Dealing With Pakistan

India Has Been Able to Admirably Achieve Its Objectives on the International Front and Isolate Pakistan. It Is Now Time to Show the Same Deftness, Agility and Unity of Purpose and Intention on the Domestic Front.

- Ashok Sajjanhar

THE MOST FORMIDABLE challenge confronting Pakistan since its birth 70 years ago is its failure to carve out an identity for itself. It has hence tried to define itself in being anti- Indian in most respects. To project itself in a positive light, it has done its best to weaken India politically and economically and tried all means to bring its stature down in the international reckoning.

The urge to undercut India became more pronounced after the severe drubbing it received in December 1971 with the dismemberment of its territory and the ignominy of the surrender of 93,000 of its soldiers to India in Dhaka in East Bengal/ Bangladesh. Since then, it has been plotting, directly and indirectly through its agents, to sow discord and violence in different parts of India, starting with Punjab in the 1980s and thereafter moving on to focus full time on Kashmir from 1989 onwards. Envy and dismay at India’s growing strength and global clout has further aggravated passions and exacerbated resentment of Pakistan’s army and spy agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to create obstacles in the path of India’s economic rise and peaceful development.

While Pakistan has always looked upon India with hostility and as an enemy state, India has been ambivalent on how to conduct its relations with this inimical neighbour. The reason for this lack of clarity is that India desires peaceful and cordial relations with Pakistan. India, under successive governments, even when Pakistan was extending covert and overt backing to militants and terrorists under the euphemistic garb of diplomatic, political and moral support to so-called “Kashmiri freedom fighters”, has tried to maintain normal bilateral relations with its western neighbour.

With the Surgical Strikes, India Has Announced to the World That India Will Do What It Takes to Protect Its Security and Lives and Property of Its Citizens.