Rocket in my pocket
Ramananda Sengupta and N. Venkatesh
A few weeks ago, we ran an article questioning the 'aman ki aasha' (hope for peace) initiative launched by two media giants in India and Pakistan.
The Pakistani idea of 'peace', we argued, seems radically different from the dictionary definition, or the Indian perception, of the word.
The Pakistani partner of this initiative is the Jang Group, which owns The News, the largest circulated English daily in the country.
Here are some excerpts from an article in that paper to mark Pakistan Day, March 23 (the day in 1940 that Mohammad Ali Jinnah formally demanded the creation of a separate Muslim state of Pakistan) which will not be run on the Indian partner's newspapers.
After the standard paeans to Jinnah, the article says Pakistan 'has obviously come a long way to be an international player in the world affairs. Conscious of the security threat posed to its sovereignty by India in the wake of its persistent hostility, it achieved nuclear capability to make its defence impregnable in the face of bitter opposition from the world powers, especially the United States.'
'Pakistan has vowed to maintain minimum nuclear deterrence to defeat the enemy designs against its security, integrity and sovereignty,' it adds, before conceding that the country 'was made to endure military dictatorships for a decade after about every decade of democratic rule on one pretext or the other.'
However, 'the nation has always refused to submit to dictatorship and continued struggle against it with perseverance and determination for the sake of democracy that was the basis its creation,' it adds.
The article then take further pot shots at India, saying: 'Pakistan may not have achieved glaring success in its socio-economic development, yet none of its people sleep on pavements or is compelled to starve like in its neighbour on its eastern borders.'
This same neighbour, however, has 'turned out to be the major factor for its predicaments ever since its emergence on the world map. The fact is that India has never spared any opportunity to harm it politically, economically and integrity-wise. It attacked Pakistan thrice and dismembered its eastern limb through military aggression. It occupied Srinagar militarily soon after independence and has since kept the Kashmiri people under subjugation through military strength. It has persisted with its illegal occupation of Kashmir and has deliberately avoided dialogue to resolve the issue. It also occupied Siachin glacier and imposed war in 1965 unilaterally. ..'
''India has now embarked on water aggression and has since started building dams on the rivers assigned to Pakistan under the Indus Basin Accord signed by the two countries through the good offices of the World Bank. It has already built at least three major dams to deprive Pakistan of its rightful share of water. ..'
Image: Pakistan's Shaheen II missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, on parade in Islamabad. Picture copyright Associated Press. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Also see: Impose a terror tax on Pak cricketers
