A recent terrorist attack on April 22 in Kashmir has killed 26 Indian tourists. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu Nationalist government took no time to blame Pakistan for the attack and vowed to "punish" the neighbor for it. Indian media, also derisively known as "Godi media", immediately went into overdrive to demand action against Pakistan. New Delhi followed up with suspending the Indus Basin Water treaty from the 1960s which guarantees 80% of the water from the three western rivers (Chenab, Jhelum and Indus rivers) to Pakistan, while India gets the exclusive use of the water from three eastern rivers (Beas, Ravi and Sutlej rivers). India also ordered Pakistani visitors to leave the country and reduced Pakistani diplomatic staff posted in India. Pakistan responded by suspending Simla Agreement and banning overflights of Indian civilian and military aircraft through its airspace. Pakistan warned India that any attempt to block its share of water from the three western rivers will be an "act of war", adding that it was prepared to respond, “with full force across the complete spectrum of national power”. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country, as is India. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine calls for the use of nuclear weapons if its national existence is threatened by any country.
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| Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati |
The Indian mainstream media has amplified the Modi government's propaganda and abandoned its role of asking the hard questions to get at the truth. Among the few who have raised serious doubts about Delhi's narrative is a Hindu religious leader named Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati. In a viral video, the holy man has asked the following questions:
1. Shouldn't our "chowkidar" (Modi has called himself chowkidar in the past) be held accountable for any attacks on our home?
2. How did the attackers manage to come in, carry out the attack without any resistance and safely escape?
3. How did you so quickly determine that the attackers came from Pakistan? And if you are so good at reaching this conclusion so quickly, why were you unable to stop the attack in the first place.
4. Can India really cut off water flow instantly to Pakistan to "punish" it? Experts say it will take at least 20 years if India allocated unlimited funds to make it happen as fast as possible. It will require building dams, water reservoirs and canals to divert the water from Pakistan.
Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi sees the hand of "Indian deep state" at work in Pahalgam, carried out while the US Vice President JD Vance in India. Sethi recalls what former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote in her memoirs titled "Mighty Almighty" about the killing of 35 Sikh villagers in Kashmir that India blamed on Pakistan during US President Bill Clinton's India visit in March, 2000. She said Clinton suspected the hand of Hindu extremists in the Chittisinghpura incident. She quoted him saying that if he hadn’t made the trip, the victims would have still been alive.
Among the Indian journalists, only Bharat Bhushan has raised some questions about his country's government narrative. He thinks India violated the back-channel agreement between Modi's NSA Ajit Doval and Pakistan's then NSA Moeed Yusuf reached after 2019 to spare the civilians on both sides in any proxy attacks. Bhushan points out a warning from Lt General Ahmad Sharif that “the (Jaafar Express) train attack (in Balochistan) has changed the rule of the game”.
Bhushan's op ed mentions Modi's muscular policy toward people he sees as "terrorists". Canada, Pakistan and the United States have all accused the Indian government of a campaign of international assassinations. He writes: "Another development has been the targeted killings of terrorists and militants — both Kashmir and Sikhs, that Pakistan alleges have been initiated by Indian intelligence agencies after the Pulwama terrorist strike in 2019 when 40 paramilitary personnel were killed. India was allegedly inspired to undertake extra-judicial killings on foreign soil, from the example of Russia’s KGB, Israel’s Mossad, and the assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia".
Bhushan concludes his Op Ed in Deccan Herald as follows: "How will India react now to what it believes to be Pakistan-sponsored terrorism? The bravado about punishing every terrorist act with greater-than-expected force is not going to be easy to put in action. Geopolitical circumstances have changed since 2019. Public sentiment cannot be the sole basis of military strikes. Thankfully, no crucial election is in the offing where assuaging public emotions becomes an issue. India will also have to provide proof to the world that Pakistan was indeed involved. This would require the arrest and questioning of the terrorists involved. That may take time. Only the tacit approval of the US can ensure that a strike against Pakistan does not spin out of control".
