Declare India the Terrorist State

By Sajjad Shaukat

Since the US started global war against terrorism, after the 9/11 tragedy, various political experts have opined that terrorism comes in a variety of forms such as religious terrorism, secular terrorism, cross-border terrorism etc.

Bruce Hoffman, in his book ‘Inside Terrorism’ writes: “For the religious terrorist, violence is the foremost divine duty executed in direct response to some demand or imperative…the secular terrorist sense leads to a sanctioning of almost limitless violence against a virtually open-ended category of targets.”

State terrorism refers to terrorist acts by governmental agents or forces, which involves the use of state resources to achieve ideological or political goals as part of state’s foreign policy.

Judging in these terms, India has broken all the records of violence by applying terror-related tactics in relation to its internal and external policies, and its genesis is ideology of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism). In fact, Hinduvta agenda enabled BJP hardliner, Narendra Modi to get a land sliding triumph in the Indian elections 2014 and become the prime minister of India. During the election campaign, Hindu majority was mobilized on anti-Pakistan and ‘hate Muslim’ slogans. Hence, Modi regime is giving impetus to Hindu chauvinism.

Although New Delhi has been destabilizing all regional states through its well-planned and deliberated strategy, however, its major focus has always been towards Pakistan.

In this regard, Indian Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, while using the Hindi phrase “kante se kanta nikalna’ (removing a thorn with a thorn) assertively said, on May 23, this year, “We have to neutralise terrorists through terrorists only…why does my soldier have to do it…the issue could not be discussed beyond this…there are certain things that I obviously cannot discuss here.”

Showing grave concerns, Pakistan’s Foreign Office, prime Minister’s advisor on national security and foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and other political leaders remarked, “The Indian defence minister’s open statement has proved that India is sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan—and Indian secret agency RAW is playing this nefarious role—it is also against others in the region and beyond.”

In fact, Indian defence minister’s statement cannot be seen in isolation, it is part of inter-related developments against Pakistan, China and Afghanistan. In this respect, Indian External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj has recognized, on June 1, this year that India strongly opposes $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

In her reply, on June 2, Sartaj Aziz clarified that the CPEC project will bring stability in the whole region—even China has clearly stated that this project is not against any other country.

Meanwhile, apart from previous terror attacks, a new wave of RAW-arranged assaults is noteworthy. On May 13, 2015, 45 persons were killed, after gunmen brutally opened fire on a bus of the Ismaili community in Karachi. Ahmed Marwat, a spokesman for Jundullah which is the affiliated group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the bus attack. On April 11, gunmen killed 20 laborers at a dam construction site in the Turbat district of Baluchistan. On May 29, 20 people were killed when unknown militants opened fire at the kidnapped passengers in Mastung area of Balochistan—after abduction of two buses. New Delhi’s the main aim behind such terror-activities is to create hurdles in completion of the CPEC,

as Pakistan’s economic development irks its eyes. Besides other related projects, the establishment of CPEC between deep Gwadar seaport of Balochistan and the historic Silk Road city in western regions-Xinjiang of China will connect Gilgit-Baltistan through Khunjerab Pass.

Notably, RAW has well-established its network in Afghanistan, and with the tactical assistance of anti-Pakistan secret agencies, it is fully backing cross-border incursions including terror-activities in Balochistan province and other regions of Pakistan so as to destabilize the latter. It has continuously been assisting the Baloch anti-Pakistan groups like BLA, Jundullah and TTP including their affiliated outfits with logistic support—the militants kidnapped and killed many innocent people and the security personnel in the province and other areas of Pakistan through suicide attacks, bomb blasts, targeted killings and sectarian violence to create lawlessness in the country. They also abducted and killed many Chinese and Iranian nationals in Pakistan.

It is of particular attention, that Indian former Army Chief Gen. VK Singh openly admitted that during his tenure, he supervised special army unit, Tactical Support Division (TSD) on the instructions of the then defence minister to sponsor subversive in Pakistan, particularly Balochistan.

