Talks with whom, Dr Farooq?

One wonders with whom Dr Abdullah wants to hold talks?  Is it with Pakistan’s outgoing coalition government headed by interim Prime Minister Anwaar ul-Haq Kakar or that country-trained terrorist groups (any particular one he prefers to suggest) or their sponsor, the Inter-State Intelligence (ISI), the intelligence wing of the most discredited Pakistan army?

Dr Abdullah,  due to his advanced age, appears to have become senile. One may wish to recall his son, Omar Abdullah, as a Union minister in the then AB Vajpayee-headed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government used to shout from rooftops that ‘Bharat Pakistan ko katham kardethi hai, if it wants’. Such reactions used to come from him whenever the Indian jawans or civilians were killed in cross-border terrorism. Whether he picked up the courage to raise it in the cabinet meetings, no one knows. However, he stopped his bold rhetorics against Pakistan, no sooner the NDA government collapsed and he yet again became the J&K Chief Minister. Ever since they returned to the state politics, the father and son duo, besides another ‘looter’ family of Indian resources with the special status granted to the state under Articles 350 and 35A, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s and those who were on the payrolls of the international terror groups, started to advocate peace talks with Pakistan. How these rogues also used to get considerable support from Pakistan Ambassador in India, from time to time, was well known.

However, all their lucrative political shops were shut, no sooner Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  along with its NDA partners assumed power at the Centre for the first time with a massive mandate in 2014. As per its election promise, the Union Cabinet abrogated J&K’s spcial status. Till then the Opposition, led by the age-old  Congress party, warned the Modi government of blood shed if such a decision was taken. To their surprise, Home Minister Amit Shah’s move was as meticulous as that of India’s first Home Minister Sardar Patel, the iron man, while annexing several princely states, especially Hyderabad under Nizam 7, Osman Ali. Shah ensured not a drop of blood was shed following the abrogation of Articles 350 and 35A announcement. Within no time, even peace was restored, and the usual stone pelting at security forces became a thing of the past. One could see, how New Delhi responded to the 2019 Pulwama suicide bomb attack in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed with the most effective Balakot strikes, destroying the terror headquarters deep inside Pakistan, or given a bloody nose to  intruding Chinese forces by the Indian army in Ladakh and later in Arunachal Pradesh. Such punitive actions were unheard of by the earlier New Delhi dispensations. Modi, by his deft moves,  ensured Pakistan’s economic downfall. Not only that.  He, along with veteran diplomat-turned-politician and present External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar,  also separated  China from the comity of nations with the new foreign policy. This has neutralized the most aggressive and expansionist China, which was dreaming of becoming a super power by overtaking the US by unleashing the biological warfare in the form of the most dreaded Covid-19 and destroying  several developed economies.

However, a shrewd and strong leader like Modi managed to help his country not only to overcome the pandemic but also developed in such a short span of time  half a dozen vaccines and helped as many as 84 countries. Modi government had also succeeded in making India strong economically and militarily, by acquiring advanced fighter jets and other armoury from France, Russia and the US, to send shivers down the spines of both the enemy neighbours. Can the peaceniks like Abdullahs or Saifuddin Soz of Congress give us the breakthroughs achieved through the earlier peace talks initiated by India? Have they forgotten the rogue Pakistan’s  Kargil misadventure soon after the two countries’ prime ministerial level talks in New Delhi? The Modi government must  push all the peaceniks behind bars for suggesting such anti-national statements of holding bilateral talks, which will provide a ‘fire cover’ and help a Cobra-like Pakistan to spread its hood in the centre-stage of global politics. That too when India is preparing to repossess the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, handed over by first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru soon after the independence when the war broke out in the midst of the partition process.