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16 comments:
It is natural to defend your country you immigrated from.based on bias. I watched the by Najam sethi and his body language and the repeat ed use of the catchphrase Deep state as a result he appears non credible.
Ajit Duvals interview indicates Indian intelligence does collect information across the line of control via human intelligence
Swami Saraswati is often quoted as his view differs from the administration historically.However his claim for the need of accountability and lack of adequate security are valid.
That Killing of innocent individual tourists is against the basic teachings of the Quran and hence should be condemned by all Muslims and those who did this act should be brought to Justice. It is an indefensible act. .
The question is not which Muslim to blame and was he Pakistani or Kashmiri , these individuals need to be brought to justice cooperatively by both governments.As far s this act is concerned I would not consider them as followers of Islam but terrorists. BBC uses a softer term Militants.
The question besides delivering Justice how one de-escalate the current situation before more innocent people get killed , civilians or soldiers.
No one wants an escalation to lead to the Nuclear option.Look forward to listening to solutions from you as a Senior member of the community.
PD: "It is natural to defend your country you immigrated from.based on bias"
I am not defending any country or person; I'm simply asking the questions.
These questions need to be answered.
Pakistan has offered to participate in an independent international investigation of the attack.
India should agree to it if it has nothing to hide.
Why not be creative?
Why not a large reward on both sides of the border for information leading to conviction?
PD: "Why not a large reward on both sides of the border for information leading to conviction?"
Won’t work.
There’s absolutely no trust between the two sides.
Only a third party that can be trusted by both sides has the potential to resolve it.
For any conspiracy theorist who thinks the Pahalgam attack must have been a "false flag operation" staged by the Indian establishment, I would point out three facts which makes it look unlikely.
One, despite what Pakistanis may think, the attack doesn't serve Modi's political objectives in Kashmir or anywhere else. For the past several years after the abrogation of Article 370, Modi government has been hyping how they have pacified Kashmir and how the situation in the territory is safe and "normal" enough for people to visit, settle and invest in. Now all that years of PR work has effectively gone up in smoke with this one attack. Additionally, Modi has been preparing to inaugurate the much-hyped rail link to the Kashmir valley some time this year to trumpet it as his personal achievement in integrating Kashmir to the rest of India, but now the opening of that rail line is likely to get delayed as well as a result of this attack.
Second, the attackers clearly seem to have targeted only men while sparing women and children. Had this attack been staged by the Indian "deep state" (or whatever) to inflame passions and to demonize Kashmiri militancy and Pakistan, it clearly makes no sense for the attackers to display such "chivalry". The attack would have looked even more dastardly and inhuman to the Indians themselves and the outside world had the women and children been gunned down as well.
Thirdly, while India has accused Pakistan of directing the attacks in Kashmir and of infiltrating militants (just as Pakistan accuses India of directing attacks staged by Baloch militants), several of the Pahalgam attackers have been clearly identified by the Indian authorities as native Kashmiris themselves and their houses have been reportedly demolished. Had this been a false flag operation, wouldn't it have made more sense for Indian govt to simply pretend that the attackers were Pakistanis who sneaked across the border?
So, clearly this no "false flag operation" and it is evidently the work of Kashmiri militants. To what extent Pakistan may be involved in directing the attack and what evidence India has to back up that accusation is the question.
In any case, I too consider the beating of war drums as an over-reaction. If Pakistani security establishment has indeed been responsible for ordering the Pahalgam attack through its Kashmiri militant proxies to avenge the Jaffar train hijacking or other militant attacks in Balochistan, India could pay back the favour in the same kind with far less risk and expense. Moreover, I see the unilateral suspension of IWT by the Indian side as an effective, long-term response that might induce the Pakistani establishment to rethink its priorities and introspect whether any long-term enmity with India over Kashmir is serving Pakistan's interest. Though India at present does not have any infrastructure in place to throttle the flow of western rivers in the Indus system (other than a few run-of-the-river hydel projects), the "suspension" of IWT would create an uncertainity about what the Indian govt might choose to do in the future as it no longer considers itself bound to the treaty. (Modi govt has reportedly decided to raise the height of dams in the western rivers and increase their capacity to hold water.)
