IRRESPECTIVE of the real motives behind the provocative statement of a BJP Minister about Azad Kashmir cannot be condoned or ignored and a prompt and forceful rejoinder was due to send a clear message to New Delhi not to harbour aggressive designs.
The Foreign Office strongly rejected the “utterly delusional and provocative” remarks made by an Indian Minister Raj Kapil Patil, who expressed hope for the ‘integration’ of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) with India under the incumbent Narendra Modi-led government.
India must never forget what happened to it when it carried out air strikes in Balakot in February 2019, ahead of general elections for 17th Lok Sabha, in a bid to brighten the prospects of electoral victory for the ruling party.
The humiliation that it received at the hands of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) would continue to haunt all day dreamers in India and based on that bitter experience India would never pick up courage to think about ‘integration’ project seriously.
Pakistan’s civil and military leadership is unanimous in their resolve, which is fully backed by the entire nation, to respond firmly to ‘cold start’ or ‘hot pursuit’.
India achieved nothing from the border crossing except to vitiate the atmosphere and take the tension to dangerous levels.
The latest remarks of an Indian minister are necessarily directed at shoring up dwindling popularity of the ruling BJP and as pointed out by the Foreign Office spokesman it is habitual of political figures from the BJP-RSS combine to drag Pakistan into India’s domestic politics in a bid to divert public attention from major issues and to stoke hyper- nationalism in order to make electoral gains.
Elections take place in Pakistan as well but none of the political parties in this country drags India into the domestic politics and this is reflective of their political maturity not to stoke tension between the two nuclear-armed countries just for the sake of domestic political gains.
As for integration of Azad Kashmir, India has seen reaction of Kashmiris to its illegal actions in Occupied Kashmir where its forces find it extremely difficult to stifle the voice of people despite the history’s longest curfew and all kinds of atrocities against innocent people.
It is in this backdrop that the Foreign Office has emphasized that rather than entertaining any notions of aggrandisement, New Delhi should vacate its illegal occupation of IIOJK and be prepared for accountability for the brutalization of the innocent Kashmiris by its occupation forces there.
