National/Regional/International Affairs

By N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal) Kathmandu: The fresh spat between India and Pakistan has once again made the entire South Asian landmass capricious which reminds us all of the “previous” three wars and several “mini wars” that these two born enemies have fought since the partition in 1947. The two “rival nations” keep on quarrelling at regular intervals so the new high voltage “verbal dual” is nothing new for those who have been watching over decades and decades India’s heightened arrogance and Pakistan’s forceful rebuttal on the overly stretched Kashmir dispute. To a greater degree, the UN body and the world’s great powers are accountable for a variety of political reasons for not having made any ample efforts in bringing the two “antagonists” to the negotiating table for peace and stability to prevail in this part of the world-the South Asian landmass which has Kashmir as a “flashpoint”. And it is this flashpoint that has brought India and Pakistan face to face in the past and the same has the potential to war on a bigger scale threatening the entire region and the world at large. While India, the recognized expansionist in the South Asian region, arrogantly claims that there is no dispute over Kashmir and that the entire Kashmir is an integral and thus inalienable part of the Indian Union, on the other hand, Pakistan emphatically claims that “Kashmir” is a disputed territory and that India must abide by the previous UN Security Council Resolutions which at different intervals of time in the past has officially acknowledged that a “plebiscite” will be held and the people of Kashmir will be allowed to exercise their right to self-determination. The UNSC resolutions explicitly and by implication, have rejected India’s claim that Kashmir is legally an Indian territory. (Source Internet). The Resolutions of 1948 and 1949 provide for the holding of a free and impartial referendum (plebiscite) for the determination of the future of the state by the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The inability of the UNSC to hold the agreed-upon plebiscite on the Kashmir issue is the real problem and so it could be taken as one of the oldest unsettled international conflicts of the globe. As against the Indian claim that Kashmir was an absolute part of India, various UNSC resolutions made earlier rebuke this Indian assertion and in addition “the entire world community recognizes Kashmir as a disputed territory”. Indian claim thus stands dismissed. Contrary to the Indian assertions over Kashmir, Pakistan continues to adhere to the UNSC resolutions which, logic demands, are equally binding upon India as well. However, India has so far bulldozed the UNSC ruling and the UN Body together with the international community (the world powers) also have largely “ignored” the issue much to the benefit of the Indian regime. The UNSC’s averseness in holding the poll gives some space to believe that the UN body too is scared of the Indian Goliath or at best is a biased world organization. The high voltage wrangle: Allow me to quote another reference before I begin delving into the main topic of today. The deposed Prime Minister of Pakistan in recent years while making a speech at the UN General Assembly had categorically said that “Mr (Narendra) Modi is a life member of the RSS. RSS was an organization, which was inspired by Adolph Hitler and Mussolini”. I also need your permission to quote the Swedish Professor of Indian origin, Ashok Swain who commented on his Twitter account on December 17, wherein he states, “What Bilawal Bhutto has said in 2022, the same thing was said by Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mamta Banerji in 2021! Why is this drama? In an article posted by Business Standard (India) on April 29, 2014, Indian leader Lalu Yadav is on record to have said that “Modi is worse than a butcher”. Yadav says further that “even a butcher is ashamed of Narendra Modi, and such a person is going to be the PM of the country”. The Business Standard quotes a Trinamool Congress leader (TMC) Derek O’Brien said that “the butcher of Gujarat could not take care of his own wife. How will he take care of this great nation?” So with these comments made on PM Modi by some Indian leaders, our readers must have guessed the topic on which this story is likely to be based. Yes! Certainly, the topic is related to the Indian Foreign Minister S. Jay Shankar’s insulting remarks at the UN, on December 15 wherein he aired that “Pakistan was the epicentre” of terrorism and that any questions related to terrorism need to be answered, not by him instead by the Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto.   