N.P. Upadhyaya, Kathmandu: Troubled days are in store for the entire smaller countries of the South Asian region that border the known regional bully-Indian union born 1947.
With the re-emergence of Hindu fundamentalist Prime Minister in India with an unprecedented big bang, chances have doubled that the coming days shall not be that much rewarding for those countries who have of late preferred to come out from the firm Indian grip.
China is perhaps listening? It is also a subtle warning to China. China’s BRI scheme is tentatively in trouble.
That the recharged Prime Minister Modi is expected to bring in some sort of calamity in the entire region gets reflected from the list of the invitees who attended his inaugural ceremony May 30, 2019.
Amit Sah’s inclusion in the Indian Cabinet and the exclusion of Pakistan from the Modi swearing in ceremony talks of so many things unspoken.
It was a deliberate move not to invite Pakistan in order to send appropriate signals across the South Asian region and beyond that the SAARC regional body has been burnt alive and that the former regional body shall now be replaced by the declared “obedient” tail of the Indian republic- the BIMSTEC. The BIMSTEC shall too die a similar death as SAARC was made to embrace forced death.
SAARC died a death in front of the current SAARC Chair that is Nepal’s PM Oli. Shame on Nepal.
Thailand and Myanmar may not be that pleased with this “tail” notion but the fact is that these countries, very friendly to Nepal that they have remained so far, will come to their senses some time later when PM Modi shall begin coercing these proud nations to yield in favor of India’s economic advantages.
Thailand shall feel the brunt not that much as this country apparently is close to the Indo-Pacific Strategy (lobby and mainly with the US) as India in an indirect manner heads the BIMSTEC which is approximately an extension of the IPS or shall be made look so after the G20 meet in Tokyo scheduled for June last week.
Nepal has no links with the Bay of Bengal India designed entity except in that the dark clouds from the Bay brings rain in Nepal during monsoon.
Let’s hope that Thailand and Myanmar realize this Indian trick on time so that the damage to these countries (that is already in the store if the India we have known since decades and decades begins showing its true color and character that it is for the South Asian smaller neighbors) could be considerably brought down.
As regards Nepal, Baby Bhutan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are concerned, it is the countries which have ever remained under the chaotic shadow of the Indian union.
The Maldives at the moment is completely in tune with the Indian regime and PM Modi shall begin his tour to South Asian nations from Maldives, as per and Indian scholar Nihar Naik.
India fears that Male must be seduced in time or China will enter the Archipelago.
Nepal’s case is unique in that since 1990 April, to be more precise, the ancient nation has been enjoying a protectorate status much similar to what Baby Bhutan enjoys since decades and decades.
Some even take Nepal as a country that supplies Choukidars for the entire Indian nation from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari. Ms. Alka Lamba and Hardik Patel import security guards from Nepal.
In fact, the 1990 movement in Nepal was brought to its logical end with the overt and covert support of the Indian Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi.
The leading political parties of Nepal in 1990 had appealed the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to pounce upon Nepal and “teach a lesson” to the active monarch-King Birendra.
Rajiv Gandhi obliged to the Nepali leaders’ appeal and soon catapulted the Nepali politics but the sitting monarch then compromised with his own nationals rather than kneeling down to Gandhi’s arrogance.
Unfortunately, the then Pakistani Prime Minister Ms. Benazir Bhutto (BB) too had sided with Rajiv Gandhi in humiliating King Birendra right inside Pakistan when the King was in Islamabad to attend to a SAARC Summit held there. King Birendra disliked the grouping or sub-grouping in a small club of seven members. The King was against the fragmentation of the SAARC. Rajiv took it seriously and wanted to teach a lesson to Nepal. He later quenched his thirst.
Benazir knowingly or unknowingly sided with Mr. Gandhi.
The rest is history. Both paid the price to what was unfortunately their due.
Later King Birendra too paid a heavy price in that his whole family was butchered under a structured scheme. The scheme though remains still a mystery. Since then Nepal is like an orphan country.
Later in 2005-6, then Indian foreign Secretary Shyam Saran deformed this country through his “paid agents”.
The Saran damaged Nepal is counting its last breathe. And the country shall be formally declared dead when the newly appointed foreign Secretary S Jay Shankar drops in Kathmandu with split Nepal mission.
