Pakistan asking TV and radio channels to run anti-India content on I-Day is sheer hypocrisy

Many in Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan have been decrying the same issue that Kashmiris may face in India – the changing of the local demography.

India and Pakistan flags | Representational image | YouTube

An advice issued on 10 August by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, commonly known as PEMRA, asked Pakistani broadcasters to not air any celebratory programming on Eid as well as on Pakistan and India’s independence days.

PEMRA said that the broadcasters should express solidarity with the “Kashmiri brethren” in the wake of the revocation of Article 370 by the Indian government and not “hurt the sentiments” of Kashmiris and Pakistanis. Furthermore, the regulator said that media channels can turn their logos to black and white (done in the past on days of national tragedies and mourning) and run programmes that project the “two-nation theory” and highlight “Indian atrocities against Muslims and minorities in India” and in Kashmir.

But such “advice” needs to be questioned, especially in light of the problematic narrative Pakistani regulators want to push.

To begin with, the two-nation theory, which Pakistan propagated for years following the country’s independence from the British colonial rule in 1947, stopped being valid when Bangladesh was carved out of Pakistan.

The idea behind the two-nation theory was that Muslims and Hindus cannot live together. But then in 1971, with the fall of Dhaka, East Pakistan decided that it could not live with West Pakistan despite the fact that both were Muslim-majority regions.

Second, highlighting Indian abuses against Muslims and other minorities in India when Pakistan’s own track record in dealing with religious minorities is quite poor exposes its hypocrisy.

The Pakistani constitution discriminates against non-Muslims and persecutes Ahmadis, a Muslim-minority sect, that is not allowed to call itself Muslim by law – those who do are prosecuted, if they are lucky enough. On most occasions, the Ahmadis face the wrath of a radicalised Pakistani public that opts for mob justice to deal with those who dare to publicly identify themselves as Muslims in the country.

Moreover, Pakistani Christians and Hindus and even Shi’ite Muslims are often targeted in hate-crimes by extremist Sunni Muslims (who are a majority in the country), and very rarely do these religious minority groups get justice. In one such recent case, Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent nearly nine years on death row in Pakistan after being falsely convicted for blasphemy, had to leave the country once the courts acquitted her because she was not safe in Pakistan despite being declared innocent.

Notwithstanding the fact that Kashmiris in India are living through oppressive conditions, especially post the revocation of Article 370, which has escalated the tensions in the region, Pakistan’s hue and cry over what is happening there rings quite hollow, given its own history in dealing with Kashmir, especially in the areas under its control.

Starting from 1947, when the Pashtun tribals at the behest of the Pakistani government invaded the region, which many say initiated the conflict with India, to how Pakistan annexed the Gilgit-Baltistan region from Kashmir and took away its special status in the 1970s, Islamabad’s policies towards Kashmir have been oppressive too.

Many in Gilgit-Baltistan region have been decrying the same issue that Kashmiris may face in India – the changing of the local demography. Pakistan has been long accused of settling in Sunni extremist groups in Shi’ite-dominated areas in Gilgit-Baltistan region to counter any potential Shi’ite rebellion, especially in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw Pakistani state becoming paranoid about its minority Shi’ite population.

And Pakistan’s Kashmir is not very independent either. It has its own government but that government is answerable to the Kashmir Council that is headed by the Pakistani Prime Minister. Moreover, no candidate can legally contest elections in Pakistan’s Kashmir if he or she does not swear an oath to support accession to Pakistan.

So, given Pakistan’s own double standards in dealing with Kashmir region and the religious minorities in the country, PEMRA must review its advice.

Pakistan for the last 70 years has been indoctrinating its public with anti-India rhetoric and has created a generation of youth that see India as enemy number one. It did so mainly for two reasons – to send jihadis to Kashmir so that a low-intensity conflict with India is kept alive. Second, by ensuring that an Indian threat always exists, Pakistan Army could justify its huge budgetary demands at home and shape the country’s foreign and domestic security policy.

But if Pakistan truly wants peace in the South Asian region, as it keeps claiming, it should stop controlling and engineering a narrative against India, especially on days like the Independence Day.

Instead, the country’s policy-makers should realise that such days give opportunities to overcome the differences, and they should focus on celebrating the freedom from the British colonial masters rather than highlighting partition of the sub-continent. South Asia can only progress if everyone shuns divisive politics and comes together to find a common ground to live together, in peace.

The author is an award-winning Pakistani journalist living in exile in France. He teaches journalism and is writing a book on Pakistan. He also manages safenewsrooms.org, a digital media platform documenting press censorship in South Asia. He tweets @TahaSSiddiqui. Views are personal.