Munir has sowed the wind and will see the institution he heads begin to crumble after the response by PM Modi
NEW DELHI: Pakistan, Asim Munir, gambled in the Pathankot attack on the myth fostered by the Pakistan military. Which is that Bharat is a nation of cowards who supinely agreed to Partition in 1947, when the reality was that the British were in no position to hold on to the British Indian Empire. The reason was the military, which was showing increasing signs of disaffection towards a continuation of British rule over an ancient land. A situation was coming in which the regular army would go the way of the Indian National Army (INA) launched by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. And after the exhaustion of having fought and won, substantially with the help of Indian troops, World War II, Britain was in no condition to quell an 1857 mutiny on a much larger scale. The British Army was not even 400,000 in number, and the public was exhausted by the war, which is why during wartime itself, of course when it was clear that Hitler and his forces were defeated, voters in Britain chose Labour led by Clement Attlee over the Conservatives led by the formidable wartime Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill. It was a shock to the world, as the US lost to the ages President Franklin Delalo Roosevelt, who was succeeded by Vice-President of the US Harry S Truman.
When Prime Minister Modi replaced the original lion carvings on the Ashoka symbol with a far more ferocious version of the King of the Forests, it was mocked by some of the habitual mockers of PM. Modi. What they did not realize then, but soon will do now, was that the Prime Minister was not acting in a purely symbolic way but in earnest. Bharat was not essentially a pacifist nation in the way Emperor Ashoka became during the closing stages of his reign. Bharatiyas were brave, they were fighters, and it was the intention of the Prime Minister to showcase that to the world through the changes in the lion figurine of the National Symbol. What Bharat is looking for, at least for the present, is not the re-incorporation of Pakistan but is going to become separated into different states, such as those with a Pashtun majority and a Baloch majority. The Pakistan army is not the protector of Pakistan as it claims but its oppressor. The army is draining away the best lands and resources of Pakistan, enriching an officer corps and steadily demoralising the soldiers. Liberation movements have come up spontaneously as a consequence of such exploitation, and not because they were sponsored by Bharat. Thus far, South Block has assiduously refrained from publicly backing the accelerating struggle for freedom conducted by the Pashtun, Sindhi and Baloch people, in seeking to gain the independence that was denied to them in 1947 not just by the British but by the pacifist spirit of the leaders of the Government of India at the time. Such silence may be on the way to becoming a relic of the past. From the beginning, the two nation theory was based on the false premise of Hindus and Muslims being different nations, a premise that was accepted without a battle for retaining unity by the leadership of the country at the time. Indeed, in the 1971 war that liberated BanglaDesh, Muslims in the Indian armed forces played an important part, as did Sikhs Christians and Jews, a community that unfortunately has shrunk in number because of migration to the US and Israel since that time.
COAS Pakistan Asim Munir used the discredited Two Nation theory to justify the cowardly terror attack on civilian tourists in Pahalgam, believing in the myth created by the Pakistan army that Hindus in particular were a cowardly people, constantly cowed and unwilling to retaliate to attacks against them. His owb Corps Commanders were resistant to provoking India by the scale of the Pahalgam attack, although they may not issue ritual statements of support for General Munir. Indeed, the tactical line is to blame on the Hindus, in the way the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack was sought to be portrayed as an act of another falsehood, that of “Hindu terror”. The campute of Ajmal Kasab by the bravery of police officer Tukaram Omble punctured that falsehood. The terrorists were each wearing Hindu religious symbols in the belief by GHQ Rawalpindi that they would be killed beyond recognition, although the symbols would survive as “evidence” of a falsehood.
It is clear from his public comments that Prime Minister Modi has had enough of such infliction of a “thousand cuts” on Bharat by GHQ Rawalpindi. That he is determined to put an end to such needling of a people proud of their civilisation and eager to defend the nation. The response to Pahalgam will be such as will put on an accelerating track the ongoing disintegration of Pakistan. Having championed “self determination” for so long in Kashmir, and having disregarded the principle when the people of Kashmir voted overwhelmingly in the polls in the state, a right that the oppressed people in PoJK have yet to secure, but will soon win. World opinion has crystallised in favour of India, with even the Chinese state keeping silent in the face of the forceful statements of Prime Minister Modi about the right of retaliation of the people of Bharat. COAS Pakistan Asim Munir has sowed the wind and will see the institution he heads begin to crumble after the response to the Pahalgam atrocity by PM Modi. Freedom from terror is the birthright of a people, and that is what PM Modi seeks for the people of the country he leads. The attack is an act of war, and that is what COAS Pakistan has conjured up as a consequence of his greenlighting of the Pahalgam terror attack.
