One thing you can’t accuse Pakistan and its ISI of being, is unpredictable. They have been, on the contrary, entirely predictable over the past 45 years since they started using terrorism as a weapon against India.
First, let’s explain this strategy. Many descriptions have been used for it over time: proxy war, death by a thousand cuts, violent jihad and more.
There is, however, one thread running through ISI’s method—use of Pakistani jihadi Lashkars or terror proxies from among Indian minorities to specifically target Hindus in India.
At some point, their calculation has been, the Hindus will rise in reprisal against their own minorities. That’s a crisis they’ve been conjuring up in India. A nation at war with itself. At one level, it will be a kind of reverse schadenfreude—you are at war with yourself just as we’ve been with ourselves. At another, it will weaken and distract India tactically, militarily, politically and morally. The third is the most important. As India’s Hindu majority turns on their own minorities in anger and frustration, it will vindicate the two-nation theory.
Why do we call this the most important? Watch and read General Asim Munir’s speech to overseas Pakistanis on 16 April. If you count out his own falling credibility at home, as well as the bombast and Quranic invocations, you can read where the pain comes from. It is over the ideology of Pakistan, the two-nation theory that was demolished in 1971. That ideology is under renewed challenge by ethnic minorities in Pakistan’s western provinces. All of them are Muslims. Many of them want out so much that they are willing to kill and die for it.
So how do you still make the case for the two-nation theory and ideology of Pakistan? By proving that minorities, especially the Muslims, are persecuted in India—so thank you Quaid-e-Azam, even if he would probably have baulked at the general’s suggestion that Pakistan was formed on the basis of the Islamic kalma. Or maybe the so properly anglicised Jinnah would’ve struggled to understand what this self-styled custodian of the ideology of Pakistan is saying, given his bad English.
Also Read: Why are Indians indifferent to Palestinians’ plight? No, it’s not about Jews vs Muslims
The reason we start from about 45 years back is because that’s when it all changed, just after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, America and its western and middle eastern (especially Saudi) allies’ recruitment of Pakistan as their stalwart ally and the use of Islamic jihad as a strategy against the ‘infidel’ Soviets. If Communists could be declared infidels by Muslims, so could Hindus.
This started in about 1980-81 with the rise of Bhindranwale in Punjab. While initially he targeted the police and members of the Nirankari sect, soon enough, Hindus were in the crosshairs of his men. The first instance of clearly targeted and segregated killings of the Hindus came on 5 October, 1983. A bus on its way from the small town of Dhilwan to Kapurthala in Punjab was waylaid, six Hindus pulled out and shot.
This was the first targeted and selective terrorist killing of Hindus in modern history. So massive was this shock, it outraged India. Indira Gandhi sacked her own Darbara Singh government in Punjab and imposed President’s Rule.
In the following months, the selective killings of Hindus picked up, until it became the default terror attack template. This was followed by Kashmiri terror groups from 1989 onwards, beginning with the killings, persecution and forced exodus of Pandits, and spread across India as ISI-backed groups, or LeT members, targeted temples, weddings, holi and diwali celebrations, Ramlilas, Hindu religious processions and so on. At some point an Indian terror group, though fully aligned with ISI, also rose. The so-called Indian Mujahideen played havoc with serial bombings across India, including Delhi, 2005 (62 killed) and Jaipur, 2008 (63 killed), and Delhi again, 2008 (20 killed).
Over these 45 years, almost a hundred attacks targeting the Hindus have taken place. Until 1994 the attackers included terrorists from Punjab too. You can check out the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) for definitive detail. Let me just mention a few, besides Delhi and Jaipur bombings.
In each case, the number of dead—all Hindus, unless the odd terrorist also died—is in parentheses. The Dhilwan bus attack (1983, 6 dead); Fatehabad bus attack (1987, 34); Lalru bus attack (1987, 38); Rudrapur Ramlila bombing (1991, 41); Ludhiana train massacres (1991, 125). And yes, that 125 is no typo. There was also the Chennai RSS office bombing (1993, 11); Lajpat Nagar blast in New Delhi (1996, 13); Dausa blast, Rajasthan (1996, 14); Coimbatore bombings (1998, 58); Attack on Amarnath yatris (August 2000, 21); Doda attacks (August 2000; 19); Raghunath Temple attacks, Jammu (March and November, 2002, 12 and 14 respectively); Akshardham Temple attack (2002, 33); Nadimarg massacre of Kashmiri Pandits (2003, 24); Delhi High Court bombings demanding the release of Afzal Guru (2011, 15) and so on.
