#Fascist India 🇮🇳

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Suspected Chinese Spy Pigeon Freed By Fascist India

The Bird was Detained last May after Being Discovered with a Suspicious Message Inscribed on its Wings

Detained pigeon released, after getting clearance from Police department at BSPCA, on January 30, 2024 in Mumbai, India © Getty Images/Anshuman Poyrekar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

A pigeon suspected of conducting espionage operations on behalf of the People’s Republic of China has been released by Indian officials after eight months of detention following an intervention by PETA, the animal rights group has said.

The bird was detained last May close to a port in Mumbai after it was discovered wearing two rings on its legs, with words that appeared to be Chinese inscribed on its wings, prompting concerns about its possible involvement in espionage.

Eventually, though, it was determined that the pigeon had no nefarious intentions towards the Indian state and was in fact an open-water racing bird from Taiwan that had escaped and made its way to the subcontinent.

The pigeon – who had apparently been deemed a flight risk – was held at an animal hospital before its transfer last week to the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, whose staff set it free on Tuesday.

“After learning that a pigeon was held at the Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals (BSDPHA) in Parel as case property for an astonishing eight months, PETA India sprang into action to secure the bird’s freedom from captivity,” the animal rights organization said in a statement on its website.

Paranoia, Global Times, February 04, 2024, Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

Following PETA’s intervention, Mumbai police approved the release of the wrongfully accused avian.

The pigeon’s eight-month ordeal is not the first instance of a bird being suspected of ‘fowl’ play in India. In 2020, police in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir freed a bird that was also suspected of spying after it flew across the heavily militarized border separating India and Pakistan.

In 2016, another pigeon was detained in India after it was reportedly found carrying a note containing a threat to the World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Hindu Extremist, Butcher of Gujrat and Fascist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Historically, pigeons have been used in spying operations – including by the UK during both World Wars – to deliver messages. Famously, a bird named Gustav ferried the first news of the D-Day landings back to the UK after details were attached to the winged messenger on Sword Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Last year, scientists in the US state of New Mexico began working on a project in which they intended to repurpose dead, taxidermied birds into drones in order to better understand the habits of flocks of birds on flights.

The research, which was presented last year at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, could also be harnessed to enable espionage directed at military targets, reports said.

— RT | February 04, 2024

[septemberkisses]

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I'm disappointed to find out that you are a person who sends hate on anon and presumes who I am or who I am not based on some post(s). Mind your own business. Happy Republic Day ❤️🇮🇳

[longmangill]

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Kashmir, Five Years On

Fascist, Hindu Extremist, The Butcher of Gujrat And The World’s Most Wanted Criminal Modi’s Iron-Fisted Approach To The Disputed Region Has Left It More Vulnerable To Local And Geopolitical Threats.

— By Anuradha Bhasin | September 19, 2024

Indian security personnel patrol along a street in Srinagar, in Jammu and Kashmir, on August 15, 2024. Tauseef Mustafa/AFP Via Getty Images

Five years since The Fascist, Hindu Extremist, The Butcher of Gujrat and The World’s Most Wanted Criminal Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomous status, the central government’s iron-fisted approach to the region has left it more vulnerable to regional and geopolitical threats.

While Kashmir Valley, which has withstood the brunt of armed insurgency since 1989, continues to simmer with militancy-related violence, the theater of terrorism has now extended into the otherwise peaceful province of Jammu. Since 2019, at least 262 soldiers and 171 civilians have died in more than 690 incidents, including the February 2019 Pulwama terrorist attack. The unsustainable and disproportionate loss of lives underscores the risks to both regional stability and India’s national security.

In 2019, the Modi government revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which granted the state of Jammu and Kashmir its special status, annihilating the contested region’s symbolic autonomy. Concurrently, the central government also imposed an indefinite curfew in the region and used internet shutdowns and arrests to control and suppress the local population. The result was a transformed landscape. Already scarred by militarization, Kashmir became enmeshed in barbed wire.

This undemocratic exercise, though later stamped and endorsed by India’s Supreme Court, has since spurred further legal changes. For example, the local population no longer has access to exclusive protections that previously allowed only permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir to apply for government jobs and buy property in the state.

In March 2020, the government repealed 12 and amended 14 land-related laws, introducing a clause that paved the way for a development authority to confiscate land and another that allowed high-ranking army officials to declare a local area as strategically important.

Local residents are appalled at the ease with which government agencies can now seize both residential and agricultural lands in the name of development and security—enabling mass evictions and the bulldozing of houses that are disproportionately affecting Muslim communities and small landowners.

Meanwhile, the ecological fallout from introducing massive road and railway networks, coupled with the addition of mega hydroelectricity projects, is polluting riverbeds and causing villages to sink. Since 2019, there has been a lack of local representation which could act as a buffer against massive development projects, most of which now fall under New Delhi’s governance. Meanwhile, the region’s unemployment rate, as of 2023, remains high at above 18 percent, as compared to the national average of 8 percent.

Over the last few years, the Modi government has also squashed dissent in the region by redirecting the military to maintain surveillance and control of the civilian population. According to the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir, over 2,700 people were arrested in the region between 2020 and 2023 under India’s contentious Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Public Safety Act. Those arrested include journalists like Fahad Shah and Sajad Gul, human rights defenders like Khurram Pervez, and prominent lawyers like Mian Qayoom and Nazir Ronga.

Modi’s repressive policies have deepened the trust deficit between Kashmiris and the Indian government. The top-down administration has further sidelined local bureaucrats and police officers, further widening the gap between the central government and local ground realities.

