FAUJI INDIA - February 2020

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As the country celebrated its 71st Republic Day with yet another grand parade displaying it’s military and technological might, the challenges within and outside the country have become greater, with a host of issues that are drawing upon our diplomatic skills, which if not tackled deftly, will weaken India’s global standing. It is a combination of the criticism over the lockdown in J&K – which has its own merit – and Pakistan drawing the mileage it can from the US, just when New Delhi thought it was on a winning streak globally.

The lockdown in J&K and the NPR-NRC-CAA issue saw the government now coming under fire from even the international community – late last year a US Congressional committee held a hearing on alleged human rights violations in J&K, followed by the UK’s Labour Party’s resolution criticizing the action and lastly, the recent series of resolutions of various Members of European Parliament (MEP) on the CAA, calling it discriminatory and segregationist. This was followed by Pakistan escaping the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) ‘Blacklist’ – after being in the ‘Grey List’ – when it was found compliant on 14 of the 27 actions to curb terror funding and financing, aided by the softening of western positions on the country, and China’s long running effort to get it off the hook. This has significantly weakened India’s narrative against Pakistan’s support to non-state terror actors, and Islamabad’s clever diplomacy to avoid debilitating economic sanctions that come with Blacklisting.