This is just an indicative list out of more than a hundred attacks. It also doesn’t include serial bomb blasts on the Mumbai rail network and of course 26/11.
I’d believe this sad pile of facts is enough to make our central point: that the ISI strategy has been to use its direct and indirect proxies to target Hindus in India. They want an outrage and counter-targeting of India’s own minorities. Further, even the whiff of it restores Pakistan army’s popularity, especially when it’s in the dumps, like now.
Also Read: Islam doesn’t kill democracy. The army-Islam combo does
I will take you back to the Bombay bombings of 1993. On the eve of the bombings, AK-47s and piles of grenades had been positioned in selected places—including the home of actor Sanjay Dutt. The idea was that, as with the post-Ayodhya riots which had recently taken place, the Shiv Sainiks would attack Muslim-majority localities and there, these weapons would be used to slaughter hundreds if not thousands of them, and the police. Who would be able to put out the fire it set across India then? M.N. Singh, then a top Mumbai cop, reminds us until then Maharashtra Police didn’t have even one AK-47.
Sharad Pawar sometimes gets bad press for revealing to me, in a WalkTheTalk, that he deliberately lied to say that one of the bombings was at a mosque. He wanted to buy time and get the police in place at sensitive points before any communal riots broke out. It was an astute and audacious move from an experienced leader. No riot followed the bombings. Bombay defeated the ISI.
You can call the Pakistani playbook Subversion 101. Inflict pain on India’s Hindus so brutally and for so long that they finally turn on their own minorities. That’s why even in Canada the Sikh radicals, aligned with the Pakistanis, attack and desecrate Hindu temples.
Let’s now see who understands this well. We can list people ideologically as far apart as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS, and Asaduddin Owaisi. Modi, in his speech in Bihar, didn’t use the word Hindu, kalma or anything that would indicate a communal aspect. This was an extremely wise move. Was it a mere oversight? I’d be positive and read it alongside the statement from Dattatreya Hosabale, the putative number two in the RSS who described the Pahalgam attack as a massacre of ‘tourists.’ They know how important internal stability and calm is for India at this critical juncture.
This is also why Owaisi is using language for terrorists nobody in our politics, not even on the farthest Right of the BJP or warrior channels is using: kutte, kameene, haramzaade. He knows the Pakistanis have delivered massive pain on the Hindus selectively. He wants to tell Hindus Indian Muslims stand alongside them. They are fellow citizens, not rejoicing enemies.
The Pakistanis and their ISI have again put the Indian majority’s patience under incredible pressure. It is just another, if the most brutal chapter in a playbook that has failed for more than 45 years. It is for us Hindus to make it fail again. We have only one country to call our own, after all.
And we’ve existed for more than 5,000 years, not created the other day based on some divisive ideology.
Also Read: Lesson from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan: if you have no patience, you don’t deserve democracy
To Mr Ow and Harpreet that have replied to an earlier comment on April 26th:
To Mr Ow:
It is indeed typical of a Hindu-rashtri, non-Bhartiya of you to start any anti-Sikh tirade and Hindutva apologia with “I have relatives married to a Sikh family” as if people that gives you a free pass or makes your thoughts any less genocidal. It’s the equivalent of saying “I have a black friend or in-law” before saying black people have no right to live. Even after making it abundantly clear, that I’m Bhartiya, you’ve decided to call me a K-Sikh because it suits your narrative. I lets you get justify to you tiny mind the mass killings Hindu terrorists have done with impunity and without any recognition of Hindu Terrorism. And neither you, nor anyone in the world for that matter, is anyone to “allow” me to live in Punjab which is my home and will continue to be till the end of time to your great closetedly, genocidal discomfort. You are no one to show Us a big heart. Punjab is our home. It is you who have been done a favor to include Punjab even after not signing a constitution that forcefully convert us to Hinduism( while you go prancing about the world telling people you’re secular) , knowing Hindu propensity for salami slicing water, state capitals, and agricultural land. Asking for closure, justice after the highest courts have connived to give clean chits to genocidal perpetrators of 84 is decency. Responding to that by calling people K-Sikhs is pettiness and closeted complicity. And BTW, your closeted genocidal dream of a Sikh exodus from Punjab, similar to the one harbored by Kushal Mehra is reeking and fools no one and pisses all over your claims of “I have nothing against Sikhs”. Dream on. There will be no Sikh exodus like the 80s and 90s.
