The Pakistani foreign office’s strong condemnation and rejection of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s uncalled for remarks about partition as “delusional thinking and historical revisionism” are appropriate and timely. It’s no surprise that the right-wing fascist outfit, from which the ruling BJP draws inspiration as well as its top leadership, has been given centre-stage on Indian media yet again at this delicate point in time. In fact, Islamabad has been warning about just such an escalation for quite a while. It’s also very important to note just why Pakistan’s numerous statements on this matter have concentrated less on the threat posed to our country, which we can manage very well, and more on the fate of minorities inside India, especially Muslims. It’s already a crying shame that the Modi administration has blatantly clamped down on their legitimate, constitutional rights and got away with it simply because the country’s large market very conveniently blinds the usual standard-bearers of human rights international law in today’s world. And so Modi, despite the abject failure of his economic, security and foreign policies, is still able to whip up support by turbocharging his extremist Hindutva fanbase and keep his approval ratings above water. Yet even as he’s able to pull this stunt he’s endangering not just the region, but the whole world because this extremism is pushing one of the most densely populated countries in the world towards implosion. Pakistan worries about this, quite naturally, because even if it gets to say I-told-you-so when the inevitable happens, it will still have to do all the cleaning up at the end of the day because of its physical proximity with India. Unfortunately, this time bomb is ticking in front of everybody’s eyes yet nobody seems too bothered by it. Still, Pakistan must continue to put the spotlight on this problem whenever and wherever it gets the chance so it can expose Indian hypocrisy more effectively at international forums. *