But then, it must also be noted that they did not actually pull India out of the treaty. The "suspension" serves a warning - a warning that what was considered sacrosanct in the past is no longer so. But the "suspension" is also an offer for back channel dialogue that India can restore its cooperation in IWT if Pakistan agrees to stop this proxy war game in Kashmir once and for all. (And, of course, India could return the favour by withdrawing any support that Pakistan accuses the country of giving Baloch militants.)
There was an article published in NYT couple of days ago by their correspondent in Delhi. According to the article Indian Government gave a brief to foreign diplomats but didn't provide any proof. When asked for the proof they just said it is pattern. To that a diplomat said that you want to start a war based on past pattern?
I don't think anyone is taking it seriously in Pakistan (or internationally). Also, from what I have read so far India does not have the capability to stop the water.
G. Ali
G Ali,
- "To that a diplomat said that you want to start a war based on past pattern?"
I would second that. It makes no sense to start a mutually destructive war over this. But my expectation (and hope) is that what we are witnessing now is merely posturing to ratchet up pressure on each other and that neither side actually wants war.
- "Also, from what I have read so far India does not have the capability to stop the water."
At present, yes. But then, Pakistan has always expressed concerns about the designs of the "run-of-the-river" hydel projects that India has constructed on the western rivers that has the potential to alter or reduce water flows to Pakistan. Now that Indian govt considers IWT to be in "abeyance", it could possibly modify these hydel projects or build new dams which could give it ability to "throttle" water flows to Pakistan at will. This would create an uncertainity for Pakistani communities downstream who depend on these waters.
Excerpts of NY Times story on Pahalgam:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/world/asia/india-pakistan-kashmir.html
In the briefings to diplomats at the foreign ministry, Indian officials have described Pakistan’s past patterns of support for terrorist groups targeting India, diplomatic officials said. The Indian officials have said their investigation is continuing, and made brief references to technical intelligence tying the perpetrators of last week’s attack to Pakistan, including facial recognition data.
The lack of strong evidence offered so far, analysts and diplomats said, pointed to one of two possibilities: that India needs more time to gather information about the terrorist attack before striking Pakistan, or that — in a time of particular chaos on the world stage — it feels little need to justify to anyone the actions it plans to take.
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The lack of clarity may help explain why India has pointed largely to Pakistan’s past support of terrorism in Kashmir to make its case for a military reprisal now. But that approach, before India has laid out its evidence even in private diplomatic discussions, has raised some eyebrows considering the gravity of the escalation. One diplomat privately wondered: Do you want to go to war with a nuclear-armed neighbor based just on past patterns?
Fidato
@tequieremos
Barkha I’ll tell you with an example why the world doesn’t take India’s allegations seriously:
After the Samjhauta Express bombing in 2007 which killed 68 people, India immediately blamed ISI without an evidence. However, at the first Indo-Pak meeting of the Joint Terror…
https://x.com/tequieremos/status/1916063639834137023
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barkha dutt
@BDUTT
Am truly shocked by the marginal, virtually non coverage of the Pahalgam Terror attack in the American media , ignorance, insularity and self obsession-hence even tougher to take huffy puffy op-eds on India seriously. They just don’t get us.
https://x.com/BDUTT/status/1915554121752735803
The Pahalgam Tragedy...
So the "story" is as follows:
3 militants, armed with weapons and a huge amount of ammunition, cross the world's most militarized border, where there are several waves of barbed wire equipped with electric current, state-of-the-art motion sensors that detect the movement of even a bird or a mouse and immediately give an alarm signal to all the surrounding military posts, a sea of high-resolution security cameras and landmines, watchtowers equipped with snipers 24 hours a day, round-the-clock patrolling by special forces troops and constant drone surveillance... Somehow these 3 militants dodged all this and entered the occupied territory from the free country!!