To Harpreet:
Like your friend Mr Ow, you’ve taken the easiest route to accuse me of living outside India, or not knowing Punjab inside-out, or blaming a single party. None of these are true, but that doesn’t matter to people you or Mr Ow that are committed to misunderstanding and misrepresenting things said by people, even on publicly readable comments. Nowhere have I asked for K-stan, but you and Mr. Ow jumped at the opportunity to call me one because I demanded ACCOUNTABILITY and JUSTICE from the highest office-bearers of the time who genocidal, self-hating people like you want to keep protecting.. It’s the only purpose served by you, Shekhar’s cabal, and the security establishment. “Is someone asking for accountability? OH crap! How do we change facts on the ground so we can call this guy a K-stani? Can we throw an Indira Gandhi hoodie at him? Can we get a separatist person whom he doesn’t recognize to stand next to him in a photo?” You’re just as pathetically complicit as closeted Sikh-hating The Print, Mojo Story, KPS Gill, Beant Singh, or Ravneet Bittu.
Go live your sorry spineless lives and pretend that having “family relations” with Sikhs makes your thoughts any less genocidal.
One of the most brilliant NI post I have read in recent times. Clarity of thought, articulation of the Pakistani intent and brevity and courage of the India response have all been captured effortlessly. Thank you SG for writing this. Hope to spread this message far and wide.
A superbly written article that hits the nail on the head as the objective of ISI is to foment discord between Hindus and Muslims in India… thank you for pointing out PM Modis and Mr Owaisis choice of words… Mr Sharad Pawars quick thinking also helped in the situation of the time…
Why is there no institutional sponsored research on the correlation between pak sponsorship of térrorism and the perception of múslims and how múslims react to this perception.
Shekha, the longstanding genocidal hatred of Sikhs harbored deeply by you, your Congress-era cartel Vir Sanghvi, Barkha Dutt, Dinkar Gupta, Amarinder Singh, and Ajai Sahni and your kindred spirits in demography-change and revisionism Kushal Mehra, Puneet Sahani, and Sheshadri Chari is betrayed the second you try try tie back every terror event back to Punjab forcefully for SEO warfare for link juice as you have done with since The Print was started. Your collective and deliberate intellectual dishonesty is in plain view for anyone who follows your work and juxtaposes it with facts and malicious patterns. Case in point: the 26/11 anniversary video which you ended by talking about Shiromani Akali Dal, the times you sanitized child ethnic cleanser KPS Gill with sanitized titles like ‘dirty harry,’ the times you and Ajai Sahni both curiously did not report Surinder Suri as a proper thoroughbred, cut-and-dried, unapologetic Hindu Terrorist( even though Ajai maintains a farcical ‘terrorism monitor’ on his joke of a website made to whitewash KPS’s crimes), the times you and Ajai both deliberately failed to mention the deliberate impunity and media silence with which 7 times SGGSJ was desecrated the culprit pled insanity and which is what drove people over the edge, not some religious zealotry. Ideally, you planned to coordinate the attacks with your reporting hoping to reframe reprisal violence as a blasphemy narrative to embed against Sikhism in the western media with coodrination from your friend Amarinder Singh no less – but beef blasphemy played spoilsport and your hand was forced to call out Hindus too. You did your best, as did Praveen Swami. Didn’t stop him from trying to rest the blame at the feet of kuka Sikh- a fimiliar play from your book. Surinder Suri openly called for exodus and genocide of Sikhs and for unspeakable things to be done to their womenfolk – and everyone can see the favorable tone you’ve used to refer to him and the way you’ve completely invisibilized his terrorism by not mentioning what he did. And don’t even get me started the deliberate wordplay to dilute 84 from genocide to pogrom to riots all to give Rajiv Gandhi a clean chit. Or the 25000 killed in just one Punjab district and over 100000 estimaed by your bosom buddy KPS butcher who you and Ajai will keep platforming till the very end, or the kids he beheaded and drowned in the Beas after removing their intestines. So save Sikhs the lectures on why you every new terror event MUST be linked to Punjab for your SEO warfare. It’s getting old. I’m sure your shameless self has no disregard for even Hindu brothers and their lives and you’re probably frothing at the mouth and breathlessly hoping for something similarly bad to happen (god forbid) just