The Pakistan Mentality Why it is dangerous and why it must be crushed Imran Khan gun
 
The Pakistan Mentality: Why it is dangerous and why it must be crushed

Why are Hindus hated? Because for over 14 centuries India resisted efforts to pass through Islam’s digestive tract and become a distant memory. The price of this struggle was colossal – hundreds of millions of Hindus were killed, all the ancient Indian universities were razed and hundreds of thousands of temples were demolished.

@ByRakeshSimha
Commentary | 26-02-2019

The first Islamic invasion of India took place in the year 638 CE. With reinforcements from Iraq, Syria, Persia and several other Middle Eastern kingdoms, a large and powerful flotilla attacked Sindh, the Indian province closest to Arabia. The naval forces of Sindh soundly defeated this Islamic armada. Over the next 72 years, fourteen more attempts by nine Caliphs ended in utter failure. The Arabs lost such countless numbers of men in these campaigns – which were conducted both via land and sea – that the Caliphs declared India a no-go zone for Muslims.

However, in 710 CE the Arabs mounted a last-ditch invasion led by Mohammed bin Qasim. In 711 CE the Muslims tasted their first victory on Indian soil when they took the frontier town of Debal after a bitter battle. Like numerous previous campaigns, initially this one too seemed like it was going to be a disaster for the large Muslim horde against a small frontier city. The Hindu soldiers put up a valiant fight and were at the point of defeating the Muslim army when the Buddhist citizens of Debal betrayed the defenders during the battle, saying that as Buddhists it didn’t matter to them whether Hindus or Muslims ruled Sindh. They quickly learned their mistake when the victorious Muslim army massacred every single one of them along with the Hindus.

It was in Debal that the first recorded conversion of a Hindu took place. This man was promptly named Maulana Islami and sent, with a Syrian noble, to deliver a message to the court of Raja Dahir, the ruler of Sindh. According to the Chachnama, when the two entered Dahir’s court, the Syrian bowed low to salute, but the newly converted Indian Muslim refused to observe the mandatory diplomatic courtesy.

Dahir recognised him and asked him why he was not observing the court etiquette, and the latter said that with his change of religion his loyalty now was to “the king of Islam”. Change of religion had resulted in change of nationality. According to the late historian and politician K.R. Malkani, “The Pakistani mentality was born.” (1)

Pulwama and the Pakistan mentality

The Pakistan mentality involves:

  • An implacable hatred of Hindus (as well as the less numerical groups such as Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, atheists and Christians).
  • The defining belief that India is an ex-Islamic country that needs to be forcibly or demographically returned to Muslim control.
  • Unwillingness to accept India as a Hindu majority country.
  • Willingness to destroy themselves if in the bargain they can destroy India or at least cause it major damage.

This mindset is not confined to the geographical boundary of Pakistan; it is a syndrome which can be found among large sections of Muslims across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent. Among many Indian Muslims it is, of course, particularly ingrained.

So why are Hindus hated? Because for over 14 centuries India resisted efforts to pass through Islam’s digestive tract and become a distant memory. The price of this struggle was colossal – hundreds of millions of Hindus were killed, all the ancient Indian universities were razed and hundreds of thousands of temples were demolished. But even more painful was the extensive loss of territory including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. And yet India remains thriving – a living, breathing symbol of Islam’s definitive defeat by the polytheists.

For many Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, the very presence of Hindus is an act of intolerance. This is the crux of the problem, and this intense hatred of Hindus finds itself reflected in the vile language of Adil Ahmed Dar, the Kashmiri terrorist who blew himself up in a truck full of explosives, killing 45 CRPF jawans. According to Dar, Hindus are “cow urine drinkers” who must be killed so that an Islamic Caliphate can be established in India. The “cow piss” reference is frequently tossed at Hindus by Pakistanis who are clearly envious of India’s economic and scientific progress. Ironically, the Hadiths record that Mohammed, the founder of Islam, prescribed camel urine to his followers suffering from various ailments. (2)

Trojans within

It is fashionable among Indians leftists and liberals to say that Kashmir is on the boil because of poverty and lack of economic development. If poverty is the cause of terrorism, why don’t Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have large-scale terrorist movements? Clearly, this segment of society lacks the grey matter to connect the dots.