Now...
The distance from the border to Pahalgam is about 400 kilometers!
There are at least two hundred military check posts in these four hundred kilometers, on every path, every road, every square, every corner... These check posts are equipped with the latest detectors that even if a person has a nail cutter in his pocket, it will be detected in a moment... But these 3 gentlemen, somehow or other, bypassed these hundreds of check posts and reached the resort track.
The climb of this track is hundreds of feet long... Somehow, they hid their guns and all their belongings in their clothes and climbed the entire track...
Dozens of security personnel are deployed at the resort. In their presence, they attacked the tourists... And... After that, they disappeared as if they had worn the Soleimani cap of Umar Ayyar...
Amit Shah and Ajit Doval... The script of this false flag, written by the children of some bhang-fed khoti, is so weak that even a fifth-grade child would not believe it.... I would have written a better script than this... Hopefully, the film that Bollywood will make on this tragedy will be written by a servant's child.
Roomah, well said.
I was having a discussion with a friend from occupied Kashmir and he said the same thing, that the area is highly fortified so how did incident happen?.
G. Ali
Roomah Rajput,
It would seem you have little idea about the geography of LoC in Kashmir. The border in Kashmir is hard to guard against infiltration with its mountains, ravines, rivers and forests. There are only limited areas that can be fenced, and then there are cross-border tunnels that has often been uncovered by Indian forces from time to time. Low flying drones can deliver weapons and ammunition at night. (Many such have been reportedly shot down by Indian forces in the past.) So, there are still plenty of ways for Pakistan to infiltrate weapons and men into the valley evading the patrols and any surveillance systems.
Also, you don't need a "huge amount of ammunition" or heavy weapons to shoot dead unarmed tourists. All the weapons and ammunition that is need for such an attack can be easily carried by one person or delivered by a drone.
- "Dozens of security personnel are deployed at the resort. In their presence, they attacked the tourists..."
The tourists and other eye-witnesses who were at the site of the attack have confirmed there were no security personnel deployed there. It took time for them to arrive after the attack as the area cannot be reached by road.
Read my earlier post above and see for yourself why your insinuations that this is a "false flag operation" that was staged to blame Pakistan make zero sense. The attack comes at a high cost for Modi's political interests in Kashmir and there are no elections anytime soon in India to justify it. There was no reason for the attackers to display "chivalry" by sparing women and children had they been directed by the Indian security establishment. And several of the attackers have been identified by Indian authorities as native Kashmiri men, not Pakistanis. And now by mentioning the distance of Pahalgam from LoC, you have pointed out to me a fourth reason as well. If all that the Indian government wanted to do was to stage an attack and blame Pakistan, wouldn't it have made more sense to stage it somewhere closer to the LoC where claims of militants sneaking across the border and attacking unsuspecting civilians would have been more believable?
Now there are also reports that another tourist visiting the Betaab valley (also near the site of the attack) a few days earlier had inadvertently captured the visuals of suspected attackers, likely scouting locations to stage the attack.
No one in India denies that there has been an intelligence failure in anticipating this attack, not even the Modi govt. Kashmiri administration reportedly opened the site for tourists without informing the security forces. The fact that the site is located so far from the LoC may have made them downplay chances of an attack there. Also, there are many sleeper cells of militants active in the valley many of whom have sneaked across the LoC both ways for training and staging attacks. Even with its greater patrolling, Indian military has not been able to stop all of it though there have been frequent news reports of security forces battling infiltration attempts.
G Ali,
- "I was having a discussion with a friend from occupied Kashmir and he said the same thing, that the area is highly fortified so how did incident happen?"
Which area are you referring to? The site of the attack in Baisaran valley? The tourists who escaped the attack have confirmed that there was no deployment of security forces in that area. In fact, the attackers may have chosen that site for precisely the same reason. No one including the state administration may have anticipated an attack to happen there.
