Mohammad Jamil
AZAD Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President, Sardar Masood Khan on Friday warned that India could strike AJK or Gilgit-Baltistan to vent its anger on Pakistan over tension with China in Ladakh. “We should prepare for war because India’s agenda is aggressive, aggravating and destabilizing after Ladakh standoff. We should take no chances and prepare for all sorts of aggression from India,” he emphasized. The AJK President termed bifurcation of Ladakh from Jammu and Kashmir State and declaring it as a union territory and threats of attack on AJK, GB and Aksai Chin to incorporate them into Indian union as an immediate trigger of a military clash between India and China. He said that besides Pakistan and the people of Jammu and Kashmir, China had serious reservations about India’s unlawful actions of August 5, October 31 last year and April 2 this year.
India had been making fake claims for the last 72 years that Kashmir was its internal matter, but the Ladakh episode had once again internationalized the Kashmir issue. It appears that in spite of facing defeat at the hands of China in Ladakh, there will be no change in India’s aggressive policy against Pakistan and Azad Kashmir. In fact, most of Indian forces deployments are on the border with Pakistan, and all India’s preparations and even mountain divisions India raised are Pakistan-specific. Pakistan is mindful of the situation and threats; and it was in this backdrop that last month a comprehensive briefing was given to military leadership – Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and services chiefs on the regional security issues with special focus on situation of Line of Control (LoC) and India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K).
The visit of top military leadership to the ISI headquarters had come amid the surge in the Indian ceasefire violations along the LoC following the abrogation of IOJ&K special status in August last year. These briefings assumed special significance because they took place amid escalating tension with India; and secondly, ISI must have information about what India is up to. After humiliation of Indian soldiers at the hands of Chinese, Indian leadership is frustrated. To add salt to injury, last month the lower house of Nepal’s Parliament approved a new map of the country, including areas disputed with India, the Speaker of the national legislature said. The area includes the Lipulekh Pass in Uttarakhand and also Limpiyadhura and Kalapani, which areas are of highly strategic importance. The move signals a hardening of Nepal’s position over a decades-long border dispute that has strained ties between the two neighbours.
Yet, one cannot rule out the possibility of mischief on the part of Narendra Modi, but he must be remembering Pakistan’s response in the past. In the early hours of Tuesday 26 February, a formation of Indian Mirage 2000 fighter jets violated Pakistan’s airspace and launched SPICE 2000 bombs against targets in Balakot and Muzaffarabad. During the daylight hours of Wednesday 27 February, Pakistan responded to the previous day’s aggression by undertaking airstrikes against six targets in Indian Occupied Kashmir. In the ensuing air battle, two Indian fighter planes were shot down by the Pakistan Air Force, and an Indian Wing Commander was rescued by Pakistani forces on the ground in Azad Kashmir. While Indian claims of inflicting heavy damage on alleged targets in Balakot had been debunked by independent journalists from different sections of the international media, Modi miserably failed to convince them.
India drew flak for revocation of Article 370 and 35-A domestically as well as internationally; yet it came out with Citizenship Law Amendment, which was condemned by all and sundry. The US government’s Commission for International Religious Freedom called it “a dangerous turn in the wrong direction as it runs counter to India’s rich history of secular pluralism and the Indian Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law regardless of faith”. The US State Department also said: “Respect for religious freedom and equal treatment under the law are fundamental principles of our two democracies. The US urges India to protect the rights of its religious minorities in keeping with India’s Constitution and democratic values.” One analyst drew parallels with Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Race Laws on citizenship that provided the legal framework for the systematic persecution of Jews leading to the Holocaust.
He added that only people of German or kindred blood were decreed to be allowed as citizens of Germany. The Ahnenpass (ancestor pass) issued to those determined to be of “Aryan blood” recorded the “family tree” of individuals, not very different from the way the Assamese have had to establish their lineage to pass the Indian test. A closer and more recent parallel to mass statelessness was the 1982 mass disenfranchisement of the Rohingya in Myanmar, before their massacre years later that triggered their exodus in 2017. There is a perception that India has chosen to go to war with itself just when it desperately needs reconstruction, as its economy has tanked after years of mismanagement. The country is facing one of its severest slowdowns in recent decades in the wake of poorly considered policy decisions. Due to war hysteria created by Modi, many investors would hold back their investments.
Standard & Poor Global Ratings said it would downgrade India’s sovereign rating to junk grade if growth does not pick up. The federal government is so short of cash that it cannot pay states their dues. Consumer spending has fallen for the first time in more than four decades. The unemployment rate is the highest in 45 years. The economic growth rate has declined for six straight quarters, the longest slowdown in 23 years. From its once-mighty double-digit growth, the Indian economy is currently growing at a mere 3.5 per cent, and the worst is still to come.
—The writer is a senior journalist based in Lahore.
