The Diplomat should avoid becoming a platform of disinformation campaign against India

Claim

Writing an article in the Diplomat, Dr Muqtedar Khan who is a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware, in the US, said that in the past few months, prominent voices in India have declared the intention to take by force the region that India calls Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Pakistan calls Azad Kashmir (free Kashmir)

Counterclaim:

There should not be any doubt with regard to Jammu and Kashmir’s position. It became part of India following the signing of an instrument of accession between then king of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh and then Governor General of India, Mountbatten of Burma on October 27, 1947. Pakistan is an aggressor and took away by force parts of Jammu and Kashmir; India is determined to reclaim its land which Pakistan snatched away militarily.

On February 22, 1994, a resolution was unanimously passed in the Indian Parliament to reclaim the remaining parts of Kashmir such as Gilgit and Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The same was reiterated by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, while attending the ‘Shaurya Diwas’ celebrations in Srinagar on October 28, 2022 to commemorate the air-landed operations of the Indian Army at Budgam Airport in 1947, which ensured the first victory of Independent India.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said India aimed at implementing the parliamentary resolution of 1994. Undoubtedly, India wants to reclaim what belongs to it, territorially and Lt General Upendra Dwivedi, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Northern Command followed suit during his press conference on November 22. He said the Indian Army is prepared to carry out any order issued by the government to retrieve Pakistan occupied Kashmir. India has several times at several forums reiterated that PoK is an alienable part of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan should vacate it for peace and prosperity in the region.

Claim:

Modi’s silence on hate speech and calls for the genocide of Muslims indicates that he is okay with it. If he was not, why would he not say so? Don’t these hateful calls violate the values he preaches? Are they not anti-Indian and anti-national?

Counterclaim:

First of all, Dr Muqtedar Khan should come out of his narrow understanding of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has been from the day one in office in 2014, repeatedly stressed on the philosophy of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.’ He has never encouraged anti-Muslim feelings or kept silence when Muslims have been attacked. On May 17, 2016, while addressing the first World Sufi Forum, he praised Islam for its message of peace and harmony. Even he said none of Allah’s 99 names stands for violence. When some Muslim youths were attacked by cow vigilante group, Prime Minister Modi, expressing his anguish over the incident, on June 29, 2017, said: “No person in this nation has the right to take the law in his or her own hands.” As a Prime Minister, Modi has given prominence to action rather than words. In June, 2022, when the country was on the boil after Hindu tailor Kanhaiya Lal was brutally beheaded with a cleaver by two Muslim men in Udaipur in Rajasthan this year, the Prime Minister did not utter any word.

In the same month, 54-year-old chemist Umesh Prahladrao Kolhe was stabbed to death in Amravati in Maharashtra. In this killing, the prime accused was 32-year-old Irfan Khan. Besides, there are numerous incidents where Hindu boys or girls have been victims at the hands of their Muslim friends or neighbours. Yet, silence. But that does not mean the Prime Minister needs to speak every time some clashes around religious lines take place in India. Instead, it has been seen that those who speak about so-called Islamophobia or Muslim’s genocide in India are somewhere linked with a gang whose members are present everywhere in the world and sparing no time in defaming India and damaging its interests.

They launch misinformation and disinformation campaigns against India—all this with ulterior motives. They ignore the fact that religious co-existence is a core strength of India. Muslims are not denied their religious, social, educational, and constitutional rights in India, the way minorities in Pakistan encounter in their everyday life. Every year, hundreds of Hindu, Sikh, and Christian girls are abducted and forced to convert in Islam through marriages in Pakistan. Their religious places are desecrated and damaged, while properties owned by them are forcibly usurped by people belonging to Muslim community in Pakistan, yet selective silence by the international community. The 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation speaks against India on Jammu and Kashmir, but does it have a gall to speak against Pakistan for its heinous terrorist attacks in India. Pakistan-backed terrorists are responsible for the killing of more than 40,000 people in Jammu and Kashmir alone. But has Dr Muqtedar Khan ever spoken against it?