Again, the left-liberal cabal, with funding from their ISI handlers, (3) argues that Kashmiris should be allowed to decide their destiny and either become independent or join Pakistan. By that logic, Muslims in districts of Kerala, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh where they are a majority can ask for freedom to secede. There will be complete chaos all across India if every Muslim – or Christian – majority area is allowed to secede.

At any rate, allowing Kashmir to become independent won’t solve the problem. Islamists like Dar won’t be placated by the withdrawal of the Indian military from the region. Next, Kashmiri leaders and terrorists – speaking through their Pakistani controllers – will demand the incorporation of Jammu and Ladakh with Kashmir. The jehadis will want Punjab, Haryana and Himachal. Then Delhi as it was the capital of the Mughal Empire. Capitulation is incremental: Russia lost Ukraine the day it surrendered East Germany.

The reason Kashmir remains volatile is that Kashmiri Muslims treat the state as their private sanctuary where they can do pretty much what they please. Kashmir’s special status has set a very bad example for Muslims in other parts of India. The unpardonable failure of the Indian state to protect the Kashmiri Pandits from murderous Kashmiri Muslim mobs, leading to the exodus of more than 500,000 Hindus from the Valley, has emboldened Muslims in other parts of India to employ similar strategies. They have developed the belief that if the Indian government didn’t protect the Kashmiri Hindus despite having 30,000 troops in and around the Valley, then Hindus are fair game in areas where the Indian Army has zero presence.

A stark example is Kairana, just over an hour east from Delhi, where Muslims systematically forced hundreds of Hindu families to flee the Uttar Pradesh town. (4) Such demographic aggression has picked up pace in every region in India where Hindus have dipped below the 60 per cent mark.

Malayali Muslims are no doubt salivating at the prospect of their community reaching the 50 per cent point in Kerala. Coupled with the abysmal growth rate (1.6 per cent) of the Hindu population in the state and the comparatively fast growth rate (2.9 per cent) of Muslims, the latter are set to be the majority community in Kerala in a couple of decades. (5)

Since Malayali Muslims have adopted a particularly fanatic strain of Wahhabi/Salafi Islam, and are sending their boys to fight in Syria in droves, it is very likely that ethnic cleansing of Hindus will be on the agenda in Kerala once Muslims attain majority status.

Again, in Assam two years ago illegal Bangladeshi settlers attempted to march through Assam, demanding Kashmir style special rights for Bengali Muslims. Thankfully, the Assam Police didn’t hesitate to give the protest leaders a sound thrashing and the marchers turned tail. (6)

The fact that illegal Bangladeshi settlers are emboldened to try and replicate the Kashmir model in Assam is a pointer to the danger lurking in appeasing Muslims and awarding them with special status. Don’t forget that in 1947, Muslims comprised just 25 per cent of united India’s population and yet they forced Partition.

Understanding the Pakistani mindset

In the 1965 and 1971 wars, India returned strategic borderlands captured after bitter fighting and for which hundreds of Indian soldiers paid the ultimate price. Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi both held the belief that by returning captured land and prisoners of war (nearly 97,000 in 1971) they could score points with Pakistanis.

Again, in the two limited wars fought in 1948 and 1999, India’s leadership held back when its army had its boot on Pakistan’s neck. Again, Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Atal Bihari Vajpayi believed that the enemy, now defeated, would understand the futility of attacking India.

However, the Pakistani mindset doesn’t quite work like that. Pakistan is only the second Islamic country in the world; the first one was in Mecca, founded by Mohammed 1,400 years ago. According to Indian author Tufail Ahmed, Indian Muslims who moved to Pakistan at Partition in 1947 compare their migration with the flight of Mohammed and his followers to Mecca in 622 CE. And they also believe that just like the Prophet returned victorious to Mecca, the Pakistanis would one day enter India as victors.