Complex ridden Jayshankar is an IFS bureaucrat now elevated to the post of a minister who knows how to twist the arms of the smaller neighbors. He is also talked to be the champion of the Indo-Pacific Strategy and wants to rule the world together with the US-India combination.
In addition he has immense hatred for China but yet he sorted out the Doklam conflict. But the rivalry remains intact.
To recall, S. Jayshankar was the designer of the great Indian economic blockade but his Nepali agents defined the barricade in a fashion that suited to PM Modi and his henchmen both in Kathmandu and in Delhi. A drama was created along the Nepal-India border in Raxaul at time of the blockade. Shame on the domestic agents.
Now S Jayshanker shall fix Nepal’s fate. China likely is the definite loser because China doesn’t believe in “envelope politics” to be practiced in Nepal.
Now that SAARC has been forced to die an unnatural death only to exclude Pakistan and that this exclusion is simply nonsense in that Pakistan would have abandoned the SAARC body, as far as this scribe recalls some related incidents, much ahead India was lobbying for the omission of Pakistan from this bulk.
To recall, Nepal some twenty years back when pressed by India, agreed to form a part of the growth quadrangle (Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Bhutan), Pakistan got the point that India wanted to minimize its role in the SAARC body by forming sub-regional groups and that too excluding Pakistan then and irritated and humiliated Pakistan sent signals that it was leaving SAARC for good.
Dr. Prakash Chandra Lohani was Nepal’s foreign minister then in the mid-nineties and the Indian plan was assisted by Kathmandu based Bangladesh Ambassador Mahmood Ali who is perhaps foreign minister in Bangladesh at the moment.
However, the Sri Lankan foreign minister Laxman Kadirgamer (rest in peace) convinced Pakistan not to leave the regional body to which Pakistan responded positively.
Or else, Pakistan would have been the first country to leave the SAARC.
The Pakistan Ambassador to Nepal Zamir Akram had hinted that Pakistan has no such strong attachment with the SAARC but is inside the SAARC Club as the close neighbors were there in the club.
Or else, said Ambassador Akram, “we have intimate ties with the Central Asian countries which is more or less like a club much similar to what the SAARC is for Nepal and others” and that SAARC needs Pakistan but not the reverse. (This scribe had listened to Ambassador Akram’s speech made on regional events including the SAARC affairs and Kashmir imbroglio indeed. The date however, is not in my memory).
So the deliberate exclusion of Pakistan from the SAARC “poor men’s club” must not have come as a surprise but instead the country now would concentrate its entire efforts in enhancing its bilateral ties with the countries of its choice, for example, the Organization of the Islamic Countries, the Central Asian nations, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Iran, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives and last but not the least with Nepal which is under ( unfortunately) the Indian grip, the domestic population believe so.
Though Nepal is under the grip of Indo-pendent leaders, but the general people possess love for Pakistan for various political reasons.
Pakistan’s engagement with China through CPEC and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is sufficient enough to keep the country engaged for its internal developments.
With S Jaishankar assuming the post of Indian foreign minister, terrible days for Nepal is round the corner as it was this Indian bureaucrat whose idea was the imposition of the economic blockade on Nepal of the year 2015 September which stretched to some six months or so. That was a crime against humanity committed by the Indian regime under Hindutva gang in India led by PM Modi.
Jayshanker is a political criminal in some way or the other.
People in Nepal who took him as a fine political personality now love to hate him, unfortunately. Yet we congratulate him on assuming the prestigious FM post.
And he is here again as the Indian Foreign Minister which means several sleepless nights for the smaller neighbors is approaching. Nepal shall be the prime target if he recalls the insult that the leaders had for him when he landed in Nepal to halt the declaration of the new Charter of Nepal.
However, for Nepal there is less to panic than what it used to be in the past.
The complete dependency on India has now been reduced to a considerable level with the opening of the Chinese corridor at Tatopani-close to Tibetan region of China. Some more link roads to China’s Tibet appear in the pipeline.
If China really wants to help Nepal then she must be ready to supply food and petro-products to Nepal if and when Indian tries for yet another blockade on Nepal. China can help assist Nepal by building of some petro storage tanks inside the Nepali border to brave the economic blockade.
