Daily Times

President Dr Arif Alvi on Tuesday cautioned India of an internal strife if it continued persecuting the Muslims under its Hindutva ideology, based on racism and hate.

“The future of peace within India greatly depends upon the treatment it metes out to its minorities, particularly Muslims,” the president said at the International Conference on ‘Institutionalization of Hindutva in India: A Regional Security Perspective’.

The conference, organized by the International Relations Department of the National Defence University (NDU), gathered intellectuals from the United States, China, Iran, Germany and Pakistan to deliberate upon the global rise of Islamophobia in the local perspective of Hindutva extremism.

He said India in its historic outlook had never been a country, but a combination of over 500 princely states that could even crumble today if it did not stop genocide and persecution of minorities.

President Alvi said the Hindutva ideology was being promoted under the patronage of Modi regime, which would create violence and unrest in the Indian society, and resultantly India would blame Pakistan for its flawed and extremist policies.

The brutalities against Muslims and their ethnic cleansing in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), he said, was the practical manifestation of Hindutva policies.

He said India’s recently amended “Citizenship Act” reflected the prejudiced mindset of Hindutva, aimed at changing the demography of Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Such acts on the part of the Modi regime, he added, were amounting to “ethnic cleansing” that required the special attention of the world to build pressure on India to stop committing human rights violations in the IIOJK.

Dr Alvi said the world, due to its vested interests, was not seriously taking the disturbing situation in the IIOJK.

“We want the international community to see the ‘true colours’ of India, that reflect an open hatred against Muslims,” he said.

He pointed out that the Muslims constituted almost 15 percent of Indian population, but regrettably, they had been kept deprived of their due representation in the Indian parliament as well as their share in the government jobs.

He said the Hindutva-inspired government could not tolerate the minorities, particularly the Muslims, and thus wanted to rewrite history by erasing the contributions done by the Muslims for India.

He quoted, in this regard, an excerpt from ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’ authored by Czech historian Milan Kundera that “the first step to liquidate a people is to take away their memory by destroying their books, culture and history”.

The president also mentioned the books, ‘End of India’ by Indian intellectual Khushwant Singh and ‘Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up’ by Indian woman journalist Rana Ayyub, that highlighted the dark contours of India’s history, deeply rooted in violence, bigotry and prejudice.

He appreciated the talent of Pakistani nation, saying he was proud of it as it had the resolve and potential to overcome challenges and prove itself in the comity of nations by gaining an ‘intellectual edge’ in all fields of life.

“I can see the country rising which will soon overcome the socio-economic challenges being faced by the country,” he added. NDU President Lt Gen Muhammad Saeed said Pakistan’s major external threats emanated from India, whose defence capabilities were primarily Pakistan-centric.

He said to maintain the equilibrium, Pakistan was justified in building its military might for the purpose of defending its frontiers and the people. He mentioned that since 2014, India was using religious sentiments for political gains, saying it could have dangerous consequences for Pakistan as well as the region.