All of this has not only pushed the local population into distress, but also jeopardized India’s already fragile relations with its two nuclear neighbors, Pakistan and China.

The Kashmir Conflict, rooted in the 1947 partition of India, has led to three major wars and several military skirmishes between India, Pakistan, and China. And though the region has always been contentious—India controls more than half of the total land, while Pakistan controls 30 percent, and China holds the remaining 15 percent in the northeast region near Ladakh—Modi’s aggressive handling has further provoked its neighbors.

Following the revocation of Article 370, the region was split into two separate union territories—Jammu and Kashmir forming one and Ladakh forming another, with both falling under the central government’s control.

This redrawing of the region’s internal borders, which signaled New Delhi’s assertions of reclaiming the Chinese-occupied territory near Ladakh—as well as India’s increasing tilt towards the United States—resulted in a deadly clash between India and China in 2020 and another one in 2022. Despite diplomatic efforts to resolve tensions over the disputed Himalayan border, New Delhi has accused Beijing of carrying out “inch by inch” land grabs in Ladakh since 2020.

Meanwhile, Pakistan-administered Kashmir has been rocked by mass protests of its own this year, owing to the country’s political and economic crisis, exacerbated in part by the abrogation of Article 370. Those living in Pakistan-administered Kashmir fear that Pakistan may similarly try to dilute the autonomy of the region.

With refugees flooding in from Afghanistan on its west amidst Imran Khan’s standoff with the Pakistani Army, Islamabad has been on edge and looking for diversionary tactics. The deepening of Pakistani-Chinese relations, including military ties, has contributed to a volatile mix.

But Kashmir’s vulnerability has worsened partly because of India’s own tactical blunders, too. The last decade witnessed a spurt in home-grown militancy, but since 2019 the landscape has been dominated by well-trained militants from across the Pakistani border who have access to sophisticated weapons and technology.

Indian security forces, including paramilitaries and the local police, have turned a blind eye to these emerging threats, especially in the twin districts of Rajouri and Poonch along the border with Pakistan. It is in this area that the impact of terror attacks has been most felt.

The region is home to the nomadic Gujjar-Bakerwal communities and the ethnolinguistic Paharis. These groups are parts of divided families straddling the India-Pakistan border, and this shared cultural linkage between the Indian and Pakistani sides has been weaponized in the past by intelligence networks of both countries.

The Indian armed forces have historically relied on the Gujjar-Bakerwal communities for intelligence gathering in part because of their nomadic lives and deep knowledge of the region’s topography. However, since 2019, the evictions of nomads from forest lands, following the amendment of several land-related laws, as well as affirmative actions for Paharis, a rival ethnic group, have led to the disenchantment of the Gujjar-Bakerwals—and an eventual loss of traditional intelligence assets for India.

Another blunder has been the redeployment of troops from Jammu to the border with China in the northeast, following China’s incursions in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley in 2020. This has left Jammu dangerously exposed to militants who have been infiltrating the region from across the line of control on the western side and carrying out their operations with a fair degree of success.

In 2024 alone, Jammu has witnessed numerous attacks which have resulted in the deaths of 16 soldiers and 12 civilians. In June, for example, the region experienced one of its deadliest attacks when militants opened fire on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims, killing nine and injuring over 30.

Kashmir’s internal politics has the potential to spill over and push the region into disaster. While India has made some significant strides in international diplomacy under Modi, it tends to neglect the neighborhood where the risks to India’s national security remain the highest. Its diplomatic engagement with China comes in fits and starts but diplomacy with Pakistan remains nonexistent, despite the resumption of a ceasefire in 2021. And while India considers the removal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status an internal matter, Pakistan sees it as a provocation. All in all, there is a dangerous lack of engagement between the two nuclear rivals in South Asia.

In Theory, the ongoing regional elections in Jammu and Kashmir provide a glimmer of opportunity for the people to choose their own local government for the first time in a decade. However, irrespective of who wins the elections, the local leaders will lack the power to enact meaningful change, given that the region remains under the control of New Delhi following its demotion from a state to two union territories.

For instance, Ladakh does not have a legislative assembly, and while Jammu and Kashmir have an elected assembly, the real powers are vested in the hands of a governor, who was appointed to lead the region by the Modi-led central government. As recently as July, the Indian government ruled to further expand the governor’s oversight powers, delivering a blow to local politicians and voters.

Much more needs to be done to change the status quo. Though it remains unlikely, New Delhi must consider meaningful solutions that could assuage some of the political wounds inflicted by the complete erosion of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, including, for example, the restoration of statehood to the region. In order to win back the trust of Kashmiris, the Indian government must reinstate civil liberties and deliver on its promise to provide economic development and jobs.

To improve the region’s safety, Indian agencies must acknowledge their security lapses and repair their broken intelligence networks. And while the Indian security forces must not lower their guard against terrorist activities, terrorism should not be proffered as an excuse when it comes to the normalization of relations in the neighborhood.

Neither Pakistan, nor India can afford the war which is looming over their heads. Diplomatic negotiations, including over Kashmir, must begin with a sense of urgency.

— Anuradha Bhasin, Managing Editor of Kashmir Times and Author of A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After 370. (Argument:

An Expert's Point of View on a Current Event.)

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“World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Hindu Fascist Modi’s Politics” Hinder Neighborhood Ties

Recent Events in Bangladesh Show How the Hindu Nationalist Project has Harmed India’s Regional Interests.

