OPED By: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
Based on a recent statement by Arvind Kejriwal, a corruption-plagued leader and intimate friend of India’s enemies, Pakistan’s leading English-language daily, The Dawn, has published an article by Jawed Naqvi. Through this article, the newspaper has notoriously attempted to demonize India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and Bangladesh.
The article begins by quoting Kejriwal: “India once used to give the world lessons on democracy, but under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it has been ‘reduced’ to “imitating detractors of democracy” in Pakistan, Russia, and Bangladesh, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.”
Then it goes further by stating, “Kejriwal claims that Modi is ‘losing the election.’ “Should he win by any chance, he would have stolen a leaf from President Vladimir Putin, who has jailed his opponents to win with a huge margin.”
Arvind Kejriwal has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin by, saying, “He ‘locked up’ various political opponents and killed others to score high at the hustings.”
Terming Pakistan’s pro-jihad and anti-Semite politician Imran Khan as “the tallest leader of Pakistan,” Kejriwal said Khan “was jailed by his opponents to contrive his defeat.”
Arvind Kejriwal similarly accused Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of “jailing political opponents to steal the election.”
Whilst pointing to opposition ‘INDIA’ alliance leaders, Kejriwal said, “If he wins, Modi will definitely jail Udhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar, among others.”
Kejriwal further said, “The dictatorship that is going on in our country is not acceptable. India has never seen such a period in the past 75 years, putting opposition leaders in jail”. He further claimed that Narendra Modi’s government was “harassing leader of Indian National Congress, Mamata Banerjee’s TMP Party and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin’s DMK”.
He said, “Put everyone in jail. Then only one party and one leader will remain, but democracy will not survive. We do not have to let this happen”.
It may be mentioned here that, following the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002, Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey, a member of Al Qaeda-connected Bangladesh Nationalist Party and a so-called journalist asked US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, “What is your response to India’s summoning of the US diplomat over comments regarding the arrest of Delhi’s Chief Minister Kejriwal, and how do you view the recent political turmoil in India, including the freezing of the opposition party’s bank account? As Amnesty International described the situation, “Crackdown on opposition reaches a crisis point ahead of national elections.”
In response, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “We continue to follow these actions closely, including the arrest of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. We are also aware of the Congress party’s allegations that tax authorities have frozen some of their bank accounts in a manner that will make it challenging to effectively campaign in the upcoming elections. We encourage fair, transparent, and timely legal processes for each of these issues. With respect to your first question, I’m not going to talk about any private diplomatic conversations, but of course, what we have said publicly is what I just said from here, that we encourage fair, transparent, timely legal processes. We don’t think anyone should object to that”.
This particular incident had evidently proved a deep-rooted connection between Arvind Kejriwal and ultra-Islamist forces as well as the Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). Now, through the latest article in a Pakistani newspaper, Kejriwal’s secret romance with Pakistan is once again proven.
Meanwhile, the British newspaper The Guardian has published a lengthy article targeting India’s Internal Affairs Minister Amit Shah. The article states, “For 40 years, Amit Shah has been at Narendra Modi’s side—his confidant, consigliere and enforcer. Today, he is India’s second-most powerful man, and he is reshaping the country in radical ways.”
In April, prior to the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, The Guardian published an editorial titled ‘Fixing a win by outlawing dissent damages democracy,’ where it said, “The world’s largest elections begin this weekend in India, amid claims that the race to lead the country has already been won. If Narendra Modi were to secure a third term with a big parliamentary majority, his achievement would match that of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Whatever the outcome, the loser has been Indian democracy. Unlike Mr. Nehru, who anonymously criticized his own leadership, Mr. Modi has little time for his opponents.
“Democracies run best when there is a contest of ideas and equal treatment of citizens in everyday administration. These are in short supply in Modi’s India. The main opposition Congress party found its bank accounts frozen. It can’t be a coincidence that all the leading Indian politicians arrested by enforcement and tax authorities belong to the opposition and none to the ruling party. Weaponizing India’s prosecutorial apparatus seems unnecessary, as Mr. Modi can massively outspend his rivals. Since 2018, Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has received about £1.25 bn from wealthy donors, more than all other political parties combined”.
After reading this editorial, anyone can understand the ulterior agenda of the British daily. It wanted to achieve two goals with a single shot – spread dirt on India’s democracy and portray Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a cruel dictator.
For British and Western media, such attempts are nothing new. For years, there has been continuous propaganda targeting Mr. Modi and the BJP. And of course, it is not difficult to understand that the Indian National Congress has been behind such anti-India propaganda. Rahul Gandhi has been doing this through his PR agencies in the West.
If we carefully scrutinize the ongoing anti-India propaganda in the British, American as well as Pakistani media – we can easily understand the degree of desperation of those hostile forces, which are attempting to plant their subservient elements such as Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and others with the notorious agenda of turning India into a vessel state. Patriotic forces in India need to confront this conspiracy in unison.
- Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is an internationally acclaimed multi-award-winning journalist, writer, research scholar, counterterrorism specialist, and Editor, Blitz, a newspaper publishing from Bangladesh since 2003. He regularly writes for local and international newspapers. Follow him on X @Salah_Shoaib
- Views personal of the author.