As opposed to Pakistani media, the Indian media would go to any length to highlight their stance on held Kashmir. This means even unthinkable would be weaved and put on the media so as to malign Pakistan, its armed forces and intelligence agencies.
Recently, India Today aired a program “India First”, which claimed that Pakistan’s ISI was now roping in Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorists to get out from Pakistani jails and, in return, wage Jihad in J&K.
It claimed, while quoting alleged Indian intelligence reports, that Pakistan was joining hands with the culprits of APS attack in Peshawar just to bleed India. The report stated that “Pakistan’s latest weapon against India is TTP terrorists.”
Then, it further claimed that a secret meeting between top ISI officials and JeM Chief (Jaish-e-Muhammad), a conspiracy was hatched to launch terror attacks in the Kashmir Valley. To say the least, the morally deplorable report tries to cover up the shameful and unbearable situation in the Valley, which continues to deteriorate every passing day.
It is not Pakistan that is sending any militants to the valley; the fire in the valley is home-grown that has consumed the peace of mind of Modi’s government. To claim that Pakistan would shake hands with the TTP terrorists, who have blood of thousands of innocents Pakistanis on their hands, is far-fetched imagination of an overzealous and sick mind.
There are no holds barred for the Indian media and Modi’s government. Its questionable ethics allow it to mold its ideology to specific nationalist contexts. To be sure, the Modi government continues to follow the counter-insurgency tactics preferred by national security adviser Ajit Doval, who believes that New Delhi must strongly counter the stone-pelting attacks by unarmed Kashmiris through brutal force, put pressure on Pakistan by violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement and killing civilians across the LoC and the Working Boundary, stop talking to Islamabad and play the victim card.
At the same time, the Modi government is trying to take the held Kashmir out of India-Pakistan equation. But in the process, it has lost face internationally and at home. Yet it still continues with its failed efforts to discipline the Valley and assimilate it with the Indian Union.
In a recent issue, The Economist wrote: “The Shopian martyrs all turned out to be local Kashmiris…It emerged, too, that one of the slain militants had been a popular teacher of sociology at the University of Kashmir. He had earned his doctorate only in November, and had joined the rebels just two days before his death.
As inexorably as police are hunting down rebels, Kashmiris concluded, new recruits are joining them.” The prestigious magazine added: “Following another bloody Sunday in early April that left 19 people dead, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the elderly leader of one dissident group, released a video of himself banging on the inside of his own gate, demanding to be released from house arrest. “Open the doors,” he shouted to police outside, “I want to attend the funeral of your democracy.” It seems that Geelani succinctly described the state of Indian democracy in held Valley, which is fast slipping out of Indian hands.