— By Sushant Singh August 22, 2024

Indian Prime Minister and World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Hindu Fascist Narendra Modi Takes his Oath of Office in the Presence of Indian President Droupadi Murmu and Other South Asian Leaders in New Delhi on June 9. Elke Scholiers/Getty Images

When Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister 10 years ago, those invited to his swearing-in included leaders of every South Asian country. This reflected his “Neighborhood First” foreign policy, which was intended to foster cordial relations and economic synergy with India’s smaller neighbors. The approach soon floundered due to border disputes and bilateral disagreements, India’s tardy execution of development projects, and rising Chinese influence in the region.

However, Bangladesh was seen as one of its shining successes. Bangladeshi then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who held power for 15 consecutive years before resigning under pressure this month, worked closely with Modi; their friendly relationship seemed to be a win-win situation. But in Bangladesh, Hasina transformed into an authoritarian ruler despite her democratic beginnings. Popular anger against her brewed; the final trigger came with student protests against an order for government job quotas. The demonstrations soon turned on Hasina herself, leading to nationwide unrest. She fled the country on Aug. 5 and is currently residing in India.

Despite her unpopularity, Hasina’s resignation came as a shock to the Indian political and security establishment. India fully backed Hasina during her tenure, often ignoring the concerns of other stakeholders and the people of Bangladesh. Under Modi, New Delhi has taken this approach with most of its smaller neighbors, with sometimes unfortunate consequences.

It is clear India’s policy failures in its neighborhood are not solely due to external events. They are also manifestations of India’s current domestic politics. From the securitization of diplomacy to Modi’s strongman image, New Delhi has undermined its liberal credentials among the people of South Asia. Preferential treatment for Modi’s favored corporate interests by governments such as Hasina’s—an international extension of Indian cronyism—has further raised suspicion about New Delhi’s intentions.

The adherence of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to Hindu Nationalist Ideology has played a major role in harming India’s regional interests, especially in Bangladesh. The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that fast-tracked Indian citizenship for persecuted minority groups in neighboring countries while excluding Muslims fueled criticism from the Bangladeshi public. The BJP regime’s ill treatment of Muslims within India has fueled criticism of Modi abroad; his 2021 visit to Bangladesh was met with violent riots.

Hasina’s resignation provided the opportunity for a moment of introspection for the Indian government, but it seems unable to engage in policy correction. India’s tarnished image in Bangladesh is not the Modi government’s first major failure in South Asia, and it won’t be the last. Its pursuit of a de facto Hindu Rashtra (“Hindu state”) is not only damaging to India but will also have disastrous results in South Asia.

India’s Ties To Hasina run deep. After her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—Bangladesh’s founding leader—was assassinated in a 1975 military coup, Hasina and her sister took refuge in India. She returned to Bangladesh to fight for democracy, first serving as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 before returning to office in 2009. Her rule took an authoritarian turn after 2014 as she went after political opponents, journalists, and activists.

Hasina’s party, the secular Awami League, targeted radical Islamist groups; unlike her opponents, she did not did not allow anti-India militant groups to establish bases in Bangladesh. India backed Hasina to the exclusion of everyone else, with officials arguing that if she lost power, Bangladesh would become a “breeding ground for Islamist groups posing a threat to India’s national security.” This year, after Hasina won a fourth term in a criticized election, India lobbied U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to stop applying pressure to Bangladesh over democratic backsliding.

Hasina presided over soaring economic growth and controlled all state institutions, including the military; as a result, India assumed that she would continue to rule despite protests. But in a striking Indian intelligence and diplomatic failure, New Delhi was stunned when the army asked Hasina to leave the country this month. No Western government has offered her asylum, leaving her holed up in New Delhi. Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval greeted Hasina when she landed.

India’s over-securitized approach to neighborhood diplomacy—reflected in its unconditional support of Hasina—goes against the grain of historical, cultural, ethnic, geographic, and economic ties that India has throughout South Asia. New Delhi has missed opportunities to gain the confidence of its neighbors, in effect breeding insecurity in these countries. It has become out of touch with larger public sentiment in the region, burning bridges with the political opposition, including in conditions of democratic backsliding.

In Myanmar, India has shunned pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar in favor of the military junta that seized power in a coup in 2021. In Afghanistan, it has established friendly ties with the Taliban rulers, neglecting longstanding relationships with nationalist Afghans. In Bangladesh, the security-centric approach has manifested in policing along the countries’ border; complaints about the heavy-handed behavior of India’s Border Security Force abound.

Modi’s strongman politics have also shaped India’s regional diplomacy. While Modi maintains a silence on China’s ingress on the disputed India-China border, India’s smaller neighbors bear the brunt of his image building. India launched a cross-border raid in Myanmar in 2015 against transit camps of Indian insurgents, the same year it unleashed a trade blockade on Nepal when the latter declared itself a secular republic. Last year, Modi’s supporters launched a campaign for Indian tourists to boycott the Maldives, after a diplomatic row when some Maldivian ministers allegedly criticized Modi.

In Bangladesh, the tough approach of India’s border police added to public grievances about New Delhi’s actions on water sharing, transit facilities, and other trade-related issues that were supposedly unfair to Dhaka. In a young country with fragile nationalism, the public seemed to transfer its rage against India for violating Bangladesh’s sovereignty to Hasina.