to give Hindu separatist salami slicers like your self the permission to fulfill desires for water, state capitals, and agricultural land. There will always be a difference between you and us. Our allegiance is to Bharat, yours is to Lala Lajpat’s “divisive ideology” of Hindi- Hindu-Hindustan. Your opinion piece sayong Sikh shrines a relatively safe is yet another joke when “darshan deedar sewa sambhal da daan khalsa jee nu bakhsho” is not even paid lip service but regular Sikhs are profiled at airports for pilgrimages and RSS agent Sheshadri Chari ask for Sikhs to be declared persona non grata from visiting Sikh shrine on arbitrary basis. Never mind if they be critical of non-delivery of justice for the 80s and 90s. You’re not fooling anyone with featured ground stories from Punjab on blue collar labor when you or the industrialists say loacls don’t work hard when in reality it’s not hours or skills, but living conditions factories want locals to compete on with migrants – wholly unfair. 3 families of irresponsiboe migrants with 6 kids each cramped in house can afford to have each kid work for as low as 7000, pay no rent for their illegal settlement whereas a sensible local with a TFR of 1.5, paying rent and utilities in a single family home can’t possibly live on less than 15-20k. Also, the open religious discrimiation during hiring, especially by Hindu owned textile mills has attained national fame, but somehow your ground coverage can see none. For your reference – Lallantop’s one hour factory walkthrough is more than enough discriminatory hiring for a lifetime. Then, there’s Dilip Gogoi, a perpetually facist and genocidal commenter that you somehow haven’t moderated or banned in all these years. Intellectual honesty goes to die at The Print, not just Amar Singh Chamkila (which is problematic and culturally stereotypical beyond saving on its own). I don’t care what you write or what you and your Congress-era cartel need to do to give Gandhis a clean chit every new day or what fresh diarrhoea you try to link Sikhs for SEO warfare. Just wanted to let you know people see through you. You’re not fooling anyone or going unnoticed. Leave Sikhs the eff out fo your genocidal wet dreams that you keep trying to manifest some pretext for. I’m going to go make a sandwich.
Sorry mr prabh , I have nothing against sikhs , even I have family relations with sikhs , they are one of the nicest folks I have ever met but somehow I feel k-sikhs like you have a ” love your bully ” syndrome , you won’t open mouth on Pakistan who have pushed you out of pakistan Punjab in 47 but you will hurl abuses at Hindus who accepted you and were generous enough to give you a place to reside in Indian Punjab during your lowest of the phases . They also could have stopped you from entering india during 47 bloodbath but they didn’t and showed a big heart and look at your pittiness 👎
You probably haven’t seen Punjab and reciding overseas now. No doubt people suffered during those times. Instead of blaming wholesomely one party at least paint a whole picture of the situation that time and times now. Keep your khalsitani concept in Canada or wherever you are now.
General Musharraf told Ms Palki Sharma during an interview in Dubai that, for a long time, the security agencies of the two countries had been busy trying to harm and hurt each other. Meaning, their respective countries and people. India and Pakistan have their soft underbellies. Balochistan is going through a bad time. Kashmir. Earlier Punjab. The north east. The DGMOs speak to each other on Friday. Hopefully, the senior intelligence officials do so as well. Beyond the hard targets are the soft ones. Pahalgam. The large civilian populations which cannot be protected as effectively as a small, security state like Israel does, although it has suffered the trauma of 7th October. 2. Whatever games the ISI plays, it is for India and Indians not to get divided on communal lines to an extent that public order breaks down. It was an incredible act of statesmanship that created one nation out of such a mixed palette.
That is an incredibly clever tact validating the Hindu feeling and at the same time assuaging the hurt. This is argument I have been trying to make to people calling for boycott of muslims business in India – escalating tensions in India, only plays into the hands of Pakistani’s
but he is happy that few Hindus died . because for him quam is everything . so every Muslim is a traitor and they should be killed with ultimate cruelty. no sympathy
you are right , owasi did a great job as a politician this time . he did not tried to hide it or play it down if he did that it may become worse.