Pakistan’s raison d’etre is entirely to re-conquer India. F.K. Khan Durrani put it in 1943: “But that India is a geographical unity is also a fact which the Muslims must never forget. There is not an inch of the soil of India which our fathers did not once purchase with their blood. We cannot be false to the blood of our fathers. India, the whole of it, is therefore our heritage and it must be re-conquered for Islam. Expansion in the spiritual sense is an inherent necessity of our faith and implies no hatred or enmity towards the Hindus. Rather the reverse. Our ultimate ideal should be the unification of India, spiritually as well as politically, under the banner of Islam. The final political salvation of India is not otherwise possible.” (7)

Among those who understood the real purpose of Partition was Rajendra Prasad, who went on to become India’s first President. According to US-based historian Faisal Devji: “Rajendra Prasad, quoting from a number of books written by Muslim nationalists shows that none was content to stop at the achievement of an independent state. Instead they saw Pakistan’s true or ultimate role as the liberation of Muslims oppressed in places like China and Soviet Central Asia, and even to ‘free’ India herself by a process of conversion”. (8)

Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, the Cambridge undergraduate who came up with the idea and name of Pakistan in the early 1930s, envisioned a country or set of countries distributed all over the map of India, in what can only be called a counter-nationalist vision, one entirely lacking territorial integrity. In a later iteration of his theory, Rahmat Ali imagined India not as a country at all, but rather a continent of religious groups. This continent named Dinia – which he formed by transposing the word India to get out of it a word derived from din, the Arabic word for religion – would be made up of a number of Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and other states, including one for Dravidians and ‘Untouchables’. According to Devji, “it is a vision that survives today largely intact in the ideology of Pakstan’s pre-eminent militant group, the Lashkar-e-Taiba”. (9)

In 1940 when the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution, which was the first concrete demand for the division of India, there were protests from Indian leaders. To this Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the architect of India’s partition, said: “Where is the country which is being divided? Where is the nation being denationalised? India is composed on nationalities, to say nothing about the castes and sub-castes.”

In 1947, when India was divided, Jinnah said what he got was “a moth eaten State”. Indeed, the constant narrative in Pakistan is that it is already a rump State which will be complete only when all of India (and Bangladesh) would come under one Islamic flag.

Pakistan cannot wag the dog

There is a section of Indians which believes “a weak Pakistan is not in India’s interests”. Some like former speech writer Sudheendhra Kulkarni have even suggested providing it a low interest loan of $4.5 billion because that is “padosi ka dharma” or the duty of a neighbour.

However, anyone who believes a stable Pakistan is good for India has merely internalised what liberal think tanks have been dishing out for decades. In fact, the contrary is true. Picture this: if India hadn’t intervened in East Pakistan in 1971, the Indian Army would have had to station half a million troops on the eastern border today. The demilitarised Bangladesh border is therefore a huge dividend from the 1971 War.

With Pakistan showing no signs of backing down from its old policy of low-intensity, low-risk attacks – interspersed with full-on wars – against India, negotiations are a waste of time and effort. In fact, talks are a clever distraction ploy by Islamabad so India lowers its guard. Indians should never forget that in 1999 while late prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was bussing across the international border to Lahore for a historic summit, the Pakistan Army was busy occupying mountain ranges in Kargil.

India must drop all niceties aside and treat Pakistan like a mortal enemy. For those with short memories or who believe the Pulwama attack is an isolated one, here’s a list of some major terror strikes by Pakistan: Mumbai 1993, Indian Parliament 2001, Delhi 2005, Mumbai 2008, Gurdaspur 2015, Pathankot Air Force Station 2016 and Uri 2016.

In this backdrop, here is what New Delhi can do to remove this existential threat to India’s security and a major roadblock towards its destiny as a great power.

Support freedom movements in Pakistan

The majority of Balochs and a large section of Sindhis are irreconcilably opposed to being part of Pakistan. Likewise, most Pathans would prefer to join up Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with Afghanistan. After the 1971 War and the emergence of Bangladesh, Sindhi leader G.M. Syed proposed a new homeland for the Sindhis named Sindhudesh. He founded the Jiye Sindh movement and said that in the next India-Pakistan war Sindhis must welcome the Indian Army as liberators.

After the horror of the November 2008 Mumbai raid, which resulted in the deaths of 158 people, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had famously said, “You do one more Mumbai, you lose Balochistan.” That time has come. Considering Pulwama and Uri are just as traumatic for Indians as the Mumbai attack, it’s time to start the process of breaking up Pakistan.