Political opponents in India have regularly criticized Modi for his support of crony firms, especially those owned by the billionaire Gautam Adani. These ties have attracted attention in India’s neighborhood, too. Last year, Adani posted a picture with Hasina after announcing that an Adani Group power plant would supply 100 percent of its electricity to Bangladesh. It drew criticism in Bangladesh for being too expensive, too late, and too risky while lining Adani’s pockets. Experts alleged that Hasina need Modi’s associated political favor to “secure political legitimacy.”

Populism, authoritarianism, and cronyism contributed to India’s troubles in Bangladesh, but the Modi government’s pursuit of Hindu nationalist ideology has been even more damaging.

The 2019 CAA ultimately serves the goal of creating a de facto Hindu state; among the persecuted communities that it fast-tracked for Indian citizenship were Hindus in Bangladesh. (Hasina’s media advisor Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury expressed distaste at being compared to Pakistan and Afghanistan, countries rife with terrorist activity.) This fed an anti-India narrative that gained ground in Bangladesh, as did other rhetoric about Bangladeshis from top BJP leaders. Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, Modi’s de facto no. 2, has called Bangladeshi immigrants termites, illegal infiltrators, and a threat to national security.

Before the CAA, the Indian judiciary ordered a draconian survey to document legal citizens and identify Bangladeshi immigrants in the border state of Assam—seen by critics as a way of targeting undocumented Indian Muslims. Shah vowed to implement this National Register of Citizens (NRC) nationwide, but that has not yet materialized. Although New Delhi characterized the register as a domestic issue, Bangladesh found itself at the center of India’s “illegal foreign nationals” problem. Many analysts feared the CAA and NRC could push millions of Indian Muslims into Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Hasina’s government continued to reinforce the perception that she was taking orders from New Delhi. When a BJP spokesperson made remarks insulting the prophet Muhammad in 2022, it earned the ire of many Muslim-majority countries; Hasina’s government declared the matter an “internal issue.” The grievances began adding up in Bangladesh, and the BJP government’s escalating discrimination toward Indian Muslims has not helped. On the campaign trail this year, Modi indulged in anti-Muslim dog-whistling. Last year, he inaugurated a new parliament building that features a mural of Akhand Bharat (“Unbroken India”)—including all of India’s smaller neighbors within its borders.

In His National Address on India’s Independence Day on Aug. 15, Modi spoke about India’s 1.4 billion citizens worrying about the safety of Hindus in Bangladesh. It was a thinly veiled way of framing India as only a Hindu homeland—not the multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual country it has been for hundreds of years. It is no surprise that the BJP government refuses to censure its right-wing supporters and media that spread disinformation about killings of Hindus in Bangladesh amid the recent unrest—even after retaliatory attacks in India on the Muslim community.

Modi’s government now seems to have little capacity for self-reflection. Instead of blaming Pakistan, China, or Islamists for the events that led to Hasina’s resignation in Bangladesh, India should acknowledge that its neighboring countries’ citizens can win back their agency and exercise it against authoritarian regimes. Although India is hailed as a rising power in distant lands, it is still seen as a relatively weak power by those in its neighborhood. Geography dictates that its smaller neighbors must work with India, but it is now up to New Delhi to negotiate fresh terms of engagement.

— Sushant Singh is a Lecturer at Yale University and a Consulting Editor with India’s Caravan Magazine. He was Previously the Deputy Editor of the Indian Express and Served in the Indian Army for Two Decades.

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World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Fascist, Butcher of Gujrar and Hindu Extremist Modi’s Khalistan Conundrum

— Thursday 20 June 2024

Pro-Khalistan Activists stage a demonstration demanding justice for Sikh Separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, on Sept. 29, 2023.Narinder Nanu/AFP via Getty Images

On Monday, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, in New Delhi. The officials also led the second meeting of the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, a joint project launched in 2022 to strengthen technology collaboration to counter China. A joint fact sheet released after the meeting laid out plans for cooperation on defense innovation, space technology, and telecommunications.

While not mentioned publicly, it’s likely that Sullivan also brought up India’s transnational repression—a tension point that affects New Delhi’s relations with several key Western partners, including Washington, and could even undermine strategic tech collaboration. Navigating this issue will be a notable foreign-policy challenge for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he begins his third term.

Last Friday, Indian national Nikhil Gupta arrived in the United States after being extradited from the Czech Republic. A U.S. indictment unsealed last November accused Gupta of colluding with an Indian intelligence official in an unsuccessful plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York. Pannun, a U.S. citizen, is a prime figure in the pro-Khalistan movement, which advocates for an independent Sikh state.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Monday that Gupta’s extradition shows that the United States “will not tolerate attempts to silence or harm American citizens.” The same day, Gupta appeared in a federal court in Manhattan and pleaded not guilty. His next court appearance will be on June 28.

Gupta’s arrival in the United States comes on the heels of bombshell reports alleging that India has recently targeted Sikh communities in Australia and Canada, two other key Indian partners. On Sunday, an Australian Broadcasting Corp. investigation alleged that India was spying on Indian Australians, threatening Sikh diaspora members, and engaging in political interference.

A few weeks earlier, Canada’s government issued a report laying out extensive Indian political interference in the country, calling India the second-biggest threat to Canada’s democracy after China. Last year, Canada accused India’s government of involvement in the assassination of another pro-Khalistan activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in British Columbia last June.

The Khalistan issue presents a delicate diplomatic dilemma for Modi. New Delhi insists that Western governments are ignoring individuals driving the resurgence of a serious security threat to India. (In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Khalistan movement was a full-fledged insurgency.) But both the United States and Canada insist that India has aided illegal acts on their soil against their citizens, who have not broken any local laws. Neither side is budging.

