India, Pakistan trade words over which country is ‘normal’

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 5

India and Pakistan are currently engaged in a verbal battle over which country could be defined as “normal”.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar had on Friday wondered whether Pakistan was a “normal” country after his attention was drawn to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s call for a jihad and his comments on a march from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to the Line of Control.

“We have been saying that Pakistan and its leaders should behave like a normal neighbouring country. They usually do not do that. We don’t expect that but sometimes we do that since we are neighbours. As far as their call of violating some other country’s territorial integrity is concerned, it does not behove the office he holds,’’ Raveesh Kumar had said.

The MEA has made the questioning of Pakistan as a normal country a part of its verbal armoury after the change in status of J&K and the lockdown since August 5.

But Raveesh Kumar rubbed it in for the second time by observing that Imran Khan might not be aware of how international relations are conducted. “On that basis, he gives such statements. He had given an open call for Jihad against India. This is not normal behavior,’’ he had said.

Pakistan has responded by questioning India’s “pretentions of casting itself as a ‘normal’ country’’ when the international community would like to ask as to what “normal country cages 8 million people’’….“what normal country provides space and political patronage to the perpetrators of mob lynchings by cow vigilantes and repugnant schemes like gharwapsi and love Jihad?

“India would be well-advised to keep its lectures on diplomacy and normality to itself. All we would like to stress is, ‘Physician, heal thyself!’,” a statement from the Pakistan Foreign Office said.

Pakistan also said it would continue to occupy the oppositional space on the Indian reorganisation of J&K by stating that it “is part of our international obligations and our moral responsibility to the Kashmiri victims of Indian repression. If India feels provoked, it is only because India is unwilling to face the truth about its indefensible actions that are driven by the toxic mix of an extremist ideology and hegemonic ambitions”.