Four Pakistan functionaries have made irresponsible statements and must be addressed:

1. Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan has said that India wants to invade Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This is a blatant lie as it is an open secret that India has no designs on POK and wants to convert the Line of Control into an international border. The Musharrafian peace accord that Musharraf came close to clinching with Manmohan Singh was based on this understanding.

Pakistan has made numerous reorganizations to POK, which have been met with barely a whimper in New Delhi. It has even ceded POK territory to China to circumvent India and build a fine highway, the Karakoram Highway, linking Pakistan and China directly. India has never threatened war in response to any of Pakistan’s moves in POK.

2. Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Asad Khan, in an interview with the US board has said that the Kashmir and Afghanistan issues were separate and that he was not trying to link them. But he has said that the Afghan peace talks, which are in their end stages, could be jeopardized because Pakistan might have to move troops from its western front bordering Afghanistan to its eastern front flanking India.

India is not threatening any war on Pakistan’s eastern front. India has just reorganized its own internal territory, Jammu & Kashmir. It is Pakistan that wants war over India’s internal issues. And how facetious can the ambassador be? He says there is no linkage between Afghanistan and Kashmir, yet in the same breath, he is saying there is a linkage. US-based newspaper editorial board might be gullible enough to believe him but not the American analyst, Christine Fair, who knows the Pakistani double game well.

Fair says that the Pakistanis lie so much that they even forget when they are lying.

3. Pakistani information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, has asked Punjabis serving in the Indian military to mutiny. By Punjabis, he purportedly means Sikhs and has ignored the fact that many Punjabis are in fact Hindu.

During Partition, Sikhs of Punjab slaughtered so many Muslims in what came to be known as the Punjabi Genocide that Pakistan took the matter to the UN. Yet, since 1971, Pakistanis are trying to separate Sikhs from India. Pakistan’s evil ruler, Zia ul-Haq, aided and abetted the Khalistan movement in India in the eighties, which resulted in much bloodshed and rancour in the country. Yet, Sikhs and Hindus made up and are now living peacefully, in their roti-beti (eating together-intermarrying) relationship.

There is little to no roti-beti relationship between Muslims and Sikhs or between Muslims and Hindus, although for the most part all of these communities live harmoniously in India.

Now the Pakistanis are baiting Sikhs with the Kartarpur corridor. Kartarpur is one of the holiest shrines in Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak, who is revered by many Hindus too. India must be alive to the new Khalistani tricks that Pakistan is up to in Kartarpur.

4. Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad, Pakistan’s minister of railways, has just said that he’s the voice of Indian Muslims. Sheikh Rashid is an abominable man who holds a responsible post. Many Muslim personalities in India such as Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Javed Akhtar, who have the love of all of India’s people, seldom hesitate to raise their voice against “intolerance” in India but more often than not do not counter war-mongering noises emanating from Pakistan.

By behaving so, they weaken Hindu liberal voices in India who support them and strengthen the rightwing, who often likes to paint then as a “fifth column” for Pakistan. Why doesn’t some of this Muslim elite come forward and tell Pakistan to stop interfering in India’s internal affairs and to cut out the scaremongering?

Indian cabinet minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Punjab’s chief minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh, have slammed Fawad Choudhry for his incitement of the Indian military. When will Shah and Azmi and Co. also tell Pakistan in clearcut terms to leave India’s Muslims, including those of Jammu Kashmir, alone?

India’s PM, Narendra Modi, is a sagacious man and he knows what has to be done to lead the country in an affable, pleasant and harmonious way. He didn’t cause Pulwama. Pakistan did. He responded with Balakot. Pakistan responded with Rajouri. Modi could have taken another swing at Pakistan, but refrained. He knows when to stop.

But Pakistan doesn’t. The whole world has spurned Pakistan over Jammu & Kashmir. Most galling must have been the cut rendered by its Muslim ally, the United Arab Emirates, which called J&K an internal affair of India. Not gaining any traction with the world, Pakistan’s leaders, including its PM and army chief, are threatening nuclear war and inciting India’s Sikhs and Muslims to insurrect.

Shame on you, Pakistan.