India again reiterated its stance to Pakistan at the Commonwealth foreign ministers’ meeting held recently. India dismissed Pakistan Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s comments on Kashmir and stated that Kashmir is India’s internal matter. India also described Pakistan as a promoter of state sponsored terrorism.
India also said that Pakistan acts as a victim of terrorism while, in fact, it is the one who endorses it.
Since the Indian government has bifurcated the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories, Pakistan has been extremely frustrated. It has continuously tried to raise the issue of Kashmir in various International forums.
In all of them, it has been snubbed. India’s default response to the Pakistan raised issue has been that Kashmir is an internal issue of the nation and Pakistan or any other nation need not to interfere in it.
While this is not the first time when India made such a remark, it is again a signal to Pakistan that it needs to shut up and think about its illegally occupied part of Kashmir. Secretary in MEA, Vikas Swarup bashed Pakistan Foreign Minister Qureshi for raising the Kashmir issue. India described Pakistan as a nation which brought genocide to the South Asia 49 years ago when it killed its own people.
India was referring to the genocide in 1971 when Bangladesh, or East Pakistan as called then, was separated out of Pakistan. At that time, around 2.5 million Hindus were slaughtered when they were trying to migrate out of the area.
Later, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said that it becomes very hard to conduct normal relations with Pakistan because of the state sponsored terrorism. He was speaking at the Asia Society. He said that as far as “our neighboring countries are concerned, our stand is that this is something which is internal to our nation. Every country has the right to change its administrative jurisdictions and we have just exercised that. He said that many countries do that and even China has done that. Neighbors should worry only if a nation tries to change its external boundaries and in this case, that has not been done”.
