News Analysis |
A close aide of the Indian Prime Minister Narendar Modi and Bhartiya Janata Party’s New Delhi spokesperson has extensive links to the expensive advertisements that have appeared in two major international cities across the world to malign Pakistan. This latest relationship shows how India is using secessionist movements as a means to destabilize other nations.
The News asserts that the so-called ‘Free Balochistan campaign’ adverts appeared one after another in London and then New York bearing similar language, content and graphics on billboards and messages splashed across taxicabs.
Maleeha Lodhi and the Prime Minister, Shahid Khaqqan Abbassi referred to the indomitable unending hostility that the nation state of Pakistan has faced for the past 70 years.
The malicious campaign, apparently, started off in New Delhi, where a group led by Modi’s aide Tajindra Pal Singh Bagga defaced walls around the Pakistan High Commission and pasted posters demanding an end to the alleged human rights violations in Balochistan. Around that time, Tajindra Bagga was appointed as spokesperson of the ruling BJP in New Delhi.
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A Baloch source familiar with the campaign says that Bagga has links with the campaign’s international advertisements. Bagga owned up the New Delhi vandalisation. “Even my name was up there on those posters,” he said, adding that the international advertisements might just have been inspired by his campaign, now that he has managed to get prominence.
Bagga denied having any contact with Baloch separatists or separatist organisations in this regard while also boasting that he has been campaigning for the last five years and held a seminar on Balochistan as well. Bagga has Narendra Modi as one of his followers on Twitter. The Indian Prime Minister had even hosted Bagga along with other pro-right media influencers at his official residence in an event called ‘#super150.’
India fears a stronger, stable and prosperous Pakistan, as this would stand in its way to be the regional hegemonic power in South Asia. To this end it needs to destroy CPEC and any ancillary benefits to the region.
He and his colleagues claim credit for attacking Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Gilani and Arundhati Roy for speaking up for the rights of Indian-held Kashmiris. Bagga has been supported in such campaigns by the Hindutva groups and leadership of the BJP. Dozens of social media posts were run by the BJP leaders for several days to popularise the campaigns. Some exiled Baloch activists also supported Bagga’s campaign and congratulated him on initiating anti-Pakistan campaign.
The campaign on London streets and its transport network was rolled out by the World Baloch Organisation (WBO). The WBO’s Bahawal Mengal, nephew of Baloch nationalist leaders Mehran Marri and Akhtar Mengal, and son of Javed Akhtar Mengal, has publicly owned the international advertisements stating that he was doing so to highlight the “case of Balochistan”.
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When the Transport for London (TfL) suspended some of the advertisements after a strong protest from Pakistani authorities, the WBO and Bahawal Mengal issued several statements and condemned the TfL for overturning the campaign. He also announced that he was funding and publicising the campaign in New York.
Massive billboards at New York’s Times Square and advertisements on local transport vehicles sprung up towards the end of December. The Pakistan Embassy officials were expecting this campaign, and they said they had notified the state authorities in advance but were helpless to respond effectively.
To do so it has decided to use both violent and nonviolent measures to destabilize Pakistan. Pakistan has come in the crosshairs of an Indian campaign which aims, if not to Balkanise it, to destabilize it to make it a weak and satellite state.
“The embassy came to know about the campaign which appears to be a continuity of the malicious stratagem that was on display in other cosmopolitan cities across the world a few months back,” one of the high-level officials told The News hoping that the campaign will miserably fail just as before.
“We have been in contact with the State Department and other subsidiaries to limit the campaign and not let it expand to other cities,” the official said, adding, “Our stance is absolute that in the garb of freedom of expression, American land should not be allowed to use against Pakistan’s autonomy and territorial integrity.”
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In September 2017, Political analyst Agha Iqrar Haroon asserted that India had spent Rs. 7 billion to run an anti-Pakistan campaign in Geneva, Switzerland and that the campaign has originated from Canada. Talking with reference to the anti-Pakistan posters in the Swiss city, Haroon said the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) last year started getting anti-Pakistan articles published in Canadian newspapers.
Such attempts have accelerated in recent times owing to two major factors: the rise of the extremist thought Hindutva to power in India and the CPEC project in Pakistan.
He said India got anti-Pakistan advertisements published in Geneva through a company, which according to him, was paid through money laundering. Earlier on 18th September, a strong protest was lodged with the Swiss ambassador over Swiss authorities permitting the use of its territory for propaganda by elements linked with the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a “terrorist organization, which is perpetrating terrorism and violence in Pakistan”.
Earlier on 18th September, a strong protest was lodged with the Swiss ambassador over Swiss authorities permitting the use of its territory for propaganda by elements linked with the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a “terrorist organization which is perpetrating terrorism and violence in Pakistan”.
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Despite, New Delhi’s own numerous ethnic uprisings, across its territory, it continues to use terrorism and separatism as a means of power politics to attempt to mold the region in its image. Such attempts have accelerated in recent times owing to two major factors: the rise of the extremist thought Hindutva to power in India and the CPEC project in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Embassy officials were expecting this campaign, and they said they had notified the state authorities in advance but were helpless to respond effectively.
India fears a stronger, stable and prosperous Pakistan, as this would stand in its way to be the regional hegemonic power in South Asia. To this end it needs to destroy CPEC and any ancillary benefits to the region. To do so it has decided to use both violent and nonviolent measures to destabilize Pakistan.
Pakistan has come in the crosshairs of an Indian campaign which aims, if not to Balkanise it, to destabilize it to make it a weak and satellite state. It is not without a sense of history that Dr. Maleeha Lodhi and the Prime Minister, Shahid Khaqqan Abbassi referred to the indomitable unending hostility that the nation state of Pakistan has faced for the past 70 years.