Could it be because Donald Trump decided that he would rather be friends with Pakistan than India? Or because he decided that there was no difference between India’s democratically elected prime minister and a military dictator who is sometimes called General Jihad? This jihadi is someone with whom Trump has broken bread more often in recent months than he has with his ‘good friend’ Modi? Whatever the reason. Pakistan’s politicians, sportsmen and sundry other citizens have suddenly become so emboldened that they believe India needs lectures on democratic values. What annoyed me enough to write the piece you are about to read was a clip I saw from an interview with Pakistan’s former foreign minister (Hina Khar of the big Hermes bag) in which she praised ‘our forefathers’ for having built a nuclear bomb.
Having said after Operation Sindoor that India had ‘gone rogue’, she said in this new clip that she used to be a liberal and believed that Pakistan should not be wasting money on building a bomb when there were urgent other things to do. But now that ‘we have seen what India can do’, she has changed her mind. Similar sentiments have been expressed by some of my Pakistani friends, who equate Hindutva with Nazism and Narendra Modi with Benjamin Netanyahu. They speak nostalgically about the days when India was ‘secular’ and liberal. The comparison with Netanyahu is obnoxious. And India has remained secular despite Hindutva, but this is something that is clearly not visible from the Islamist Republic next door.
What is puzzling is why, if India was such a shining land of secularism and democracy before Modi came along, did the leaders of Pakistan never show their respect then? If they respected India so much, why did they send terrorists to massacre innocent people in the restaurants, hotels and railway stations of Mumbai. If they respected India so much in those times, why did they send a constant relay of jihadi murderers into the Kashmir Valley? Why did they try to blow up Parliament House? Why did IC 814 get hijacked?
So what is it that they hate so much about what Narendra Modi likes to call ‘new India’? What is it that inspires ordinary Pakistanis to dare suggest that what happened in Pahalgam was a ‘false flag operation’? It is not a term I was familiar with, so let me explain that what this means is that there was no terrorist attack, it was just something India’s ‘deep state’ did to find an excuse to attack Pakistan. It is an outrageous suggestion but for people who have grown up haunted by their ‘deep state’ it is easy to believe that India also has a deep state.
What I find truly mystifying and offensive is the suggestion that Pakistan can teach India about democracy. Have they forgotten that their most popular political leader has been rotting in jail for more than two years? Have they forgotten that another popular leader was executed after a show trial? Have they forgotten that their bonsai democracy is prevented from growing by military men who have contempt for any ideas that are remotely democratic and a hatred of India that seems to infect the very air they breathe?
There are many things wrong with India and there is no question that our democracy is flawed and sometimes fragile. But, not even in the distant future do we see signs that it could be replaced by a system of governance like that of Pakistan. Since Modi became prime minister there has been damage. One reason is the senseless targeting of Muslims. Especially when elections come around. Speaking of elections, it is worth mentioning that Rahul Gandhi seems to be very popular in Pakistan. This is because he so clearly shares the Pakistani view that India is no longer democratic. He held a press conference last week at which he declared (yet again) that democracy was dead. If it was, then he would have needed to be a lot more circumspect about his attacks on the Election Commission than he has been.
Personally, I have no idea what he was trying to say last week about voter fraud. On his platform, he introduced two people whom he said had used their cellphones to delete the names of voters who would have voted for Congress. This, he said, was done with the complicity of the Chief Election Commissioner. If you understand what this new plot is about, drop me a line.
Meanwhile, can we hope that other Indians do not subscribe to the ludicrous notion that India is no different to Pakistan. We are different. But what Modi needs to pay more attention to is why India’s image has taken such a beating since he became prime minister. Introspection is needed at the highest levels of the Bharatiya Janata Party because it could result in some acknowledgement that it is the unleashing of the worst kind of Hindutva warriors that could be the reason why this has happened.
Hindutva is not Nazism or Islamism. But it becomes a very ugly ideology in the hands of those obsessed with eradicating Muslims or at the very least making them feel like they are lesser citizens of India than Hindus. It is this that has made people in many countries nostalgic about that ‘old India’ when Hindus and Muslims both had the same rights.
