Daily Times

One is really surprised to see how effectively Indian society at large has been brainwashed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make an ordinary Indian believe that Muslims residing inside India and across the border are the root cause of every ill in their country. In fact, BJP thrives on one-point agenda of Hindu-Muslim hatred and its political campaign is mainly based on dividing Indian society on religious polarisation.

As the general elections in India are approaching fast, the BJP is ready to cross any limits to gain support of Hindu voters may it be at the cost of the lives of Indian soldiers and ordinary citizens. It is in the same context that Palwama incident, in which more than forty Indian soldiers were killed, was stage-managed to create war hysteria against Pakistan. And like ever before, Indian government supported by crazy Indian media squarely put the entire blame on Pakistan without any proof.

Realising the sensitivity of the situation, Prime Minister Imran Khan reiterated that Pakistan will not allow its soil to be used by any militant organisation for cross-border terrorism and that Islamabad is ready to act against any such organisation if New Delhi provides any actionable evidence. He also offered India talks on cross-border terrorism.

The Indian government, however, arrogantly refused Pakistan’s offer to resolve the issue through talks and rather threatened to ‘punish’ the perpetrators of Palwama terror attack.

The irresponsible Indian media kept on adding fuel to the fire by asking the government to avenge the death of soldiers by conducting surgical strikes across the Line of Control. While offering cooperation to India on cross-border terrorism, Imran Khan, however, had made it clear to the Indian leadership that any misadventure from across the border will be retaliated.

Due to political compulsions and election winning factor, Indian government authorised its air force to conduct surgical strikes across the Line of Control to destroy what they called the terrorist training camps. On the night of 26/27 February, a heavy formation of Indian Air Force intruded in Muzzaffarabad sector which was immediately challenged by the Pakistani Combat Air Patrol team forcing Indian aircraft to return. In haste, they dropped their payload in the forest of Balakot 4-5 nautical miles in Azad Jammu & Kashmir.

The Indian media and the government claimed that India had taken the revenge of Palwama incident by destroying a Jaish-e-Muhammad training camp and killing more than 350 militants.

However, once Pakistani media teams visited the area, there was no evidence of any such camp or any casualties except a lone house which was slightly damaged and its owner suffered minor injuries. The actual casualties of Indian so-called surgical strike were a small number of trees which were cut to half or fell down. Pakistan Army spokesperson during a press conference warned India of a surprise response at the time and place of their own choosing.

And the response did not take long. It came the very next day wherein a formation of Pakistan Air Force successfully locked six Indian military targets but later on engaged open areas just to make India realise that Pakistan was very much capable of engaging their hardcore military targets during the broad day light. Both the Indian Mig-21s who again violated the Pakistani airspace were shot down by the PAF’s indigenously built JF-17 Thunder jets.

One Indian Aircraft’s wreckage fell in Indian-held Kashmir while the second one fell inside Azad Kashmir whose pilot Wing Commander Abhi Nandan was also by Pakistan Army.

This openly visible and effective response really took the Indian leadership and the its armed forces by surprise. To avoid the humiliation, India also claimed shooting down a Pakistani F-16 and proudly showed its destroyed parts on a television channel but were thoroughly embarrassed when an Indian expert pointed out that the parts being shown were that of a MiG-21.

The very next day, Prime minister Imran Khan, while addressing a joint session of the parliament, once again asked Indian leadership to de-escalate the situation and as a goodwill gesture announced to release the Indian pilot who was already impressed by the humanity and professionalism of Pakistan Army besides confessing to jingoism of the Indian media.

The international community is praising the peace efforts of Pakistan and Prime Minister Imran Khan has been trending on social media while Indian media and Modi’s government are facing criticism both at home and abroad. Despite the goodwill gesture of releasing Indian pilot, its army is continuing atrocities in the occupied valley and also targeting civil population in Azad Kashmir.

A son of a former Indian army officer and a member of BJP has exposed the planning of Palwama blast by leaking the conversation between Raj Nath Singh and Ameet Shah who were planning to sacrifice Indian soldiers just to gain votes for BJP by conducting a terror attack inside IHK on the lines of Uri incident. On the other hand, having failed to provide any evidence of targeting Jaish-e-Muhammad in Balakot, India has now engaged foreign media which is propagating about 35 militants killed by the Indian surgical strikes. Though there is no limit to the lies, at least the figure of killed militants has dropped down from 350 to 35.

Let’s hope and pray that better sense prevails among the leadership, general public and armed forces of India and they realise that war is actually the failure of policy and it will not do anything good to both the countries except gaining few more seats for the BJP, creating further wedge between Hindus and Muslims and pushing many more millions below the poverty line.

Published in Daily Times, March 4^th 2019.