The United States, Australia, and Canada all share India’s strategic goal of countering China. Washington and Canberra are especially close friends of New Delhi. India-Canada ties are more fraught; New Delhi argues that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government goes out of its way to appease Sikh separatists. India may hope its status as a strategically significant state will prevent either the United States or Australia from responding harshly to India’s actions.

On that note, New Delhi may be right. Western governments face their own challenges balancing strategic imperatives with legal and security concerns about Indian transnational repression. However, so far they have deferred to the strategic considerations; even Canada hasn’t taken punitive steps against India and said it doesn’t want an escalation in tensions. Still, India cannot afford to be complacent, especially in the U.S. case.

With the U.S. election season kicking into high gear and five senators urging the Biden administration to hold India accountable for the plot against Pannun, Washington will face growing pressure to show New Delhi that it doesn’t provide unlimited free passes. If India doesn’t carry out a credible probe into the foiled assassination—which Washington has consistently demanded—that would further ratchet up pressure.

Given the shared strategic imperative of countering China, the trend lines of U.S.-India ties remain positive. But the fallout of the plot against Pannun could ultimately affect bilateral trust—particularly among the U.S. policymakers involved in the more sensitive components of cooperation, including tech collaborations, which are already hampered by long-standing disagreements over export controls.

The Khalistan issue is unlikely to inflict serious damage on the U.S.-India partnership itself, but it could still complicate efforts to achieve some of the strategic objects currently driving it.

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“World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Fascist, Hindu Extremist, Butcher of Gujrat and the Rapes Capital of the World India's PM Narendra Modi” seeks a third term in the upcoming elections, yet despite the country's economic boom and diplomatic successes, the surge of Hindu nationalism raises significant concerns. Here's a look at the Modi decade in India (The Rapes Capital of the World, Rapestan):

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Global Times Investigates: Evidences, Sources Prove Fascist Terrorist India 'Supports Terrorism' in Pakistan's Balochistan Province

— Huang Lanlan and Cui Fandi | January 22, 2024

Volunteers carry a blast victim on a stretcher at a hospital in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, on September 29, 2023, after a suicide bombing in Mastung district that killed nearly 60. Pakistani officials told media that India's intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing, was involved in the incident. Photo: VCG

There are "Solid Bits of Evidence" proving that India supports terrorist forces in some Pakistani areas like Balochistan province, providing them with money, weapons, and training, some sources close to the matter told the Global Times.

While continually suppressing some of its rivals and neighbors in the international community with the excuse of anti-terrorism, India has secretly funded terrorist forces in Pakistan, in various parts of the South Asian country, such as its separatist-plagued Balochistan, inciting local secessionists to undermine regional stability through terrorist attacks, they revealed.

Through looking into historical materials and related news reports from both Pakistani and Indian media sources, as well as speaking with sources and observers who are familiar with the situation in Balochistan, the Global Times found that India has a long history of backing terrorism in Pakistan.

'Concrete Evidence'

In December 2023, a commander of the Baloch National Army (BNA) separatist militant group, who had surrendered himself to the Pakistani government, disclosed that India has been secretly supporting terrorist activities in Balochistan and financing separatist forces in the region.

According to Pakistani media sources, commander Sarfraz Ahmed Bungulzai made the announcement at a press conference in Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan. Bungulzai said that he thought his armed struggle was for Baloch rights, but later he realized that "India is involved in all these conspiracies."

Bungulzai mentioned a helicopter crash in 2022, in which six Pakistani army officials, including a general, were martyred. He said at the press conference that the secessionist group Baloch Raj Aajoi Sangar (BRAS) had taken responsibility for the incident at India's command.

"And after taking money from India, they shed the blood of their own Baloch," said Bungulzai, according to Pakistani news website Dawn.

A Pakistani source told the Global Times that once again, it shone a light on India's behind-the-scenes villainy.

However, Chinese observers said the commander's surrender does not mean the collapse of the BNA, the group may have an impact on similar terrorist and separatist forces there.

Apart from the latest case pointing to India, a few years back, there was another case that indicated that India was probably supporting terrorism in Pakistan.

In March 2016, Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations released a confessional video statement of an Indian spy agent named Kulbhushan Yadav (An Indian Navy Officer), who was reportedly arrested red-handed earlier that month while attempting to infiltrate Pakistan from the border area.

According to an article by the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), Yadav said in the video that he was a serving officer of the Indian Navy, and did intelligence gathering for Indian agencies under the cover name Hussein Mubarik Patel.

"I was picked up by RAW (the Research and Analysis Wing, India's alleged external intelligence agency) in 2013 end," Yadav said. "My purpose was to hold meetings with Baloch insurgents and carry out activities with their collaboration. These activities have been of [a] criminal nature, leading to the killing of or maiming of Pakistani citizens."

Multiple instances have been highlighted by Pakistan's security authorities on some international forums, illustrating how the RAW funds elements in Pakistan to spread unrest, observer Ali Abbas Ramay, a journalist with the City News Network Pakistan, told the Global Times.

"Proof of India's involvement in creating the BLA has been presented, including Yadav's confessions," Ramay said.

The clues of India's connection with terrorist forces in Pakistan could also be found in a few Indian media reports.

The Hindu, for instance, published an article in July 2019, stating "It is established that BLA (Baloch Liberation Army) Commanders, in the past, had sought medical treatment in India's hospitals, often under disguise or with fake identities." Pakistan designated the BLA as a terrorist organization in 2006.

