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Indian contrivance When will Islamabad wake up to the crafty Indian contrivance, and instead of crying for resumption of stalled composite dialogue, see through the Indian cunningness and its artful game plan? The instant case in point is foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s meeting with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna in Trieste, Italy, on the G-8 ministerial meeting’s sidelines. As usual, the Islamabad establishment was out, giving a positive spin to the rendezvous, tending to show it up as a path-breaker for wide-ranging talks between the two countries’ foreign secretaries next month. And as usual, the Indians were arrogant, hubristic and rude, making it abundantly clear that the two diplomats’ confabulations were to be no such thing. Their talks, they stressed, would enable New Delhi “to take stock of where we stand on the issue of terrorism and the fulfillment by Pakistan of its assurance that its territory would not be used for terrorist attacks on India”. The meaning is all too clear. The two foreign secretaries’ meeting will have only a one-point agenda, with the Indian subjecting the Pakistani to interrogation, asking him questions and demanding answers. Why indeed is the Islamabad establishment so hell-bent on deluding itself and deceiving our people with deceptive glosses, keeping them in the dark even on matters that are very much in the Indian public’s knowledge for the Indian official hierarchy’s openness and frankness with it? Just recently, Krishna told a mass-circulation Indian journal that New Delhi had made clear to Islamabad that India would begin talking to Pakistan only after it took credible action against terror infrastructure. Pakistan, he said, “understands what that credible action is”. “We have given them evidence about the training camps and infrastructure to be dismantled”, he said. Yet the Islamabad establishment has never spoken of this specific conditionality that the Indians have put for resuming the composite dialogue. Curiously, as the Indian officialdom is open and forthcoming, though calculatedly, to its people, Pakistan’s is only inexorably secretive and closed to its people. And while the Indian officialdom is talking to its people, it indeed is also talking to the world audience to its immense advantage. And while keeping the things close to its own chest, the Pakistani officialdom is not just keeping its own people uninformed and ignorant but also the peoples of the world to its great disadvantage. The Indian voice is heard worldwide, with reach dividends in sympathetic world public opinion. The Pakistani officialdom’s reticence goes only to help paint Pakistan as a sinner and India as the one sinned against in the world’s eye. Indeed, there is a strange kind of queerness with the very act of the Islamabad hierarchy from top to bottom. Even as India is keeping deployed almost 80 per cent of its military might against Pakistan, yet President of Pakistan, Asif Zardari, says he doesn’t feel “my country” is facing any military threat from India. And as the Indians are still propagating unrelentingly that ISI was involved in Bangladeshi border paramilitary’s revolt against Sheikh Hasina’s government, the ISI is just keeping mum. It is even letting go uncontested two former Bangladeshi spymasters’ accusation against it of clandestinely supplying weapons to an Indian northeastern insurgent group through Bangladesh, thereby allowing the charge to stick. And strangely enough, this hierarchy is at best only mews and barks not ever over the bustling shop that India has set up in Afghanistan to incite militancy and insurgencies in Pakistan. It indeed has not even tried busting the Indian contrivance of innocence and piety. Presently, as the Indian ruling political leadership and its subordinate officialdom are going to town yelling they have adopted zero tolerance as state policy, none in Islamabad is asking why has this intolerance not extended to the serving Indian military intelligence officer implicated in the Samjhota Express bomb blast that killed and maimed mostly the Pakistani passengers. Nor is anyone asking why this military officer’s mentor, himself a retired army colonel, still keeps roaming free despite being caught red-handed having trained Maharashtrian youths for terrorism in Pakistan. It is high time that the Islamabad hierarchy instead of wasting its breath on calling for dialogue’s resumption must focus on puncturing this Indian ruse of terrorism, which it is plying so hurtfully against Pakistan. It must understand the Indians are presently in no mind to talk to Pakistan. Their intent is to pillory and castigate Pakistan on the terrorism’s ruse and put it on the mat. And if someone in Islamabad is living in his own make-believe world that its persistent calls for dialogue will mobilise the world pressure on India to resume it, he better disabuse himself of this delusion, the sooner the better. Nobody will go out of the way, not even Americans, to pressurise India to that end. For the world community, India is far too attractive for multifarious reasons, including lucrative business and commerce opportunities and huge defence deals it has on offer, to annoy for Pakistan’s sake. But if the Islamabad hierarchy doesn’t shred apart the Indian contrivance of terrorism now, India will surely come marching on fast nearer to its long-cherished goal of having Pakistan declared a terrorism-sponsoring state.
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