By Uzma Ehtasham
Foreign Office has issued an unusually blunt rebuttal to recent remarks by India’s external affairs minister, framing them not as routine diplomatic sparring but as part of a familiar pattern of deflection. According to Islamabad, New Delhi’s invocation of “bad neighbors” is less a reflection on regional realities than an attempt to obscure its own conduct, both at home and beyond its borders. It is a charge that goes to the heart of a wider and increasingly uncomfortable debate about India’s role as a regional power and the gap between its democratic self-image and the realities unfolding under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
At the center of Pakistan’s response is the argument that India has persistently sought to externalize blame for instability in South Asia while avoiding scrutiny of its own actions. The foreign office pointedly recalled the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a serving Indian naval officer arrested in Pakistan in 2016 and accused of espionage and sabotage. For Islamabad, Jadhav’s arrest was not an aberration but evidence of a systematic policy of interference that contradicts India’s public posture as a victim of cross-border terrorism. The insistence that such cases be treated as isolated incidents, Pakistan argues, no longer withstands serious examination.
This line of argument reflects a broader frustration in Islamabad with what it sees as an asymmetry in international responses. Allegations against Pakistan, often based on intelligence claims or media reporting, have historically prompted swift diplomatic pressure. By contrast, Pakistan contends, documented cases implicating Indian actors in destabilizing activities are met with silence or studied ambiguity. That imbalance, the foreign office suggests, has encouraged a sense of impunity and reinforced a narrative in which power and perception matter more than consistency or evidence.
Yet the statement went beyond the familiar terrain of regional security and counter-allegation. It drew attention to developments within India itself, painting a picture of a society growing more polarized and less secure for its minorities. Under Modi’s leadership, Pakistan argued, India has witnessed a sharp rise in violence and discrimination against Muslims and Christians, alongside reports of forced conversions and attacks on places of worship. These trends, it said, sit uneasily with India’s claim to democratic exceptionalism and raise questions about the ideological direction of the state.
The foreign office cited reporting by the Wall Street Journal noting that the Indian government failed to condemn a series of attacks on Christians during the Christmas period. Silence, in such circumstances, is rarely neutral. Critics argue that it can be read as tacit approval, or at least as a signal to extremist groups that there will be little political cost for violence carried out in the name of majoritarian identity. When the state appears reluctant to defend its most vulnerable citizens, the damage extends beyond individual communities to the credibility of democratic institutions themselves.
Adding to this unease are revelations from within India’s own media landscape. Investigative reporting by the publication The Commune has highlighted cases in which individuals holding fake degrees were able to secure US visas, alongside wider concerns about India’s emergence as a hub for human trafficking, financial fraud and other illicit activities. Taken together, these reports challenge the narrative of a rapidly modernizing state governed by transparency and the rule of law. They suggest instead a system strained by corruption, ideological capture and weak accountability.
Pakistan insists that raising these issues is not an exercise in rhetorical escalation but a reflection of evidence that is increasingly difficult to dismiss. International institutions, independent journalists and civil society voices within India itself have documented many of the trends now under discussion. What is changing, Islamabad argues, is not the substance of the problem but the scale of its consequences. Policies rooted in exclusion and coercion rarely remain confined within national borders. Their destabilizing effects, whether through regional tensions, transnational crime or ideological radicalization, tend to travel.
The appeal to the international community that concludes Pakistan’s statement is therefore framed less as a diplomatic plea than as a warning. Major powers and multilateral organizations, it argues, must recognize that continued indulgence of India’s trajectory carries risks that extend well beyond South Asia. Stability built on selective blindness is fragile, and the longer warning signs are ignored, the more costly any eventual correction is likely to be.
For years, India has benefited from a strategic consensus that views it primarily through the lens of economic opportunity and geopolitical utility. Pakistan’s intervention seeks to disrupt that consensus by insisting on a fuller accounting, one that includes uncomfortable questions about internal repression, regional conduct and the erosion of democratic norms. Whether the international community is prepared to engage with those questions remains uncertain. What is clearer is that the costs of avoidance are rising, and that the language of deflection can no longer easily conceal the realities it seeks to escape.
(The writer is a public health professional, journalist, and possesses expertise in health communication, having keen interest in national and international affairs, can be reached at uzma@metro-morning.com)
