By Sushil Kutty
‘India that is Bharat’ has never been more ‘Hindu’ than at this point in time. The signs of the elusive ‘Hindu Rashtra’ are showing, starting with the India-Pakistan ‘Mahabharata’ in the offing. The war will be fought on Hindu-Muslim lines and is the direct fallout of an anti-Hindu diatribe of the Chief of Army Staff of an Islamic Republic.
Ballistic and cruise missiles to take part tell the story: Ghazni and Ghouri against ‘Agni’ and ‘Prithvi’! The “war of words” is in full-flow, marked by clear-cut Hindu-Muslim rhetoric. Ground action has not yet started but the ‘Water War’ has begun.
The Government of India is blocking Pakistani YouTubers making dollars out of India-related content, featuring eternal enemies finding solace in each other. The honey traps and the honey-trapped, a ‘Love Jihad’ is being played on the margins of the standoff.
Among the hundreds of Pakistani YouTubers the names of Arzoo Kazmi, Shoaib Chaudhary, Ribaha Imran, Anam Sheik, Nimra, Sana Ahmed, ‘Naila-Shaila’… all of them blocked and all of them with a direct line to Pakistani spy agency ISI and the Pak Army publicity apparatus ‘DG-ISPR’.
The Modi government on April 28 “banned/blocked” a slew of Pakistani YouTube handles. Several escaped the dragnet but not for long. On April 29 more channels were blocked and this time, lots and lots of ‘X’ handles, too. Arzoo Kazmi was blocked with Geo TV, Dunya TV, Samaa TV, Bol TV, the creme de la creme – the uppercrust!
Top Pakistani journalists, Nazam Sethi and Hamid Mir were also blocked. And “intellectual on hire” Hassan Nisar, who like Arzoo Kazmi thrives on “red herrings”, his brand of India-hate couched in hyperbole and heavy intellect-lifting. Many of the Pakistani YouTubers didn’t figure in the first list released by India’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.
To get around the block, Indian YouTubers friendly with Pakistani YouTubers “invited” the blocked Pakistani YouTubers to their shows! Late evening, Kazmi was defending herself on friendly Indian YouTube channels. So much for the blockade!
Like somebody complained, “there’s too much democracy in India” and Pahalgam is a godsend chance to set things right! The Indian State is alive to this interpretation and its thinking and actions are skewed in that direction.
The most startling example of a Pahalgam impact is the discernable silence in the ‘Muslim Quarter’. Shell-shocked Indian Muslims were stunned into inaction as scenes of ‘Pahalgam’ enacted in the “meadow” hit the nation. The deliberate identification and the spontaneous execution!
Indian Muslims may have their dark elements and darker moments, but not in the manner of “Pahalgam.” Indian Muslims are yet to find their voices post the Pahalgam trauma. Only now, after AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi and J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah spoke out, have Indian Muslims started believing in themselves again.
Former J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah also spoke up. Truely, a lot of water has flown down the Jhelum since the ‘KP-exodus’ of 1989-90.
Pahalgam shouldn’t have happened and asking questions of why it happened and how it happened and who allowed it to happen are valid questions, but for certain politicians to ask for proof of targeted Hindu killings is taking democracy a bit too far. The Congress should take its “national party” status seriously.
The Congress should also know that one Pahalgam does not lead to Muslim votes’ consolidation. On the contrary, Pahalgam consolidated ‘Hindu votes’ like never before. Pahalgam is an inflexion point for politics in India as much as it is for Pakistan in the context of the subcontinent going forward.
Pahalgam’s Hindu thrust is showing. It laid bare the concealed fact that “India that is Bharat” has been slowly but surely, inexorably, building the foundation for a Hindu Rashtra. The targeted killings of Hindus and the Modi government’s actions since leaves nothing to the imagination.
The Modi regime has sworn “unimaginable consequences” for the carnage against the “Hindu” by a Muslim country. Gen. Asim Munir deliberately differentiated between “Hindu India” and “Muslim Pakistan” – and asserted that the twain shall never meet! Gen. Munir couldn’t have spoken sooner for the “Hindu nationalist” Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP and the RSS will milk the most out of Munir’s faux paz. Gen. Munir’s “maulvi background” and his insistence that the “two-nation theory” is the sole reason for Pakistan’s existence has sealed the argument in favour of a country with all the discernable characteristics of a Hindu nation.
It will be very-very hard to unseat the BJP from the Centre if the Modi government keeps escalating Hindutva actions. The current drive against Indian Muslim wives of Pakistani men is proof. Pakistani women living in Kashmir with their Kashmiri husbands are being asked to take themselves off. Knocking down “homes” of alleged Kashmiri terrorists is another instance of the Hindutva card.
The State is suddenly, after Pahalgam, very, very strict on laws targeting immigration and migrants and those have never been used against “Muslims” before. And the ruthlessness with which they’re being implemented has to be seen to be believed. “Let us stay or send in body bags,” one Pakistani wife of a Kashmiri Muslim asked.
It is the same with Muslim wives of Pakistani men they married during the time of India-Pakistan bonhomie. These Muslim women with Indian passports had to send off their children carrying Pakistani passports.
Police are hunting for “Pakistanis living in India”, in state after state. “I have three children. They have told me to leave my youngest daughter here. She is little, how can I leave her here?” a Pakistani wife of an Indian man asked. “How can I leave my husband here. I have built a house here. We came here because of the government’s policy. What have we done? What is our fault in this?”
The long and short is, India is no longer the playing field for the secular. The Congress had to backtrack within 24 hours with a “not our views” defence following the anti-Hindu comments made by some Congress leaders who didn’t want to read the signs post-Pahalgam.
The Hindutva heart is stone-cold. There are 12 categories of visas governing Pakistanis – visa on arrival, business, film, journalist, transit, conference, mountaineering, student, visitor, group tourist, pilgrim, group pilgrim and medical. All of them will face legal action under the newly enacted Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, if violated. Looks like after Pahalgam, India is no country for Gen. Munir-type Muslims. (IPA Service)
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