India has done this before with finesse and Chanakyan statecraft. In the build-up to the 1971 War, the country’s external intelligence agency RAW had started training Bengali freedom fighters in the former East Pakistan. India also successfully turned Bengali officers in the Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force and the Pakistan Foreign Service into double agents. Those multiple thrusts ultimately resulted in the defeat of the Pakistani military forces.

This time around, RAW should perform a triple pincer strike by massively arming rebels in Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa – the three provinces which are chafing under Punjabi domination. Because these provinces are losing their identity due to the influx of Punjabi settlers who are slowly changing the demography of the provinces, the local people will welcome India’s support. The Balochs, for instance, are so desperate for India’s support they will rename cities in India’s honour.

As Doval has said, India’s advantage is that it has the cash to pay off terrorists and turn them into double agents who will happily strike at Pakistan. The Pakistan Army claims it has lost more than 7,000 troops fighting just one set of terrorists – the Pakistan Taliban. Three simultaneous rebel movements bankrolled by India will simply overwhelm its armed forces. The resulting turmoil will quickly drive out both foreign and domestic investors, resulting in the collapse of the Pakistani economy.

For those who claim that Islamabad will also ramp up its terror operations in India, here’s news: because Pakistan is a much smaller country, it will suffer greater turmoil and devastation than India. Security analyst Amarjeet Singh explains in Indian Defence Review: “Whereas a proxy war by Pakistan in two Indian provinces merely affects less than 10 per cent of all Indian provinces, a proxy war by India in two Pakistani provinces can affect 40 per cent of Pakistan. By its sheer size, Pakistani resilience can be less, and Pakistani response to Indian proxy wars can be less effective. In addition, the effect of proxy wars on the Pakistani economy can be much more to Pakistan than a proxy war on India by Pakistan.”

Pakistan will find out that two can play the game, and that India can play it far longer. Pakistani generals are so used to a life of luxury, post-retirement corner plots and numerous flunkies at their beck and call that they have no stomach for a high-intensity conflict with India.

In a 1971 report titled ‘Implications of an Indian Victory Over Pakistan’, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) summed up what would happen if India attempted to break up Pakistan. According to the report, the Sindhis “often hostile to the Punjabis could declare their independence”. The Pakhtuns of Afghanistan might take the opportunity to reunite with their brother Pakhtuns of Khyber Pakthunkhwa. “Indeed, were Pakistan to fall apart, the Afghans would probably help the process along by moving to detach (Khyber Pakthunkhwa) and bringing it under their protection.” Balochistan could either remain attached to Punjab or it would be absorbed by either Afghanistan or Iran.

After the centrifugal forces have played out, what remains would be a “not inconsiderable country”. In the CIA’s view, provided it had not been too badly damaged, Pakistani Punjab would probably recover economically fairly quickly. But while the rump state “would remain the focus of bitterly anti-Hindu, anti-Indian sentiments”, it would no longer pose a threat to India. “Nor would it have the international stature previously enjoyed by a united Pakistan. Rather it would probably be viewed by most powers as a state on the border of Afghanistan: remote and of no great consequence.” (10)

Double defence spending

India’s defence budget is $64 billion or just 2.5 per cent of GDP; Pakistan’s defence budget is $9.6 billion, which is 3.5 per cent of its GDP. While many will be aghast if India hikes its defence budget to, say, $128 billion, the reality is that securing the country is not a casual matter; it’s an existential issue which deserves to be dealt with seriously.

During wartime, virtually the entire resources of a country are diverted into war production. That is how Russia and the US defeated the German Army. All their consumer goods factories were turned into weapons plants; workers who put together refrigerators were trained to assemble tanks and fighter jets. Russian citizens survived more than five years on bread and water.

Since the mid 1990s, India has faced a low-intensity war waged by Pakistan with support from China. Like it or not, we are at war and our soldiers are dying every day. In this scenario, doubling of the defence budget to 5 per cent is just like taking out a large insurance on your home – it costs extra but if the house collapses, it is money well spent. Yes it will certainly impact some development projects but the massive impetus it will give to the military industrial complex will compensate for the losses. Plus, the peace dividend is incalculable. Millions of people will be able to lead peaceful lives and trade and industry will grow in places considered no-go areas.

The US is the best example of this – its economy has been proven to benefit from defence spending. In fact, a reason America is constantly at war is because war spending boosts its economy.

