One of the main purposes behind a false-flag operation, as India conducted at Phulgam, is to convince world public opinion that it is acting rightly, rather righteously. That it has failed to do so has become evident from the reaction even of those it had thought of as its friends. India would probably have wished for at least its friends to have rushed to join its accusations of Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism and for fomenting the attack. It has not even been met by any expressions of doubt. Indeed, its diplomats can probably congratulate themselves on India not having been called out, so obvious a farrago of falsehoods and tissue of lies it has tried to present. The FIR of the attack has shown how blatantly false the Indian narrative is.
US President Donald Trump’s reaction perhaps shows that India might well have cried ‘wolf!’ once too often. Though his comment did seems than the seriousness of the situation warranted, his comment that India and Pakistan would ‘figure out the rising tensions. His comment that the two countries have been clashing over Kashmir for 1000 years shows how badly he garbles history., but it is of no help to India, which had been counting on his special rapport with Indian PM Narendra Modi, his use of India as a regional counterweight to China, and the fact that Trump’s Vice-President JD Vance, was on a family visit to India at the time of the attack. The involvement of Iran and Saudi Arabia, who have both offered to mediate, also indicates that the world is aware that India has tried to blame Pakistan for its own failure in security, as it has done frequently in the past.
However, just because Indian diplomats the world over are busy tripping over their own feet does not mean that Pakistan should not conduct a diplomatic offensive to convince the world that India should not be allowed to get away with launching a war scare every few years. India should not be allowed to use its and Pakistan’s being nuclear-armed to scare the whole world. The assumption that India is a large market has allowed it to unjustly maintain its grip on Kashmir, and now it is being used to enable it to browbeat Pakistan directly. It should not be forgotten, meanwhile, that the nation has to deal with an India which has elected since 2014 a party upholding the Hindutva doctrine, which is inimically opposed to Pakistan.
