July 25, 2019
Thus Spake Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
By Syed Rifaquat Ali
Talking to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, at the Oval Office in White House on July 22, the US President Donald Trump, said: the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, said to me during the G-20 summit held in the International Exhibition Centre in Osaka, Japan, on June 28-29, " would you like to act as mediator or arbitrator? I said, where? Modi said: Kashmir.
This created a furore in the Lok Sabha in India.
The Congress Party in opposition demanded a clarification on this count. The Indian foreign minister, S.Jaishankar, clarified that Narendra Modi had never talked to the US President in Osaka on Kashmir issue.
But the political parties, including Congress Party, could not be pacified and demanded that Modi should himself clarify in the House, since it was a matter between Trump and Modi.
Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi said that the Kashmir issue is a bilateral problem, no third party mediation is acceptable to India, and Prime Minister Modi must clarify his position: whether he has asked Trump to mediate or not. If not, then the US President is speaking a lie.
Inexplicably, Modi is shying away from the Lok Sabha to set the record straight. Why? Because, if he says he had said no such thing to Trump in Osska, then it will mean that Trump is not speaking the truth. In other words, Trump is lying.
And Modi does not want to have a direct confrontation with Trump with whom he is unctuous. India does not want to antagonize America in context of her soured relations with Pakistan.
But Modi forgets that in diplomatic relations, there is nothing like permanent friendship. Memory is short and politicians tend to forget the past.
In the past, there was a strong slogan of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai. And today, India and China are at loggerheads over Doklam.
The Indian political leaders are a confused lot and therefore no solution to Kashmir problem is in sight. On the one hand, the Indian leaders assert that India will not part away with even an inch of land in Kashmir, and on the other hand, India is in favour of bilateral talks on the subject.
Is it not self-contradictory? The only peaceful resolution is referendum in Kashmir. We should not forget: Vox populi, Vox dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God.
For how long you can suppress the voice and soul of people. India has no coherent foreign policy and both India and Pakistan are fiddling with the Kashmir issue for the last seventy years.
Both the poor countries keep strengthening their military might at the expense of the common man which is pyrrhic so to say.
Syed Rifaquat Ali is Sydney-based journalist.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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