More significantly, a quantum leap in India’s defence budget will be a double whammy for Pakistan. Firstly, Islamabad can never match India’s spending power. Secondly, unlike India, every rupee it spends on the military goes down the sinkhole. Khurram Husain explains in The Dawn that “defence spending does not produce an economic boost because the ‘military industrial complex’ in Pakistan is very small”. (11)

Bottom line: every rupee the Pakistan government spends on defence is a rupee denied for development. Since the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are surviving on minimal rations and also suffering massive power cuts and joblessness, large increases in defence spending will make their daily existence a living hell.

Warm up Cold Start

Cold Start is the colloquial term for the Indian Army’s Proactive Military Strategy for a blitzkrieg style strike into Pakistan. Although its operational details remain classified, the goal of Cold Start is broadly for Indian armour and infantry to launch lightning strikes into Pakistan and capture bite-sized (up to 80 km deep) chunks of enemy territory within 72 to 96 hours from the time the order to mobilise is issued.

The beauty of Cold Start is it may never have to be used. It screws with the Pakistani military’s mind and forces the generals to spend time and scarce resources on finding ways to stop an Indian blitzkrieg. As well as beefing up the military with billions of dollars worth of conventional weaponry sourced from China and Turkey, the Pakistani military is taking out another insurance policy – by cranking up the production of nuclear weapons.

Atomic bombs – plus the missiles required to launch them – don’t come cheap. In fact, the entire ecosystem required to develop, build, deploy, store and maintain them is so prohibitively expensive that even China, with an $8 trillion economy and $3 trillion in forex reserves, has built only 300 nuclear weapons. It knows that trying to catch up with its chief rival, the US, will only lead to a Cold War style arms race.

However, the Pakistani ruling elites blinded by notions of racial superiority vis-a-vis Indians and in their mad obsession to achieve parity with India are ramping up production of nuclear warheads. According to the Federation of American Scientists, in a few years Pakistan could overtake France to possess the fourth largest stockpile of nuclear warheads after Russia, the US and China.

Cold Start also works to undermine the much smaller Pakistani economy. According to the Pakistani media, the threat of the Indian Cold Start doctrine and increase in India’s defence budget has prompted the Pakistan government to sharply increase its defence budget, further increasing the strain on that country’s fragile economy.

Build an Iron Dome

Building a ballistic missile defence (BMD) system is not just expensive, it can bring down a country. Mikhail Gorbachev would agree. The former president of the Soviet Union got so spooked by the US Stars Wars project that he threw in the towel and disbanded the world’s second most powerful nation.

India has become the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to successfully test a BMD system that can shoot down enemy missiles. So how does this impact Pakistan? Pakistan has a limited number of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads so in order to make sure that enough of them get through India’s BMD shield, it’ll have to fire more of them. As India’s keeps improving its version of the Israeli Iron Dome, Pakistan will have to keep building more and more missiles and nuclear weapons.

Pakistan will also try and build a rudimentary BMD system which will cost billions to develop, manufacture and maintain. Runaway defence spending can quickly wreck the economy. During the Cold War, the Soviets got so paranoid about American advances in military technology that they stockpiled 40,000 nuclear warheads – a huge overkill. The overspend on the military wrecked the civilian economy, resulting in shortages of consumer goods and medicines. This made the regime unpopular, so that in the end the country self-destructed.

If the mighty Soviet Union, with all its technological advancements, military power and worldwide popularity could not survive its own people’s anger, what chance does Pakistan stand? The Pakistan Army is the glue that holds this disparate and deeply divided country together, but not even the generals can stop an idea whose time has come – the dissolution of Pakistan.

Economic and social strangulation

India should go for Pakistan’s economic jugular by turning it into a global pariah. Those who doubt this will be successful should look back at the boycott of the 19th Saarc Summit in Islamabad in 2016. Led by India, first Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Bhutan pulled out, quickly followed by Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives.

India’s economic and military heft needs to be leveraged to make individuals and countries keep away from Pakistan. This should involve:

* Ban on travel by people between the two countries.

* Anyone who has been to Pakistan cannot visit India. (Arab countries already practise this ban on Israel, and nobody’s protesting so if they protest this move, it’ll only expose their hypocrisy.)

* Any company that has business interests in Pakistan cannot undertake new projects in India.