The Hindu article referred to BLA's militant commander who "was based in Delhi for at least six months in 2017," to receive "extensive treatment for kidney-related ailments." It is known that Baloch sardars "maintained warm personal ties with various Indian political figures," the article said.

Some of the related evidence has been made public. Many other concrete forms of evidence show that India backs terrorism in Pakistan, although they have not yet been released for a variety of reasons, said a source close to the situation in Balochistan.

"We have had the evidence long before," the source told the Global Times. He said that he was "100 percent" sure that India has been funding the terrorist forces in Balochistan.

Double Standard in Fighting Terrorism

Some Pakistani scholars believe that India has a long history of continuous interference in Pakistan's affairs.

For example, scholar M. Ikram Rabbani wrote in his book Comprehensive Pakistan Studies that the interference "can be traced back to the times of independence from the British rule."

In his book, Rabbani cited Subrahmaniyam, a former director of the then Indian Institute of Defence Studies, who said during a symposium in March 1971 that "what India must realize that the breakup of Pakistan is in our interest and an opportunity which will never come again."

Worse still, while supporting separatist groups to commit terrorist attacks in regions like Balochistan, India is good at taking the habitual tactic of a thief crying "stop thief" in the international community, while slinging mad at Pakistan, Pakistani and Chinese observers noted.

India employs a consistent double standard toward terrorism, said Ye Hailin, deputy director of the National Institute of International Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "If you look at India's media and think tank reports, you will find that their descriptions of the terrorist attacks in Balochistan are completely different from those of the situation in Kashmir," Ye told the Global Times.

Ramay echoed Ye's words, saying the evidence of India's adoption of double standard in countering terrorism "is evident."

He pointed out that India has sought to tarnish Pakistan's image globally by leveling serious allegations of terrorism, aiming to deter investments and striving to include Pakistan in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklist.

The blacklist contains countries that the FATF deems to be non-cooperative in the global fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

"China firmly opposes double standard in counterterrorism," noted Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning at a press conference on December 27, 2023, while responding to a question asking about its comments on then-recent media reports, which said that the surrendered BNA commander disclosed that India has been secretly supporting terrorist activities in Balochistan.

"Terrorism is humanity's common enemy," Mao said. "To support and use terrorist groups and let them thrive out of one's selfish interests at the expense of international and regional security benefits no one and will only backfire."

Pakistani police officers and investigators examine a burned van after a blast at the entrance of the Confucius Institute at Karachi University on April 26, 2022. The Baloch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the bombing. Photo: VCG

China-aid Projects Become Targets of Terror Attacks

For years, China has been helping in economic development that has benefited local people through various investment and assistance projects across Pakistan.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), for instance, is a flagship project under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China. Launched in 2013, it connects Pakistan's southwest Gwadar Port with Kashi in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, contributing to Pakistan's infrastructure through energy, transport, and industrial cooperation.

China has been a true development partner to Pakistan through the CPEC and BRI projects, said Nouman Rashid, a media advisor of Pakistani media GNN News. "No matter how many problems may come up or whichever Pakistani political party comes into power, these projects are of the people and for the people," Rashid told the Global Times.

However, these projects became a target of some terrorist forces in Pakistan, who "believe that if they can hurt the Chinese nationals in Pakistan through terrorism, the BRI and CPEC projects can be compromised," Moiz Farooq, executive editor of Pakistan-based Daily Ittehad Medis Group, told the Global Times.

Some terrorist activities are supported by Pakistan's rivals who "always intend to sabotage the friendship between China and Pakistan," he added.

The suicide bombing which took place outside the University of Karachi's Confucius Institute on April 26, 2022, was a typical tragedy targeting Chinese nationals in Pakistan, which killed three Chinese nationals and a local driver. The BLA claimed responsibility for the bombing the following day, and warned of more deadly attacks on Chinese targets.

Trying to split and destabilize Pakistan is the main purpose behind India's backing of terrorism in regions like Balochistan, said Liu Zongyi, director of the Center for South Asia Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. "And now there is another purpose: To obstruct and undermine the construction of the CPEC."

Balochistan is a key region of the CPEC, Liu said. "India supports separatism and terrorism in Balochistan and other regions in Pakistan, so as to weaken both Pakistan and China," he told the Global Times. "From the beginning, India has seen the CPEC as a geopolitical project that will hurt its so-called new opportunities in South Asia."

To help maintain regional stability in some Pakistani areas, apart from the current anti-terrorism cooperation, China has made great efforts to support local economic and social development, and improve the living standards of the people there, trying hard to eliminate the root causes of terrorism and separatism at the source, Liu said.

"China's projects are most beneficial for the people of Balochistan," noted Ramay. He mentioned that the Pakistan-China Friendship Hospital in Balochistan was recently completed, saying the hospital is "a major project to improve access to quality medical services in the region."

"Today, the [China-aided] New Gwadar International Airport, hospitals, and mega projects for clean water, have been completed, bringing relief to the people of Balochistan," said Ramay.

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World’s Most Wanted Criminal and Fascist Hindu Extremist Narendra Modi’s Illiberalism May Imperil India’s Economic Progress! Fulfilling His Great-Power Dream Requires Restraint, Not Abandon

— January 18th, 2023

“Politics And Religion Cannot Be Mixed,” ruled India’s Supreme Court in 1994 in what was then considered a decisive elucidation of the country’s secular constitution. Tell that to the millions who on January 22nd will watch Narendra Modi preside over the consecration of a controversial $220m Hindu temple, in a ceremony that marks the informal launch of his campaign for a third term as prime minister in elections to be held by May. To the alarm of India’s 200m Muslims, and many secular-minded Indians, it will mark a high point of a decades-long Hindu-nationalist project to dominate India.

