Muhammad Hanif
SINCE Modi-led government came to power in India in 2014 and his BJP won its second-term in 2019, Modi has not only continuously pressurized the smaller South Asian states like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives to cooperate to fail the holding of the SAARC summit being held in Pakistan by declining to attend it, he has also started showing its muscles to Pakistan and even China. Whereas the leaders of a majority of the countries in the world are focusing on the geo-economics to serve the welfare of their people, the Modi government in India prefers geopolitics over geo-economics with a cold war mentality. By doing so the Modi regime is complicating India’s bilateral disputes with the neighbouring countries, especially Pakistan and China, resorting to even war mongering rather than resolving the disputes through a dialogue. For example, in 2015, when Pakistan and China signed an agreement to construct China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), to connect the Kashgar city of Western China to the Gwadar city/port in Balochistan, Pakistan to act as a connectivity project between China, South Asia and other regions for joint economic benefits, India’s Modi-led regime started opposing the project. This was done under the pretext that it passes through Gilgit-Baltistan, falsely claiming that, being a part of Jammu and Kashmir, it is the Indian territory.
Whereas the fact is that as per the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir, the final decision of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan or India is to be done by the people of the state by expressing their opinion through a UNSC supervised plebiscite, which India has denied to hold for the last 72 years. Actually, India wants to obstruct the CPEC to contain Pakistan’s economic development. India is not only opposing the CPEC through its statements, the Modi regime has started destabilizing the project by sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan using its Embassy in Kabul and Consulates located in the cities close to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. For this purpose the Modi government has established an anti-CPEC terror cell in the RAW’s Offices, and that cell works under the supervision of the Indian PM Modi. To disturb the CPEC project, India’s RAW is also struggling to exploit the sectarian issue in Gilgit-Baltistan. In this context, the confessions of Kulbhushan Jadhav, Indian Naval Spy officer, that he was assigned to destabilize Balochistan by sponsoring terrorism, the former US Defence Secretary Hegel and Gen. MC Crystal’s earlier statements, that India was causing difficulties for Pakistan using the Afghan soil, and the dossier recently presented by the Pakistani representative in the UN to the UN Secretary General on India supported terrorism in Pakistan are a sufficient proof that India is sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan.
On 5 August 2019, the Modi regime violated the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir, and divided the state into two union territories, named as Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh by ending Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. Moreover, to crush the Kashmiris’ ongoing freedom struggle to get their right of self determination granted to them by the UNSC, and to kill the likely response of the Kashmiris for ending Kashmir’s special status, the Modi government is using above 90,000 troops and carrying out the genocide of the Kashmiris. This India is doing in utter disregard to the fact that as per the UNSC resolutions, Pakistan is a party to the Kashmir dispute and India’s illegal actions in Kashmir are tantamount to creating tension with Pakistan. Also, to pressure Pakistan to end the Kashmiris’ political, moral and diplomatic support, the Modi government has carried out surgical strikes in Pakistan in bare places by dubbing those as the terrorist camps and got beaten by Pakistan. It also started the ceasefire violations across the LoC, causing civilian casualties. While doing all this, the Modi regime does not realize that it is flirting with nuclear Pakistan, and creating a dangerous situation, which will ultimately lead to a catastrophic war between two nuclear states.
For its visible displayed arrogance, India appears to be encouraged by it being a close defence partner of the US and getting high tech modern weapon systems from the US, France and Russia, and signing strategic agreements with the US like sharing of each other’s military bases and being a lynchpin to the USA’s Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China. Hence, apart from creating tension with Pakistan, India even tried to test China’s muscles in June and August 2020, when its military troops tried to grab some military posts across the LAC and got beaten from the Chinese Army. Due to India’s arrogance the situation across the LAC is still tense. In view of the above discussion, it is quite evident that, under Modi’s leadership and his RSS-led BJP’s ultra nationalist Hindutva guided government, India is a threat to regional peace. Therefore, it is advisable for the US, other P-5 countries, the UNSC, the OIC and important countries of the world to realize this fact and reign in India from destabilizing peace in the region. Also, these powers should try to avert a war between the two nuclear neighbours by helping to resolve the Kashmir dispute in the light of the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir.
—The writer is an ex-Army Colonel and Senior Research Fellow, Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad.