If so in many more ways than one, the Indian minister’s close to disgraceful comment on Pakistan perhaps encouraged FM Bilawal Bhutto to respond with an equal and apt force to the blunt notes of Mr Shankar. FM Bhutto said, “Osama is dead, however, the Butcher of Gujrat is still alive and he is at the moment the Prime Minister of India”. Needless to say, when the Gujarat massacre took place in 2002, the incumbent Indian Prime Minister Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The Godhra incident (Gujrat, a State of India) incident, 2002, wherein reportedly under Chief Minister Modi’s express instructions or say commands hundreds of Muslims were burnt alive, as per Indian media reports, by the hooligans which logically encouraged the Western countries to impose a “visa ban” to Chief Minister Modi. The Godhara incident took some Hindu lives as well. Modi’s hatred of Muslims is not a secret. However, the same developed West openly greeted Modi when he became the Prime Minister of India in 2014. But informed sources claim that the ban continues on Modi till he is India’s Prime Minister. Notably and most importantly, a report in the Business Line on March 12, 2018, says quoting Katrina Lantos Swett, the Vice Chairwoman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, that “Modi shall not be granted the privilege of US visa because of the very serious doubts that remain and that hang over Modi relative to his role in the horrific events of 2002 in Gujarat”. Katrin Lantos further states, “Obviously what happened in 2002 in Gujarat was sectarian violence on a really massive scale. I don’t think you can say that that wasn’t a religious issue. It was a religious issue and the 2005 visa denial harks back to that”. In sum, the Gujarat violence is taken as India’s worst riots based on religion which led to the deaths of more than a thousand Muslims. Reports had it that many Muslim women were gang raped but not penalized. However, those Hindu fanatics who were found to have gang raped even pregnant Muslim women during the orchestrated Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002, media reports have said that they have been released last year. A case in point, Bilkis Bano was one among the hundreds, for example, the pregnant woman who underwent such trauma and was denied justice. The details of the Indo-Pak verbal duel: It all started on December 15 when India’s highly haughty foreign minister S. Jay Shankar while speaking in the UNSC on the ‘Maintenance of International Peace and Security: New Orientation for Reformed Multilateralism’, a special program with the Indian Presidency of the 15-nation Council, slammed Pakistan for raising the Kashmir issue in the Council and said in an aggressive tone that a country that hosted slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and attacked the neighboring Parliament (read India) does not have the credentials to “sermonize”. Minister Shankar had in effect pointedly censured Pakistan for raising the Kashmir issue in the Council and described Pakistan as the “Epicenter” of terrorism. Raising the Kashmir issue is anathema or say ad nauseating to India. But this could not be an excuse as the global community has registered the lingering Kashmir issue as a disputed territory. India can’t escape the agreed upon “plebiscite” for self-determination of the caged Kashmiri population. India’s matching rival Pakistan is not Nepal, a country that is made to swing to the whims of the Delhi babus as became evident from the emergence of Delhi’s nourished political animal Prachanda as Nepal’s Prime Minister once again just the other day. This clearly speaks that India has conquered the US and China in the political race giving a subtle hint to US and China that India shall finally prevail in Kathmandu as the three paid and posted Indian scholars had hinted on November 16, 2022, that India will tolerate the US influence only to an extent as defined by India. Let’s not talk of China as it is the permanent loser in Nepal. India’s warning to the US was that “don’t cross the limits in Kathmandu’s politics”. This warning applies to China as well. To divert the world's attention, the Godi media is trying to portray the new Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda as China’s man. And K. P. Oli’s ‘proximity’ with RAW Chief Goyal needs no more expansion. Prachanda stayed in Delhi as a government guest for over a decade. In a way, India hinted to the US that the latter should accept that Nepal’s politics is under the Indian sphere of influence for all time to come. Back to the story: Before taking up how Bilawal Bhutto responded to Shankar’s vitriolic expression, as a responsible media man of Nepal I would wish to register the facts that certify India is a terrorist State. I will provide only two examples, one from Nepal and the second from the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). India’s official sheltering of Nepal’s violent Maoists for over a decade in Delhi and the Indian design to damage Nepal through Nepal’s perverted Maoists from its “soil” speaks of it all India is a terrorist state. To