* No overflights over India by any aircraft originating in Pakistani. Taking the long route to Bangladesh and SE Asia via Sri Lanka and to Nepal via Tibet will make airline operations from Pakistan expensive.

* Ships that visit Pakistani ports cannot enter Indian territorial waters.

* Revoke Indus Waters Treaty; Jawaharlal Nehru gave away 80 per cent of Himalayan rivers to Pakistan so India can walk out of it with justification.

* India must not take part in ICC cricket tournaments if Pakistan is invited.

Remember that the US managed to bring down its chief enemy, the Soviet Union, by slapping economic sanctions that ran for decades. Virtually everything from the transfer of advanced technology to the sale of wheat and sporting contacts with Russia were banned. In the end, Gorbachev decided he couldn’t keep in step with the West and dissolved the Soviet Union.

Hit Pakistan’s useful idiots in India

While the entire nation was mourning the horrific attack on the CRPF convoy, there were many who were celebrating. It was entirely expected that Pakistanis, Kashmiri students and some Indian Muslims would mock the Indian state and its security forces and symbolically dance on the grave. However, what disgusted Indians was the sight of some Indian journalists, liberals and seculars joining the Pakistani and Kashmiris in celebrating the deaths of the young jawans.

One of them was Nidhi Sethi, deputy news editor of – no surprises – NDTV. This journalist had posted a comment on Facebook which seemed to glorify the terror attack by Jaish-e-Muhammad. She had written, “Where a grisly 44 has been proven to be greater than the mythical 56.” She also added a hashtag #HowstheJaish, a take on the famous dialogue ‘How’s the Josh’ from the recent movie Uri: The Surgical Strike. (12)

Mugdha Karnik, former director of the Centre for Extra Mural Studies at the University of Mumbai, Kalina, also wrote “How’s the Jaish, Modiji” on her Facebook. Despite the volume of angry messages she was getting and the outrage she was causing, the woman steadfastly refused to take down the post. She eventually did, perhaps after a call from the Mumbai Police.

In all such cases of mocking the victims, the social media armchair warriors who were spinning these morbid messages seemed absolutely nonchalant in their demeanour and confident in their beliefs that nothing would happen to their careers. After Pulwama, this has to change. There have to be consequences for those who mock the martyrdom of Indian soldiers. Russia has passed a law that makes it a criminal offence if a citizen criticises the Russian participation in World War II. Not only does it impact the morale of the forces to see antisocial elements take potshots at their war dead, but such words as Sethi and company used are extremely cruel towards the families of the martyrs.

Such brazenness has resulted from decades of mollycoddling enemies of the state. Hillary Clinton had once told Pakistani leaders, “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” Clinton was referring to Pakistan’s policy of breeding terrorists aimed at India. However, her words apply equally to India’s policy – or rather the lack of it – towards Breaking India forces that are acting from within.

Some journalists such Barkha Dutt and Shekhar Gupta have been allowed to use the freedom-of-the-media excuse to weaken India’s security. Barkha’s traitorous conduct during the Kargil War and her eulogising of the terrorist Burhan Wani as the “headmaster’s son”; and Gupta’s incendiary piece on the Indian Army plotting a coup were shameless pieces of gutter journalism but sadly they suffered no consequences.

In July 2009, Harinder Baweja, who was editor (news) at Tehelka, took part in the “International Kashmir Conference” in Washington organised by a Kashmiri named Ghulam Nabi Fai. She said in her address that the main reason a solution to the Kashmir problem had been elusive was because of “India’s mindset”. Baweja added “if there is a problem in Kashmir, it is because it was created by subsequent governments, both in Srinagar and Delhi, and if the ISI is meddling in Kashmir, it’s because India muddied the water in the first place”. (13)

Two years later when the FBI busted an ISI front in the United States, they discovered that the man running the racket was Ghulam Nabi Fai. According to Outlook, Fai had roped in several eminent Indian journalists and intellectuals during his more than two decades of high-profile operations. (14)

Fai had funnelled $4 million from the ISI to influence American opinion on Kashmir. The FBI recorded 4,000 emails and phone calls from his Pakistani handlers.

