– R.K. Sinha
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will not forget his recent visit to India for a long time. He had come to India to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). He was expected to get respect from India like a head of state. But India clearly wanted to convey to Bilawal Bhutto that India is angry with him because he had made very indecent remarks in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York some time ago. He was also condemned all-round in India then. Actually India was angry with him since then. Bilawal came to Goa. He wanted his Indian Foreign Minister S. Talk to Jaishankar separately. But the Indian Foreign Minister did not give them grass. India knows that Pakistan has no ground under its feet. He will not talk about punishing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, he is not interested in dismantling the terrorist factory in his country and he will not even bother to discuss the continuing killings of religious minorities there.
S. Jaishankar clearly told Pakistan in the conference that Jammu and Kashmir was, is and will remain an integral part of India. Like all the states and union territories of the country, G-20 meetings are also being held in Jammu and Kashmir, there is nothing unusual in this. That is, India was in a mood to change its past and future on the pretext of SCO conference. S. Jaishankar did not even shake hands with Bilawal. Why even shake with the person who was making cheap comments on the popular Prime Minister of India.
On May 4, a grand banquet was organized for the foreign ministers of other member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). With this, the two-day conference of the group began. The reception, held at the seaside Taj Exotica resort in Benaulim, was also attended by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Kang, Russians Sergei Lavrov and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Uzbekistan’s Bakhtiyar Saidov, SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming and others. Here also our Foreign Minister ignored Bilawal Bhutto. Actually, after about 12 years, a Pakistani foreign minister is visiting India. Prior to that, Hina Rabbani Khar had traveled to India in 2011 as Pakistan’s foreign minister for peace talks.
Although no bilateral issues are taken up in the forum of SACO, there has been no attempt from India’s side to take any initiative to resolve bilateral issues with the wily neighbor. The reason is very clear. Pakistan does not even take the name of reforming. The people there nowadays are dependent on every grain due to inflation. But Pakistan will not improve. The leaders of Pakistan do not have the manners to keep their point in a decent language. Home and Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid and Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhary Jail in Imran Khan’s government in Pakistan also used to spew venom against India and Hinduism.
Sheikh Rashid is a very soft person. Seeing each and every press conference of his, one can get an idea of his gutter print human being. They are either cursing Nawaz Sharif or Shehbaz or they are blaming Zardari and his son Bilawal Bhutto for the latest debacle in Pakistan. It is okay here that they unnecessarily attack their political opponents. He has been getting respect among the fanatics of his country because he keeps threatening India with nuclear war. Sheikh Rashid, who describes himself as a fan of Dilip Kumar and Rekha, has even said that the nuclear weapons kept by his country can be used against India. It will be used in such a way that the Muslims living in India are saved.
Sheikh Rashid used to say that we have nuclear weapons of 250-250 grams, we can drop them wherever we want. What does Pakistan need to fear? Along with this, he used to say that he will teach such a lesson to India that the bells of all the temples of India will stop. A fierce opportunist, Rashid was once close to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif. Fawad Chaudhary is also anti-India like Sheikh Rashid. They too have been envious of India’s progress. Fawad Chaudhary made fun of the puja when the puja was performed before the Rafale fighter jet was handed over.
Actually opposing India and Hindus is in the DNA of Pakistan. That’s why many Indian diplomats were not surprised when Bilawal Bhutto spoke nonsense. But after 2014 India’s foreign policy has changed. His expressions and flavors were no longer defensive. Now friendship is answered with a hug and bitterness is answered in the same bitter tongue. Obviously, following the same policy, India did not grass Bilawal Bhutto.
Meanwhile, it is also true that there are disputes among SCO members. For example, the border dispute between India and China has been going on for a long time. But at the same time, mutual business is also going on. The mutual trade of both the countries is going to be up to 100 billion rupees. There is a dispute between India and Pakistan regarding terrorism. India has been repeatedly asking Pakistan to end terrorism. But Pakistan does not listen. That’s why it is also getting ruined fast. There is also a border dispute between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The eight member states of the SCO represent about 42 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of global GDP.
The region has immense tourism potential which can be promoted by increasing awareness about SCO countries. India would like to work in tourism and other sectors with the rest of the SCO members except Pakistan. There is no question of aligning with Pakistan. India has tried its neighbor many times. No positive change is expected from there. The leadership and people of Pakistan do not know about their own good or bad. That’s why it would be futile to talk about friendship with him now.
(The author is a senior editor, columnist and former parliamentarian.)
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