Now that Modi govt has reportedly given "operational freedom" to its military to strike as per its convenience, and Pakistan Info minister has talked of "credible intelligence" of an Indian strike in the "next 24-36 hours", I sincerely hope the worst case scenario would be an Indian strike on an empty or disused Pakistani facility (say Gwadar port or airport?) and a Pakistani counter-strike on a similar empty Indian facility so that both sides can claim victory by giving "befitting responses" to each other and then go back to their daily business.
(And I wish and hope that the Indian side has learnt its lessons from the events of 2019.)
From The Economist:
India must prove Pakistan’s complicity in the attack in Kashmir
It would then have every right to strike back
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/04/29/india-must-prove-pakistans-complicity-in-the-attack-in-kashmir
Indian government Bans 4PM YouTube News Channel Citing National Security Threat, Founder Calls It Murder of Democracy
https://www.thequint.com/news/india/4pm-youtube-channel-ban-india-national-security-sanjay-sharma-pahalgam-press-freedom
YouTube news channel '4 PM,' with 7.3 million subscribers, was banned on Tuesday, April 29, following an order issued by the Indian government citing 'national security or public order.'
A message on the 4PM YouTube page now reads: 'This content is currently unavailable in this country due to an order from the government related to national security or public order.'
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'May be Due to Pahalgam Videos'
Speaking to The Quint, Sharma claimed that while no detailed explanation has been provided by the government yet, he suspects that the recent videos on the channel about the Pahalgam attacks may be the reason.
Since the April 22 attack, several videos on the channel have been critical of the government, with some featuring captions like 'Laal kaaleen par Amit Shah ka swaagat. Mritakon ko shraddhanjali dene gaye the ya tamasha banaane?' (Amit Shah welcomed on a red carpet. Was he there to offer condolences to the dead or to put up a show?) and 'Sindhu samjhauta todne ki hawabzi ko lekar phas gaye Modi, Pakistan ko paani kam nahi, zyada mil raha hai' (PM Modi faffing about the Indus water treaty, Pakistan is getting more water, not less)."
Sharma added that he did not receive any prior notice, and the authorities did not flag any specific video as a 'threat to security.'
"We don't make videos against our country. Our nation is our first priority. The only thing we did was ask questions about the Pahalgam attack. Why was there no security at the time of the attack? Why were tourists allowed in Baisaran Valley? These are reasonable questions and should be asked," Sharma told The Quint.
In a statement posted on X, Sharma had earlier called the move an attack on the freedom of the press.
'Under the pretext of national security, the government is trying to curb a strong voice of democracy,' he wrote. 'Modi is not the country. Questioning the government should not be a crime. In a democracy, we have the right to raise our voices.'"
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During the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, the channel was briefly taken down for four to five days, but legal proceedings ultimately ruled in its favor, he said.
"As you can see, this is not the first time this has happened. I have always been a target for the government, and they have repeatedly launched investigations against me. My channel is one of the biggest political commentators, and the fact that we run it from Uttar Pradesh is something the government cannot digest."
Sanjay Sharma, Editor-in-Chief of 4PM
When asked if he plans to take any legal action, Sharma said, "I have written an email to both the Ministry and YouTube, asking which video they deemed to be a security threat. I would have taken corrective action had we been informed, but the government decided to proceed arbitrarily without providing any prior notice."
"We have a population of 140 crores. Shouldn't we question the government if we have any security concerns? Isn't it our responsibility to ask why there wasn't any security in Pahalgam? Asking questions is not a national security threat; it's the opposite of that."
Meanwhile, Sharma has said that the channel will continue operating through its regional platforms and has urged people to subscribe to them.
The ban on 4PM marks the second major digital takedown in 48 hours. This comes a day after the Indian government blocked 16 Pakistani YouTube channels, including Dawn and Geo News, for allegedly spreading false narratives about the Pahalgam terror attack and India's military response.
Earlier, the government also issued a notice to BBC India regarding its 'incorrect' terminology that referred to the Pahalgam terrorists as 'militants.'
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