As well as Baweja, Fai’s guests list included justice Rajinder Sachar (who headed a committee which falsely claimed Indian Muslims faced discrimination in all aspects of life); Gautam Navlakha (editor of the communist rag Economic and Political Weekly); Dileep Padgaonkar (late editor of the Times of India); Harish Khare (former journalist at The Hindu); Ved Bhasin (editor, Kashmir Times); and Praful Bidwai (late columnist with communist leanings).

India should pass a new law that bars Indians from associating with enemies of the state and Pakistanis in particular. In the spy game, everyone and anyone is a target. Since the days of Maulana Islami of Debal, India has been cursed with a disproportionate number of collaborators. Virtually every single battle won by Muslim and European Christian invaders was facilitated by Indians who threw in their lot with the enemy for one reason or the other. Today, the leftist curriculum and decades of secular brainwashing has turned millions of Indians into pliable secular caricatures who often fall for the pleasing words and guiles of foreigners. Many will be motivated by the “Pakistanis are just like us” syndrome, even as their Pakistani handlers secretly laugh at them.

In this backdrop, people who are caught fraternising with the enemy should pay heavily in terms of their careers. Karnik’s pension should be stopped and Sethi should never be able to get a journalism job in India. It is surprising that NDTV, which is now partly owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance, continues to employ Sethi. India cannot afford to have traitors weaken it from within.

Endgame

Some of the measures outlined above are currently being implemented by the Narendra Modi government. In 2015 India plugged a leak in the Indira Gandhi Canal in the Sri Ganganagar area in Rajasthan. For decades, Pakistani farmers had been taking free water via the leak, allowing them to grow all kinds of crops. In 2017, with India choking the free supply, Pakistani farmers in the border areas faced a crop failure.

In 2018 India declared it would fast-track three projects, including construction of two dams, to arrest the unutilised water of its share under the Indus Waters Treaty. This alone would kill an entire sowing season in Pakistan in the coming years. It’s incredible that while 300 million Indians are facing a water crisis, it has taken the political leadership 60 years to take this step.

India’s new water diplomacy is also in action in Afghanistan, where Indian engineers are building the Shahtoot Dam on the Kabul River. In Pakistan there is growing fear that the dam is the latest move in India’s grand plan to strangle Pakistan’s limited water supply. “It is not just one dam that is alarming for Pakistan,” says Foreign Policy magazine. “India has assisted Afghanistan with studies on the feasibility of a total of 12 dams to be built on the Kabul River, which could generate 1,177 megawatts of power and further reduce water flow into Pakistan.” (15)

The revoking of the Most Favoured Nation to Pakistan is just the beginning of the pain for Pakistan. After decades of treating its dangerous neighbour with kid gloves, India is waking up to Chanakya’s famous aphorism: “The antidote of poison is poison, not nectar.”

Sources

  1. R. Malkani, The Sindh Story, Page 37
  2. Wiki Islam, Camel Urine and Islam, https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Camel_Urine_and_Islam
  3. Outlook, Indian Scribes, Intellectuals Linked With Fai, https://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/indian-scribes-intellectuals-linked-with-fai/728447
  4. Times of India, Exodus of Hindu families from Kairana a reality, finds NHRC probe report, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/Exodus-of-Hindu-families-from-Kairana-a-reality-finds-NHRC-probe-report/articleshow/54451892.cms
  5. Meri News, Will Kerala become a Muslim-majority state in a few decades? http://www.merinews.com/article/will-kerala-become-a-muslim-majority-state-in-a-few-decades/15923731.shtml
  6. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uZqiuXQpeE
  7. K. Khan Durrani, The Meaning of Pakistan, page ix
  8. Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (page 33)
  9. Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (page 22)
  10. CIA, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp79r00967a000400020005-1
  11. Khurram Hussain, https://www.dawn.com/news/1403932
  12. IDRW, http://idrw.org/ndtv-suspends-deputy-news-editor-for-celebrating-pulwama-terror-attack-may-take-further-action/
  13. Rediff, https://www.rediff.com/news/report/kashmir-is-a-humungous-human-tragedy/20090731.htm
  14. Outlook, https://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/indian-scribes-intellectuals-linked-with-fai/728447
  15. Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/13/afghanistans-rivers-could-be-indias-next-weapon-against-pakistan-water-wars-hydropower-hydrodiplomacy/

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