Pakistan should face reality

“I can think of nothing more gallant, even though again and again we fail; attempting to tell things as they really are, for at least reality, though never fully attained, can be defined. Reality is that which, when you don’t believe in it, does not go away” said late poet, Peter Viereck.

How true this sounds when applied to the United Nations in general and Pakistan in particular. India has been telling the world how obnoxious Pakistan’s terror policy is and how it is damning the peace all around it in the company and blessings of China.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s, befitting reply to the Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi who sought to defend his country with the usual litany of lies, put things in perspective as never before. In response to India’s argument, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi sounded familiar in re-enacting the straw man fallacy - that India is the mother of all terror in the world.

The failure of Pakistan to address the real problem is deeply rooted in its military-ISI nexus which dictates its internal and external policies. As Sushma Swaraj rightly pointed out, Pakistan has never focused on its independence and the needs of its people and has never tried to develop healthy and democratic institutions in the country for its own benefit. Instead, being consumed by limitless hatred it keeps targeting India and its people.

Sushma raised few relevant questions. Why has not our neighbour built institutions like IITs IIMs or ISRO? What prevents it from following a developmental trajectory? Why create schools of terror and nurture the young only to send them on missions that result in death? The al Qaida, Taliban, JeM, LeT...and their endless branches with different nomenclature...what do they tell the world? These tell-tale evidence exposes the hollowness of Pakistan’s misadventures and yet it has the cheek to call India, the land of Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi and of countless saints and philosophers who gave the human beings the concept of ‘Vasudhaivaka Kutumbakam’, the mother of all terror.

Instead of answering the questions, our neighbour uses the cliched arguments on Kashmir forgetting its own repression in PoK. Envy, malice, wrath, revenge, devour their hearts by not getting vent and restrain the minds of Pakistan’s rulers (with or without uniform) from sending any positive vibes to the world. Pakistan should introspect without venom why the country was maimed into two and remember its brutalities in the then East Pakistan which saw at one time, more than two lakh killed heartlessly by its forces during 1969-70 alone that led to the birth of Bangladesh.

Why seethe against India? In addition, it prefers to mislead the world with a Gaza girl’s picture to prove its point! Did Pakistan every publish a book with the title ‘The Age of Reasoning’. Or is it handing down to its generations only books titled ‘Age of Hatred’, ‘Age of Horror’, ‘Age of Politics and Murder’, ‘The Strategy of Terror’ or ‘The Age of Terror’. As Sushma aptly called it, Pakistan should rename itself ‘Terroristan’! Will the UN realise the truth ever and act against it?