Pakistan on Saturday came down hard on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his tweet regarding partition of the Indian subcontinent, saying that no modern state is so much in contradiction with itself as the Indian state – the so-called ‘largest democracy’.Taking to Twitter, the Indian premier had announced that August 14 — the independence day of Pakistan — will be observed as ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’.”Partition’s pains can never be forgotten. Millions of our sisters and brothers were displaced and many lost their lives due to mindless hate and violence. In memory of the struggles and sacrifices of our people, 14th August will be observed as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day,” Modi wrote on his official handle.
While the violence of the partition is without question one of the blackest marks in Pakistan and India’s history, it did not start or end on August 14 or August 15. It began much earlier with communal violence that, unfortunately, still affects the region. Also unfortunate is the fact that Modi seems to have forgotten that his rise to the premiership was fueled in part by ‘mindless hate and violence’ in Gujarat that he helped stoke. In fact, his reelection was also thanks in part to the blind eye his government has turned to mindless hate and violence against religious minorities all over the country.
Modi in particular has come to validate the concerns of the men who would later become the leaders of the Pakistan movement — what would happen if a Hindu supremacist government came to power in a united India. His tenure has been a reign of terror for anyone who is not a high caste Hindu or a rich BJP donor. He has used media to portray himself as infallible — the reason his policies keep failing is ‘unpatriotic’ people, almost always minorities. Even in a global health crisis, he regularly makes time to malign about 15 per cent of India’s population and finds ways to blame them for the policy failures caused by the bigoted buffoons that have his ear.
Mr Modi’s statement also amounts to unnecessary provocation at a time when the regional situation, given the turmoil in Afghanistan, is exceedingly volatile. That said, after 74 years of ‘one step forward and two steps back’ — and even this was only possible when they were not engaged in outright war or quasi military conflict against each other — Pakistan and India need to work towards a better relationship. Instead, the Indian prime minister has opted for a grotesquely self-serving reference to history with a focus on his political interests by appealing to his Hindutva base and also by blaming the Nehruvian legacy of the Congress leadership whose forebears oversaw the events of 1947. The fact is that on this side of the border, nothing has done more to convince sceptics of the justification for India’s partition than the actions of the Modi government.
Shafaqna Pakistan
shafaqna.com.pk