China would have loved to assist Nepal but Beijing suspects the political credentials of PM Oli whose India tilt is a matter of shame for the entire Nepali population. If he is not then Oli has to prove that he stands for Nepal but not for India.
Look, Nepal is the current Chair of the SAARC and when the SAARC has been made to die, Nepal PM Oli dropped to Delhi to dutifully honor the one who time permitting shall ditch him. Just wait.
How India treats Nepal PM Oli got reflected in Delhi when the Indian media showed Sher Bahadur’s photo as Nepal PM Oli’s arrival in Delhi. For Nepali Choukidars, such insults mean little as we are “used to”.
The same humiliation got repeated with Bhutanese Prime Minister. But the ex-Bhutanese PM retorted. Should this mean that Bhutan is thinking big?
The King is weak or else Bhutanese youths would have come heavily down against the Godi media.
All said and done, Pakistan must build its personality as the smaller neighbors count on Pakistan for various political reasons. Indeed, it is related with the matters of prevalence of peace, stability and South Asian security.
In the meanwhile, at Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meet in Saudi Arabia the Pak foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Thursday condemned Indian atrocities in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) and urged the international community to probe the grave human rights abuses in the held valley.
The foreign minister said this while addressing a session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Jammu and Kashmir in Jeddah.
He was leading a Pakistan’s delegation in the meeting of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) in Jeddah, a precursor to the 14th Islamic Summit Conference due to be held in Makkah.
PM Imran Khan has too joined this delegation in Saudi Arabia-the OIC meet venue.
Qureshi said that Kashmiri youth taking to streets shows their lack of faith in Indian leadership.
“Kashmiris’ right to self-determination continues to be denied through illegal occupation and a concerted campaign of torture, humiliation, rape, and violence,” said the minister Qureshi.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Thursday said the Jammu and Kashmir issue “is close to our hearts” and “linking it with terrorism is a violation of international law”.
And here is the most important part message from the OIC to the newly sworn in Indian PM Modi. It could be a lip service only but yet this is what the OIC meet spoke on Kashmir.
“The Jammu and Kashmir crises is close to our hearts and is one of the most important issues on the agenda of the organization of Islamic Cooperation, and therefore our commitment to the Jammu and Kashmir cause has been and will remain firm,” said OIC Secretary General Dr Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen.
He said Kashmir movement is a “legitimate struggle” of the people for the realization of their rights and independence and fully in conformity with the resolution of the United Nations and international law.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Thursday said the Jammu and Kashmir issue “is close to our hearts” and “linking it with terrorism is a violation of international law”.
“The Jammu and Kashmir crises is close to our hearts and is one of the most important issues on the agenda of the organization of Islamic Cooperation, and therefore our commitment to the Jammu and Kashmir cause has been and will remain firm,” said OIC Secretary General Dr Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen.
He said Kashmir movement is a “legitimate struggle” of the people for the realization of their rights and independence and fully in conformity with the resolution of the United Nations and international law.
Adding strength to the Pakistani voice on Kashmir, the OIC Secretary-General Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on May 30, 2019, expressed hope that India and Pakistan will resume a “genuine” dialogue for addressing all outstanding issues, particularly the Jammu and Kashmir issue.
Dr Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen, General Secretary of the OIC, also said that the bloc was following with deep concern the “bloody events against the security of the people of the Jammu and Kashmir.”
“I hope that a genuine dialogue between Pakistan and India will resume, which will be the best framework for addressing all outstanding issues, particularly the Jammu and Kashmir dispute,” said Dr Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen said while addressing Ministerial Meeting of OIC contact group on Jammu and Kashmir on the sidelines of 14th Islamic Summit at Makkah.
Kashmir issue shall chase India uninterruptedly.
But Indian arrogance remains undeterred.
Summing up, Pakistan is a country which is a political and nuclear deterrent for the entire South Asian countries tortured by India under PM Modi.
The regional goliath under PM Modi shall increase its coercive acts further in the days ahead. Kashmir shall remain a flash point in South Asia.
The message is loud and clear. Will Pakistan compete with the Indian diplomacy and be a stabilizing force in the region dominated by the Indian regime? That’s all.