INDIA’S intentions are now clear. Our neighbour to the east is interested more in maligning Pakistan internationally than finding a solution to the current stand-off. It could even be argued that bringing to book those who orchestrated the Mumbai assault does not really top New Delhi’s list of priorities, for there are wheels within wheels. India seems to be interested in one thing alone: isolating Pakistan in the global arena. Why would India want to pursue such a course? More than one explanation comes to mind. Not satisfied with the fact that it is already the region’s hegemon, India desires official — read western — endorsement of this reality. The upcoming elections in India must also be taken into account because Pakistan-bashing is the most convenient way for the Congress party to steal the BJP’s thunder and gloss over the Indian state’s massive security lapses in Mumbai. Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted on Tuesday that there is a problem on the security front, he was quick to divert the blame to regional actors. India may also be drumming up international support to have Pakistan declared a terrorist state. If that were to happen, there would be calls for stripping Pakistan of its nuclear capability, much to India’s satisfaction and to the detriment of the balance of terror.

For a while it seemed that tensions were easing but India has been upping the ante in recent days. Originally it was said that the Mumbai attackers had ‘links’ with Pakistan. Then New Delhi shifted the focus from non-state to state actors, and on Tuesday Manmohan Singh opted for an all-out assault, alleging that Pakistan “uses terrorism as an instrument of state policy.” He further claimed, without putting on the table the evidence India claims to have gathered, that “given the sophistication and military precision of the attack it must have had the support of some official agencies in Pakistan.” This statement has changed the equation completely. Islamabad’s attitude thus far has been conciliatory and this must not change. However, Tuesday’s tirade deserves a measured yet strong riposte.

New Delhi has handed over a dossier of ‘information’ or ‘evidence’ and it is in the fitness of things that Islamabad peruses the same to verify the Indian ‘findings’. If the dossier contains any actionable intelligence, appropriate measures should be taken because that is in our own interest more than anybody else’s. For its part, India must realise the inherent absurdity of its demands. On the one hand it claims that Pakistan “uses terrorism as an instrument of state policy.” At the same time India wants the state of Pakistan to take action against those who masterminded the Mumbai attacks. This makes no sense and cannot serve as the basis for a working relationship.

India calls for ISI liquidation

Police in Indian-administered Kashmir break up Srinagar demonstration.

 Radical Re-elected in Gujarat

You can read BJP’s Hindutva philosophy here. In almost every article, they talk about Muslims.

“The problem, however, is that these many Pakistanis take this all lying down and do not stand up to the militants.”

Article link

Most Muslim scholars and leaders try to explain Muslim decline through the prism of the injustices of colonialism and the subsequent ebb and flow of global distribution of power. But Muslims are not weak only because they were colonized. They were colonized because they had become weak.

 Link

The IDI should reread and study the principles on which Israel was founded and then perhaps it will mobilize its energies for peace and human rights and cease drafting bizarre agreements between the religious and the secular, between Jews and Arabs, between a regime of religious establishments and those who wish to live as free individuals unencumbered by the yoke of religion and ritual. Israel urgently needs a struggle for human rights – for all individuals – a struggle against discrimination, against degradation, against arrogance. And Israel especially needs peace and open debates.

Ayaz Amir, Dawn:

It would also help if Pakistani journalists given to parroting the American line on Afghanistan (friendship deterring me from naming them) were to stop insinuating that elements within the Pakistani intelligence community are helping the Taliban. If they are helping the Taliban, there would have been no need to get 700 of our soldiers killed in Waziristan.

Currying favour with foreigners is a time-honoured Pakistani pastime but it shouldn’t be carried to the extent where it begins to harm the country. Let the New York Times and the Washington Post say what they will. We should be more careful about our own utterances.

http://dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that the upcoming foreign secretaries-level talks with Pakistan would explore the contours of a joint mechanism against terrorism rather than right away share evidence in the Mumbai blasts, according to his remarks quoted on Saturday.

?