Our Indian headache

By the time these lines reach you, I am sure you would have read a host of pieces on the cruelty and barbarity of the Peshawar School massacre. Let me then express my heartfelt sorrow and move on to a byproduct of the sad episode. The tragedy occurred on December 16, the anniversary of the secession of East Pakistan in which India had contributed generously. It was natural that someone would mention India on one of our talk shows, even if in passing. Distraught Pakistanis have always heard rumours that India, through the Karzai government, might have befriended the TTP.

Then, out of the blue came Narendra Modi’s condemnation of the attacks and his decision to observe a two-minute silence in the Indian parliament and in schools in solidarity with the victims. Even a hardened Modi-hater like me was moved. Yet if we were expecting to witness a change of heart in India, we were sadly mistaken. Within no time, Indian channels started interviewing Pakistani experts on telephone and every anchor would so callously trying to tell us that this is some sort of karma for harbouring the likes of Hafiz Saeed. One talk show was titled “Bad Taliban, Good Hafiz Saeed?” Pray, what was his connection with the Peshawar tragedy? Nothing. Just the old Indian attention-seeking tactic. It has to be the ultimate victim of terror. Secular India now regularly projects its Muslim population as a potential radical threat to grab international attention. Not that it is any of my business.

Subsequently, the appearance of Hafiz Saeed on national television, some rude comments about India and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi’s release on bail, were to prove godsend for India’s Pakistan bashing industry. Now it was as if the innocent little angels were not butchered in Peshawar but in India. Since then, the Indian media is acting as if an attack on it is imminent. Sorry to disappoint the drama queens there, but nothing of the sort is to happen. Not that anyone cares what their rabid media thinks but because Islamabad had promised to some of its closest allies that it will not let anything of the sort happen in the aftermath of Mumbai and since then, has walked the talk.

Keen as India is to remind us that we have a Muslim terrorist problem, it has never tried to search its own soul. If Pakistan is a security state today, it is because since its very inception, India has exerted tremendous pressure on the nascent country through its soft power. Guess why was Gandhiji killed? Because he had protested against the Indian government’s decision to deprive the newborn country of its due cash balance. Indian rulers and important ministers continuously kept predicting our premature demise. Indian actors have accepted some of the worst roles in foreign films depicting Pakistanis. It is not about the four open wars that the two countries fought. It is about a single indivisible cold war that India has fought against my poor country and transformed us into the great regional tragedy.

Ever wonder why Pakistanis think India might have a hand in terrorism within Pakistan? It’s new national security adviser Ajit Doval’s video is online in which he confesses of spending seven years as undercover agent in Pakistan as a Muslim shrine devotee.. Who knows how many others are here doing what?

I don’t know what this inferiority-superiority complex thing is that India keeps channelling. Perhaps, suppressed hatred of centuries spent under Muslim rule. But it has made our lives hell. India says Pakistan has a Muslim terror problem. We sure do. Terrorists just killed 132 of our children. India says it has a Muslim terror problem of its own. What it doesn’t see is that its actual problem is the Hindu terror/extremist terror problem. Why do you think Pakistan parted its ways with India? Hindu-Muslim riots there have cost 10,000 lives since 1950. Pakistan’s fault? How do you think Modi rose to power? Until India doesn’t confront this menace, its secularism will remain a sham and it won’t be the hegemon it wants to be. It has subconsciously chosen to remain a petty country not a regional power. Otherwise sirs, stop worrying about us and move on.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th,  2014.

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