India charges Pakistan’s ‘factory of hate’ sustains deep state through anti-India sentiment
United Nations: India has charged that Islamabad is running an “organised factory of hate” that exploits religious terminology to cultivate permanent hostility towards India among its citizens, solely to enable Pakistan’s “deep state” to maintain its hold on power.
“Blaming neighbours for its own failures is an old Pakistani habit (and) this attempt to hoodwink the world will fail”, India’s Permanent Representative P Harish told the Security Council on Monday.
Pakistan ordering its government agencies to call groups inside its own borders “Fitna al Hindustan”, he said, “is nothing but officially sponsored misinformation and disinformation dressed in religious terminology”.
“Fitna” is an Arabic religious term variously translatable as “sedition” or “idolatry”.
Harish said, “This is an outcome of an organised factory of hate coming from the deep state of Pakistan, which aims to keep their citizens in a state of permanent hostility with India in order to perpetuate their stay in power and control of national resources and distract them from core political and economic problems”.
Harish’s reference to the “deep state” was aimed at the military, which made unassailable its control of Pakistan’s polity through last year’s constitutional amendments.
“The de facto coup by the military through the 27th Constitutional amendment is only its most recent manifestation”, he said.
The amendment in November put its military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, a religious hardliner, virtually above the law and consolidated his control of the government.
Speaking at the Council discussion on Afghanistan, Harish called for coordinated international efforts to fight terrorism facilitated by Pakistan.
“Only coordinated efforts of the international community can ensure that ISIL [Islamic State] and Al Qaida and their affiliates, including the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, and proxies of LeT such as The Resistance Front, along with those who facilitate their operations, no longer indulge in cross-border terrorism”, he said.
LeT’s proxy, The Resistance Front, took responsibility for the religiously motivated attack that killed 24 Hindus and a Christian at a tourism spot in Pahalgam in April last year.