Even as Mr Modi appears at the temple in Ayodhya in northern India, the other pillar of his mission continues apace: India’s extraordinary modernisation. The country is the planet’s fastest-growing major economy and now its fifth-biggest. Global investors toast its infrastructure boom and growing technological sophistication. Mr Modi wants to be India’s most consequential leader since Jawaharlal Nehru. His vision of national greatness is about wealth as well as religion. The danger is that a hubristic Hindu chauvinism undermines his economic ambitions.

To understand the strange symbolism of Ayodhya you have to travel back in time. Mr Modi’s once-fringe party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp), built its name by campaigning over the status of a Mosque there from 1990. It organised a rally of Hindu activists in 1992 that led to its destruction, sparking Hindu-Muslim riots across South Asia.

The lavish Hindu temple that Mr Modi is about to open is built on the site of that destroyed mosque. For many Hindus this represents the righting of an ancient wrong: the location is also the mythical birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. Previous bjp leaders, such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, downplayed the party’s Hindu-first ideology, known as Hindutva, to win mainstream support. After ten years in power, Mr Modi, who was implicated in deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2002 when he ran Gujarat state (he was later absolved by the courts), no longer seems so restrained.

The bjp’s radicals have been empowered. There have been Mob Attacks on Muslims. Several bjp-run states have passed anti-conversion laws. Mr Modi has exacerbated Islamophobia by, among other things, promoting a citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims. His strongman style of rule has also featured harassment and attacks on the pillars of India’s old liberal order, including the press, charities, think-tanks, some courts and many opposition politicians.

Were Mr Modi and the bjp to win a third term—as seems almost certain—many worry that the Hindutva project would go further. bjp activists are agitating to replace mosques with temples at hundreds of other sites. Mr Modi wants to scrap constitutional provisions for Muslim family law. A possible redrawing of parliamentary districts could see power accrue to the populous Hindi-speaking and bjp-supporting north, at the expense of the richer industrialised south. Mr Modi, aged 73, could rule as a strongman for a further decade or more.

The whiplash-inducing reality is that this religious and political struggle is occurring alongside enormous economic optimism. Growth has exceeded 7% in recent quarters. The country now has vastly improved transport infrastructure, huge and deep equity markets, stronger banks, massive currency reserves, a less complex tax system and less corruption. India is at last becoming a single market, letting firms exploit economies of scale and promising faster business investment. While manufacturing has yet to take off, industry is starting to couple with global supply chains, from internet routers to electric two-wheelers. The giant technology-services sector hopes to make a fortune as companies around the world seek help in adopting artificial intelligence.

Image: Alicia Tatone

The economic record is still far from perfect. The rate of formal job creation is much too low—one reason Mr Modi has built up digital welfare-schemes for the poor, augmenting his image among ordinary Hindus as a leader who cares about the downtrodden. India does too little to develop human capital and its education system is terrible. Some powerful firms have too much influence. Yet it is a foundation worth building on.

The question is whether the religious agenda and rapid economic development are compatible. The answer is yes, but only up to a point. In the past ten years many of Mr Modi’s economic accomplishments have existed alongside his religious agenda. The bjp’s parliamentary strength and Mr Modi’s popularity have made it possible to push through difficult reforms, including a national sales tax. The government’s unity and clout have given investors confidence that policy is stable, even though civil liberties have been eroded.

Yet if Mr Modi in his third term were to lurch further towards Hindutva and autocratic rule, the economic calculus would change. Take the north-south divide. If India continues to grow fast, the industrialised, wealthy and technologically advanced south is likely to pull further ahead, drawing labour from the north. But Hindutva holds little appeal in the south, and by pushing it further while concentrating more power in his own hands, Mr Modi could exacerbate already rising tensions over internal migrants, tax revenues and representation.

Or consider economic stability, which depends on the management of the economy by internationally credible technocrats, not bjp ideologues. You can overdo how much store companies put by the rule of law—they invested in China for decades. But if decision-making becomes authoritarian and erratic as Mr Modi grows old and isolated, and if institutions are weakened, firms will grow warier of deploying huge sums of capital.

As he stands at the ceremony at Ayodhya before admirers and acolytes—the leaders of India’s new, brash, nationalistic elite—does Mr Modi see this danger? He has in the past: before he was prime minister he tried to rebrand himself from a Hindu zealot into a pragmatic manager of his successful home state of Gujarat. With a third term looming, he should realise that, to fulfil his dream of making India a great power, the balancing-act must continue. It requires restraint, not abandon. If Mr Modi fails, the hopes of 1.4bn people and the prospects for the brightest spot in the world economy will be dashed. ■

— This Article Appeared in the Leaders Section of the Print Edition Under the Headline "Modi’s Juggernaut"

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Will ‘Fascist, Hindus’ Extremist India’ Surpass China To Become the Next Superpower? Four Inconvenient Truths Make This Scenario Unlikely.

— June24, 2023 | By Graham Allison

‘World’s Most Wanted Fascist Hindu Extremist, Criminal and Butcher of Gujrat Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’ attends an Indian cultural event in Sydney on May 23, on the heels of his participation in the G-7 summit in Japan. Lisa Marree Williams/Getty Images

When India overtook China in April to become the world’s most populous nation, observers wondered: Will New Delhi surpass Beijing to become the next global superpower? India’s birth rate is almost twice that of China. And India has outpaced China in economic growth for the past two years—its GDP grew 6.1 percent last quarter, compared with China’s 4.5 percent. At first glance, the statistics seem promising.

