Before pointing the terrorism finger at
Pakistan, it’ll be wise for India to take a look in their violent backyard
first
Congress
spokesman Randeep Surjewala said “moral and constitutional propriety” demanded
that the PM ask Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje to resign. PHOTO: AFP
While in Singapore, I
met an Indian Hindu from Indian Gujarat, the state where I was born, in the
hotel lobby. After exchanging pleasantries, he asked me,
“And in which city do you live now?”
When I said Karachi, he was
shocked.
“But that’s in Pakistan!”
And then, when the truth dawned on him, he said,
“You’re
a Pakistani as well as a Muslim?!”
He started edging away from me
and I had to assure him that I wasn’t about to blow him up. Like most Indian
Hindus, he had always believed that most Pakistanis cannot speak English, that
they are too poor to afford vacations abroad, and that most Pakistanis are
involved in terrorism.
And
if you read Indian newspapers, you will notice that majority of the Indian
narrative is of the same opinion. You frequently find words such as “terroristan” to describe
Pakistan.
Recently,
our ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Maleeha Lodhi, mistakenly displayed the picture of a Palestinian girl to
point out India’s atrocities in Kashmir. It was a simple human error, not a
major blunder, since there are plenty of photographs of wounded Kashmiri
Muslims available on the net to prove to the world of India’s barbarisms.
But
the Indian media pounced upon the incident, forgetting that not too long ago
their own foreign minister SM Krishna had committed a much bigger blunder. It
happened in 2011, when he read out the Portuguese foreign minister’s
speech instead of his own.
But then, India’s media is notorious for pointing fingers at
Pakistan, ignoring the 836 million Indians who struggle
to exist on less than half a dollar a day.
As for the lack of toilets in India, that is a minor
matter for them. They love it when their government spends billions on sending a spacecraft to Mars instead of
providing food and toilets to its citizens. Of course, with 80% of Indians
living below the poverty
line, most Indians have not had the education to know anything about Mars (or
even that it exists).
After all, they have a prime minister who says that
Indians had mastered the science of plastic surgery 10,000 years ago, grafting
the head of an elephant on a human.
Instead of criticising its government for the
indiscriminate murder of countless Kashmiri Muslims, the
Indian media ignores what their army is doing in the illegally-occupied state.
In fact, they seem to believe that most people of Indian-occupied Jammu and
Kashmir actually love India. According to them, those who protest against
the rapes and killings by the Indian army in Kashmir are terrorists trained and
positioned by Pakistan. Show them pictures of wounded Kashmiri Muslims or a
Kashmiri Muslim tied to a moving vehicle, and it has no
effect on them. In fact, they welcomed the decision to actually reward the officer who tied the poor
Kashmiri Muslim to the jeep (so that he, and not they, would be hurt by
protesters throwing stones).
Even pictures and videos of
their army beating up Muslims during Ashura processions are ignored by them.
In fact, if more proof of Hindutva hatred for Muslims is needed,
just look at what they are doing to prevent Rohingya Muslims from entering India. In
addition to expelling the 40,000 Rohingyas already
present in India, they are using pepper spray and sten guns to keep new
Rohingya Muslims out of the so-called largest democratic (by default) nation.
It would have been another matter, of course, if the Rohingya
had been Hindus. While Bangladeshi Hindus are welcomed with open arms and allowed to
settle in India, Bangladeshi Muslims who have lived for decades in
India are under threat of deportation. This, then, is the true face of Indian
secularism. Muslims and other minorities are pariahs,
while Hindus are their lords and masters.
So naturally, we were not surprised when the Indian Foreign
Minister, Sushma Swaraj, a virulent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member, said to the Pakistan delegation at the UN, “We produced scholars, doctors, engineers.
What have you (Pakistan) produced? You have produced terrorists.”
Fortunately, she was
promptly corrected by an unofficial Kangana Ranaut Twitter account, who tweeted
the following:
Irony is Swaraj saying India produced engineers & Pak
produced terrorists, while our own PM is a terrorist and theirs is an engineer.
When your own people
are correcting you, Mrs Swaraj, your own people who are well aware of facts,
there’s not much left for us to say; your people are doing the talking for us.
Instead of calling Pakistan a terrorist state, the Indian media
should remember that their own prime minister belongs to the militant Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the terrorist organisation that has had the ‘honour’
of having Mahatma Gandhi’s killer, Nathuram Godse, as a member.
By the way, isn’t the open worship of Godse by Yogi Adityanath
and the unveiling of his
statue sufficient to prove that India’s ruling BJP party is itself a terrorist
organisation?+
By the way, Mrs Swaraj, while we are doing our best to deal with terrorism and
executing terrorists, you are letting your own terrorists go free. In fact, even a
self-confessed one such as Swami Aseemanand has been acquitted by
your so-called independent courts and is now free to arrange the killing of
even more Indian Muslims.
And yet you have the
gall to say that Pakistan is the hub of terrorism? Look in your own backyard
first, madam.
Shakir Lakhani
Engineer, former visiting lecturer at NED Engineering College, industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical industries for many years. Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those who know him), mentally unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
https://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/57863/before-pointing-the-terrorism-finger-at-pakistan-itll-be-wise-for-india-to-take-a-look-in-their-violent-backyard-first/
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