During the recent visit of the US Secretary of State John Kerry to New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Modi was humbled in the meeting when American team showed some hard evidence of TTP chief Mullah Fazalullah and RAW nexus in Afghanistan to influx terror in Pakistan.

It is worth-mentioning that unlike the Indian-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai, President Ashraf Ghani realized that Afghanistan and Pakistan are facing similar challenges of terrorism and will combat this threat collectively. During the visit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief General Raheel Sharif to Kabul, on May 18, this year, the two countries signed the security agreement—Pakistan’s ISI and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) to share intelligence and conduct coordinated operations against terrorists. Now, frequent visits of Pak-Afghan civil and military leaders to each other’s country also irritate New Delhi.

It is notable that theoretically, Indian Constitution safeguards the rights of minorities, but in practice, ideology of Hindutva prevails. Hindu politics and culture, dominated by the fundamentalist parties such as BJP, RSS VHP, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena including other extremist outfits have been propagating Hindutva. Provocative utterances of their extremist leaders and the BJP rulers have resulted into unending violence against the Muslims, Christians Sikhs, and Dalits, while creating war-like situation between Pakistan and India, as Indian unprovoked shelling across Line of Control and Working Boundary displays.

In this connection, destruction of the Babri Masjid (mosque) in 1992, massacre of 2500 Muslims in the in the BJP-ruled Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 and those of more than 2002 Muslims during the communal riots of 2008 in Uttar Pradesh—participation of Indian high officials and leaders of the VHP, BJP and Bajrang Dal in the incidents including attacks on churches might also be cited as instance. Similarly, under the BJP regime, forced conversions of Muslims and Christians into Hindus might also be noted as example.

On April 30, in its annual report 2015, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said, “Since the [last year’s] election, religious minority communities have been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to the ruling party BJP and numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by Hindu nationalist groups, such as RSS and VHP.”

It is mentionable that on January 20, 2013, Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and Home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde confessed the nexus between BJP and the RSS, disclosing that organized training camps run by these fundamentalist parties were promoting Hindu terrorism. They also disclosed that these parties were behind the Samjhauta Express, Meccca Masjid and Malegaon blasts including Gujarat and Babri Masjid incidents. Earlier, New Delhi was accusing Pakistan’s primary intelligence agency, ISI for blasts in Malegaon and other cities.

While, on July 19, 2013, the Indian former home ministry and ex-investigating officer Satish Verma revealed that terror-attacks in Mumbai in November 26, 2008 and assault on Indian Parliament in January 12, 2001 were carried out by the Indian government to strengthen anti-terrorism laws. But, Indian top officials and media had blamed Islamabad and a Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for those attacks.

In the recent past, Indian agencies orchestrated a boat drama to defame Pakistan, allegedly reporting that a Pakistani fishing boat as a Pakistan-based outfit LeT was intercepted by Indian Coast Guards, off the coast of Porebandar, Gujarat. And Indian Coast Guard crew set the boat on fire and it exploded. But, its reality exposed Indian terrorism, because, some Indian high officials admitted that there was no such boat which came from Pakistan.

As regards Hindutva terror, besides other brutal tactics, it is also employed in the occupied Kashmir. In this context, various human rights groups have reported thousands of unmarked mass graves in the Indian controlled Kashmir. Especially, in August, 2011, Indian Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) officially acknowledged in its report that innocent civilians killed in the two-decade conflict have been buried in unmarked graves. Notably, foreign sources have said that unnamed graves include those innocent persons, killed by the Indian military and para-military troops in the fake encounters including those who were tortured to death by RAW.

Nonetheless, India is also manipulating the so-called statement of the ISIL or ISIS which said on May 23 that it can buy nuclear device from Pakistan within a year. Most alarming point is that RAW can itself supply nuclear bomb to this militant group to use against America, Israel or any western country so as to cause World War 111 in wake of global war against terrorism.

We can conclude that it is the right hour that the US-led western countries must declare India the terrorist state, as it is carving out a disastrous strategy, and it would never help in rooting out terrorism which is an international issue, threatening all states.

Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

Email: sajjad_logic@yahoo.com