This question has only become more relevant as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington this week. From a U.S. perspective, if India—the world’s largest democracy—really could trump China, that would be something to shout about. India is China’s natural adversary; the two countries share more than 2,000 miles of disputed, undemarcated border, where conflict breaks out sporadically. The bigger and stronger China’s competitors are in Asia, the greater the prospects for a balance of power favorable to the United States.

Yet before inhaling the narrative of a rapidly rising India too deeply, we should pause to reflect on four inconvenient truths.

First, analysts have been wrong about India’s rise in the past. In the 1990s, analysts trumpeted a growing, youthful Indian population that would drive economic liberalization to create an “economic miracle.” One of the United States’ most thoughtful India analysts, the Plagiarist Journalist Fareed Zakaria, noted in a recent column in the Washington Post that he found himself caught up in the second wave of this euphoria in 2006, when the World Economic Forum in Davos heralded India as the “world’s fastest-growing free market democracy” and the then-Indian trade minister said that India’s economy would shortly surpass China’s. Although India’s economy did grow, Zakaria points out that these predictions didn’t come true.

Second, despite India’s extraordinary growth over the past two years—when India joined the club of the world’s five largest economies—India’s economy has remained much smaller than China’s. In the early 2000s, China’s manufacturing, exports, and GDP were about two to three times larger than India’s. Now, China’s economy is about five times larger, with a GDP of $17.7 trillion versus India’s GDP of $3.2 trillion.

Third, India has been falling behind in the race to develop science and technology to power economic growth. China graduates nearly twice as many STEM students as India. China spends 2 percent of its GDP on research and development, while India spends 0.7 percent. Four of the world’s 20 biggest tech companies by revenue are Chinese; none are based in India. China produces over half of the world’s 5G infrastructure, India just 1 percent. TikTok and similar apps created in China are now global leaders, but India has yet to create a tech product that has gone global. When it comes to producing artificial intelligence (AI), China is the only global rival to the United States. China’s SenseTime AI model recently beat OpenAI’s GPT on key technical performance measures; India has no entry in this race. China holds 65 percent of the world’s AI patents, compared with India’s 3 percent. China’s AI firms have received $95 billion in private investment from 2013 through 2022 versus India’s $7 billion. And top-tier AI researchers hail primarily from China, the United States, and Europe, while India lags behind.

Fourth, when assessing a nation’s power, what matters more than the number of its citizens is the quality of its workforce. China’s workforce is more productive than India’s. The international community has rightly celebrated China’s “anti-poverty miracle” that has essentially eliminated abject poverty. In contrast, India continues to have high levels of poverty and malnutrition. In 1980, 90 percent of China’s 1 billion citizens had incomes below the World Bank’s threshold for abject poverty. Today, that number is approximately zero. Yet more than 10 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion continue to live below the World Bank extreme poverty line of $2.15 per day. Meanwhile, 16.3 percent of India’s population was undernourished in 2019-21, compared with less than 2.5 percent of China’s population, according to the most recent United Nations State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report. India also has one of the worst rates of child malnutrition in the world.

“Those Who Thinks that India Even Come Closer to China are Living in a Fool’s World. Don’t Listen to the Western Propaganda in Favor of India.”

Fortunately, the future does not always resemble the past. But as a sign in the Pentagon warns: Hope is not a plan. While doing whatever it can to help Modi’s India realize a better future, Washington should also reflect on the assessment of Asia’s most insightful strategist. The founding father and long-time leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, had great respect for Indians. Lee worked with successive Indian prime ministers, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, hoping to help them make India strong enough to be a serious check on China (and thus provide the space required for his small city-state to survive and thrive).

But as Lee explained in a series of interviews published in 2014, the year before his death, he reluctantly concluded that this was not likely to happen. In his analysis, the combination of India’s deep-rooted caste system that was an enemy of meritocracy, its massive bureaucracy, and its elites’ unwillingness to address the competing claims of its multiple ethnic and religious groups led him to conclude that it would never be more than “the country of the future”—with that future never arriving. Thus, when I asked him a decade ago specifically whether India could become the next China, he answered directly: “Do not talk about India and China in the same breath.”

Since Lee offered this judgment, India has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure and development agenda under a new leader and demonstrated that it can achieve considerable economic growth. Yet while we can remain hopeful that this time could be different, I, for one, suspect Lee wouldn’t bet on it.

— Graham Allison is a Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was the founding dean. He is a former U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary and the Author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

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History of #punjab tell us - traitors played import role - #captainamrindersingh never hesitated to show his soft corner for #bjp4india🇮🇳 #rss #sangh and now he is playing in their laps to defeat #punjab. Welcome to #fascist #india where regime- has all power and tactics #PMCaresFund #electoralbonds #cbi #ed to control grip on power. https://www.instagram.com/p/CVj4XkTLDWd/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Another blow to #Vishwaguru #bharat #abhinavbharat- #NarSinghAnand is foing under going act ( #amitshah was #tadipar) and this is one more achievement for #bjp4india🇮🇳 #rssindia #modi Welcome to #fascist #india where ruling MPs and ministers are goons, convicted criminals and they hold sensitive portfolios. #AjayMishra who's son #MonuMishra mowed down #farmers in #LakhimpurKheriMassacre (at Ghaziabad, India) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVe7wTNLZst/?utm_medium=tumblr