India’s Overkill
The thousands of years old “Kautiliya Arthasastra” is a complete code of Hindu statecraft, duplicity being a main plank of its regime for state conduct. Other than poison, use of women, false propaganda, etc, in Chapter 2 of Book 12 it says “secret agents should spread rumours among the citizens and country people and when spread far and wide, assassins should rob citizens at night and slay chiefs, saying” thus are dealt with those who do not obey the Regent”. They should leave blood-stained weapons, articles and binding ropes in the quarter of the Regent and secret agents should proclaim, “the Regent is slaying and robbing the subjects” – they should set fire to royal palaces and city gates, to stores of articles and grains and kill the officers there, saying piteously that it has been done by the Regent. Anything sound familiar here?
While blaming of the Dec 13 attack on the Indian Parliament on Pakistan was dubious at best, accusing Pakistan for the attack on the American Center in Kolkata was outrageous. By now we are familiar with the pattern, and it is not surprising that most of the accusations emanate from L K Advani, India’s Home Minister. His life’s ambition seems to be to have Pakistan declared “a terrorist state”. There are those among the Indian hierarchy who know that the accusations have no basis, it is also not surprising that they are almost apologetic in supporting their Home Minister. They should be paying attention to the allegations under oath made against him by his own daughter-in-law, a person who was his “Special Assistant” for years before getting married to his son. Among other disclosures, she has also accused him of meticulously planning the destruction of the Babri Masjid. With respect to the recent incident, how come some “Farhan” from Dubai rang him up directly claiming responsibility, and can’t this be traced back? Moreover how is it that the attack seems to coincide with whenever any high official from the US or Europe is visiting India. Since the US President’s Special Envoy on Counter-terrorism and the FBI Director General were in India at that time, it was most convenient to have the terrorist attack during this period. It served to underscore India as “a full partner of the US as a major target of terrorism”. Or is it so? Are the US officials naive or gullible to fall for these recurring coincidences? US officials close to “ground zero” in Kolkata (and away in the US), quietly disassociated themselves from the thrust of Indian accusations, saying the attack did not seem to be directed against the US and that there was no real evidence of any involvement of Pakistani-sponsored terrorist groups.
For the record there are any number of disparate groups in or around Kolkata wanting to have a go at Indian security officials. For the record also, among the dozen or so active militant groups active against India in that area, only one, and that one also a criminal gang, is headed by a muslim. In Kolkata itself there are a number of kidnap/ransom gangs, it is a crime-infested city. After the fall of the communist regime in West Bengal, leftist groups have also been criminally active in the city and the State. For years Kolkata was also the happy hunting grounds for Naxalites, a four-decades old leftist militant movement quite active in murders and assassinations, not only in West Bengal but in Andhra Pradesh and other adjacent States like Behar and Orissa. For the Nepalese, Kolkata has long been its only staging port, the ideologues of its Maoist rebels were mostly educated here, maintaining second homes. Given that Colin Powell had offered aid to the Nepalese against the Maoist rebels, could they be also suspect? As the virtual capital of Eastern India, and its only port, Kolkata has vital interest for all the insurrections in the East of India fighting for independence, among them the Mizos fighting for Mizoram, the Nagas for Nagaland and the Manipuris for Manipur, the Bodos for Bodaland, all these being Baptist Christians. Among the Buddhist rebels are Gorkhas, while the Assamese are a mixed religious lot, being led in their revolt by the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). And why does Bangladesh have seven divisions plus to guard its frontiers when at maximum fighting strength Pakistan only had three divisions and a half in 1971? Is there any day in the 365 days of the year that Bangladeshis are not killed crossing the border by the Indian Border Security Forces (BSF)? Could it be that some disgruntled Bangladeshis decided to take a potshot at Indian security guards in the early morning hours between 6 and 7 when no US citizens were around? Four gunmen riding motorcycles killed 4 security guards and badly wounded 16 others before getting clean away, they were professionals.
Indeed one should be grateful that India made such a ridiculous spectacle of themselves by their public crying of wolf. Their tantrums will make some analysts take another look at the spate of their wild accusations. In fact by being patient and not reacting to Indian histrionics, Pakistan has done itself immense good. The contrast has exposed Indian accusations as being patently false and motivated.
Under the cover of these accusations India has proceeded to go berserk against the hapless civil population within Kashmir. During the past few weeks repression by Indian military and law enforcement agencies has exceeded all bounds. While during the time South Asia was not of much interest to the world they could keep it hidden under the carpet, now that the region is exposed to the international media, how long will they be able to keep this torture and rape, murder and arson hidden from prying eyes? The truth will be revealed for what it is. Time now is against any prolonged Indian cover-up. International media persons are professionals who are usually a hard-bitten cynical lot quite adept at separating fact from fiction. Pakistan should be professional in exposing the Indians for what they are doing, the Indians are involved in state terrorism of the worst kind, and against citizens whom they nominally call their own, they should hardly be the ones shedding crocodile tears. Foreign agencies and the domestic private sector media persons must be encouraged to ferret out the truth and bring it to the notice of their international colleagues.
Also this is as good a time as any for foreign powers to carry out their own investigations and put the truth before the world. With the expertise available to the west, this should not be difficult. In fact why not fully investigate the so-called ISI-Taliban connection now that all information should be in western hands and find out how much more it was than the CIA, KGB, MI-6, RAW, etc interference during the same period with their surrogates in Afghanistan such as the Northern Alliance? The Indians seem to have realized their over-kill and have been back-tracking furiously for the past 48 hours or so. This is a good opportunity to show up their patent lies to display before the world. For this we need media specialists who have the country’s interests at heart, not their own. Unfortunately some of our media persons combine inferiority complexes with their egos, this works against the national interest. We cannot afford individual Madonnas, even of the male-kind. They have to be politely disassociated from their personal motivations and shown what is the national mainstream. All this comes out of instilling self-confidence and patriotism, these have to overcome personal whims, likes and dislikes.
While Pakistan has been on the receiving end of tremendous adverse propaganda over the past few months because of our ill-conceived half-baked “sponsoring” of the Taliban, we have redeemed ourselves quite a bit in western eyes by our post-Sep 11 conduct. Things happened so fast that it completely overturned India’s post cold-war strategy to woo the US as a long term strategic partner, ostensibly to corner the Chinese, but actually to remove the last hurdle standing in its way to really become a regional superpower. While the war in Afghanistan waged by the US was at its height against the Taliban, India bided its time, making a couple of false starts when Blair and Colin Powell were in Pakistan to shore up the Coalition. Once the war in Afghanistan wound down, India brought its full attention to bear on Pakistan and for good measure has brought South Asia to the very brink of nuclear holocaust. While we have to keep our powder dry and not be lulled into a false sense of complacency, this is an opportunity given by Providence to make good use of India’s overkill.
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