recall, India declared Nepal Maoists as a “terrorist outfit” much ahead of Nepal stating the same. Foreign Minister Yashwant Singh speaking with media men in Nepal (Hotel Everest Sheraton on the eve of the SAARC Summit in Kathmandu, if I recall) admitted that the Maoists were “terrorists” and that they (the Maoists) will be declared the moment he is back in Delhi. A friend of a terrorist is certainly a terrorist and that is India. Isn’t it enough to prove that the Indian regime itself is a terrorist outfit? What India is, ask Nepal. How India twists the Nepali arms, ask Nepal. How Prachanda became once again the PM of Nepal, ask India. Nepal surely is the victim of India’s disgusting and repulsive politics. For Nepal, India is definitely a “terror machine”. OIC meet in UAE talks of Indian “terrorism: The meet of the 57-member Muslim block named the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) way back in March 2019 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, upon the conclusion of the OIC meet came up with a separate resolution, upon Pakistan’s intervention on the Kashmir issue and Pakistan-India peace process. It was the 46th Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) meeting in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The separate resolution, as stated earlier, said among other things, that it "condemns the recent wave of Indian terrorism" in the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) and "mass blinding of Kashmiris". (The News, March 3, 2019). It also said that the Jammu and Kashmir issue remains the core dispute between Pakistan and India and its resolution is indispensable for the dream of peace in South Asia. (The News, March 3, 2019). Noteworthy is that though it was a separate account of the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC), however, the insertion or the inclusion of the word “Indian terrorism” is significant in that it categorically establishes that Indian terrorism is very much there in Kashmir. Reading the report which talked of “Indian terrorism”, a term perhaps for the first time coined so boldly by the congregation of the Islamic States scattered over the globe, the Indian officialdom must have pulled hairs for obvious reasons. And any bad words against India make it a plus point for Pakistan, as is the practice between the two rival nations. So the response, albeit a tough one, from the Pakistani foreign minister must not come as a surprise to those academicians, intellectuals, commentators and analysts who have been watching the “bilateral attitude and behavioral conducts” of the Indian and Pakistani leaders. Both use at times abusive and derogatory remarks for each other. If it is so then why is the Indian media pouncing upon Bilawal Bhutto who spoke the truth based on hard facts though the expressions were a bit harsh? If foreign minister S. Jay Shankar has the right to abuse Pakistan in the strongest terms then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto too has the same right and that too unconditionally. To avoid such occurrences, both India and Pakistan must restrain their erratic utterances. Both need to equally follow diplomatic decency. Having said all this, let’s listen to how Bilawal Bhutto responded to the Indian Minister’s blunt remarks on Pakistan wherein the term “Epicenter” was used. Bhutto responded by saying, “Modi was banned (from) entering into the US soil till he remains the Prime Minister of India. The butcher of Gujarat became the butcher of Kashmir. The RSS derived the inspiration from SS, the elite force of Nazi Reich & Hitler & denies Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy.” Bhutto thus has also appealed to the international community to help Pakistan combat and go after those who backed, supported, financed and facilitated terrorism in Pakistan. FM Bhutto says, “Ask the people of Gujrat and Kashmir as to who is the real butcher? “ Stunned presumably by the verbal war of words between India and Pakistan in recent weeks, the US State Department spokesperson Ned Price, on December 20 told reporters at a regular press briefing that "We have a global strategic partnership with India. I have also spoken about the deep partnership we have with Pakistan. These relationships in our mind are not zero-sum. We do not view them about one another”. The US mediation offer: "There are differences that, of course, need to be addressed between India and Pakistan. The USA stands ready to assist as a partner to both”, said Ned Price. Is India ready to invite the US “mediation” on the overly stretched Kashmir dispute? Indian answer to Ned Price’s arbitration offer is eagerly awaited. To recall, India and Pakistan’s bilateral relations stand nosedived instantly after India swiftly annulled Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on August 5, 2019, with the scrapping of the previously special status of Jammu and Kashmir. That’s all.