Recently, the Indian Army Chief, addressing a press conference, stated that Pakistan was the epicentre of terrorism and that the cycle of violence in Jammu and Kashmir was being orchestrated. Then later, India’s defence minister, Rajnath Singh, went a step ahead by saying that Pakistan was making persistent attempts to destabilize India. He said that India must dismantle Pakistan’s terror infrastructure in AJK. Calling AJK “the jewel in the crown,” he remarked that Indian Kashmir was incomplete without it.
These provocative and contrary-to-the-fact statements have been befittingly responded to by ISPR and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs respectively.
The statement by ISPR, while taking strong exception to the baseless allegations of the Indian Army Chief, rightly pointed out, “Instead of trying to conjure up a non-existent terror infrastructure in Pakistan, the military leadership of India is advised not to indulge in self-delusion and appreciate the ground reality.”
This assertion aligns with similar concocted claims regarding terrorist training facilities in Pakistan made by the Indian political and military leaders in the past, which they were never able to substantiate and ultimately had to eat dust.
India has no legal or moral grounds to assert fictitious claims over the territories of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The case in point is February 26, 2019, when the Modi government sent its planes to destroy a non-existent terrorist camp at Balakot and claimed that a large number of nearly Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorists had been killed. Thanks to the international media that exposed this biggest-ever hoax by unravelling details of the incident according to which there was no terrorist camp on the stated site except a few fallen trees as a result of the payloads dropped by the Indian planes.
The fact is that the Indian political and military leaders have been using such false narratives to reinforce their public discourses on the eve of elections to reap political gains without realizing their wider implications. Modi orchestrated the Pulwama incident and then used it against Pakistan to win public support in the elections. That conspiracy now stands fully exposed.
The fact is that India itself is guilty of state terrorism, which is amply proven by the arrest of serving Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav in Balochistan whose confessional statement ultimately earned him the death penalty by a military court. The killing of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada, which led to a diplomatic row between the two countries and another attempt at killing a leader who is a strong proponent of a separate state for Sikhs strongly reinforced that narrative. The reports in the Washington Post and The Guardian also provide corroborative evidence of Indian terrorism.
The Washington Post has reported that India’s intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has carried out at least six target killings in Pakistan using hired criminals and Afghan shooters. The report claimed that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, having positioned himself as the most assertive Indian leader since independence, is the driving force behind the nation’s actions beyond its borders. The Guardian also reported in the first week of April that the Indian government had killed about 20 people in Pakistan since 2020. The paper published this report based on interviews with officials of Indian intelligence and the documents shared by Pakistan which shows the involvement of Indian RAW in these attacks.
As far as Indian defence minister Rajnath is concerned even in the past, he has been acting like a loose cannon and hurling threats at Pakistan. Two years ago addressing a Kargil War memorial in Ladakh he had said “India would go to any extreme to maintain its honour and dignity if that includes crossing the LOC. We are ready for that if we are provoked and if the need arises.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responding to Rajnath’s latest statements, has rightly and forcefully asserted, “Jammu and Kashmir remains an internationally recognized disputed territory, whose final status is to be determined in accordance with relevant United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.”
In this context, India has no legal or moral grounds to assert fictitious claims over the territories of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Indian leaders need to be reminded that Kashmir is an unfinished agenda of the partition and the question regarding its accession remains to be decided in accordance with the UN resolutions. The UN and the world community have never accepted Indian claims of Kashmir being an integral part of India; a stance that it has been bandying around since 1957 notwithstanding the fact that the UN through its resolutions 91 and 122 had IIOJ&K assembly resolution declaring Kashmir’s accession to India. The resolution unequivocally declared that the question of accession could only be settled through a plebiscite held under the auspices of the UN.
Even the people of IIO&JK have never accepted the Indian narrative and had perforce to launch an armed freedom struggle in 1989 which continues till today. The Indian security forces have killed more than one hundred thousand Kashmiris, raped thousands of women and destroyed thousands of structures. The stories of blatant human rights violations in IIO&JK by the Indian security forces have been documented by international human rights organizations including Amnesty International.
Not only that India revoked the special status of IIO&JK in August 2019, divided the state into two territories and amalgamated them into the Indian Union. This was followed by the promulgation of laws aimed at changing the demographic features of the state and ruthless suppression of resistance against it. Hardly a day passes when Indian security forces do not kill people in the search and cordon operations. The Indian actions in IIO&JK are a blatant violation of UN resolutions and the 4th Geneva Convention.
The statement by ISPR rightly pointed out that the Indian Army Chief in his capacity as General Officer in IIO&JK earlier personally oversaw the most brutal repression of Kashmiris. While empathizing with the victims of the Indian Army’s brutality the ISPR statement expressed the hope that civility – professionalism and norms of state-to-state behaviour would guide the conduct of the Indian Army’s leadership rather than pandering to political exigencies.
The Indian political and military leadership is better advised to behave responsibly and shun their belligerent posturing towards Pakistan because it is capable of giving a matching response to any Indian aggression as was done during the 26 February adventure by India which resulted in the loss of two Indian planes and capture of a pilot.
The writer is a former diplomat and freelance columnist.