914, when the assassination of Prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand was used as an excuse to ignite World War-I. Modi and his accomplices had behaved in the same fashion. Pulwama is in need of being probed in a judicious manner to set the course of history in the right direction.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2023.

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