Threat by Indian PM

By

Inam Khawaja

The Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh stated on 4, December 2013; “There is no scope of Pakistan winning any such war in my lifetime,” he told reporters in New Delhi, reported Press Trust of India. This statement was in response to Nawaz Sharif’s statement “Kashmir is a flashpoint and can trigger a fourth war between the two nuclear powers at anytime.”

Nawaz Sharif was only pointing out the facts. No one can deny that Kashmir dispute is not a flashpoint nor can one ignore the horrors of a nuclear war. In fact he has always been in favour of peace and improving relations with India; immediately after winning the elections in May he invited Manmohan Singh but was rebuffed.

The history of negotiations between these two neighbours from 1947 to date clearly shows that they have been unable to improve the relations and solve any of the problems souring their relations. The basic impediment is the fact that the successive generations of Indians do not accept an independent Pakistan and continue to strive for “Akhand Bharat”. They don’t seem to tire of saying; “We are one”, “We have a common culture” and so on, totally ignoring the fact that Muslim literature, music, art, architecture, dress and cuisine are poles apart and has nothing in common with the Hindu literature (even the scripts are totally different) art, architecture, dress and cuisine are totally different even the method of serving food is different.

The Indian media continues to harp upon the same old theme. The fact is that the Indian leaders even after sixty six years consider the establishment of Pakistan a great tragedy. Jaswant Singh in his book states;

“There are some other to my mind, equally important aspects of this great tragedy of India’s Partition deserving our reflection. Did not this Partition of India, vivisecting the land and its people question the very identity of India itself.” (Page 6 & 7, Jinnah India-Partition Independence by Jaswant Singh, 2009)

For Jaswant Singh and almost all Indians even today the partition of British India was a mistake and a great tragedy. In fact the real tragedy is that Indians cannot seem to get out of this mindset of “Akhand Bharat”.

 In December 2001 India mobilized bulk of their forces on Pakistan’s borders in Punjab, Rajasthan and Indian occupied Kashmir. After ten months of eye ball to eye ball confrontation Indians withdrew realising the danger of it developing in a nuclear war. As a result of the failure of this massive confrontation the Indian Army developed the Cold Start Doctrine and officially unveiled it on 28, April 2004 at the Army Commander’s Conference. Since then Indians have held over a dozen exercises to operationally debugthe doctrine. It may be noted that the Cold Start Doctrine is Pakistan specific.

In 2011the head quarters of their Strike Force and Rapid Force were shifted from Central India to Punjab a requirement of Cold Start Doctrine. Today over seventy percent of Indian Army and Air Force are mobilised against Pakistan.

Once again Pakistan has suggested the demilitarisation of Siachin. The effect of the military occupation of Siachin is having a very grave climatic effect on the glacier. It needs to be remembered that in 1984 India moved their forces in Siachin which until that time was unoccupied and in pristine condition. The majority of people in Pakistan are in favour of peace and demilitarisation of Siachin. We call upon the peace lovers and environmentalists in India to take up the cause of peace and saving the Siachin Glacier from the detrimental effect of military occupation.

December 6, 2013