India has intensified proxy-war, says Munir as Baloch rebels hit Pak forces hard
Munir claimed that "India's actions" were a response to its "defeat in the Marka-e-Haq", framing age-old unrest in the restive province as an orchestrated conspiracy.Munir's rhetoric echoes a statement by the Director General of ISPR, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, who headed Pakistan's disinformation campaign against India's Operation Sindoor and is the son of a nuclear scientist who tried to hand over nuclear weapons technology to al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was "the chief financier behind attacks like the Jaffar Express bombing in March 2025".The Pakistan Army and its chief Asim Munir's familiar tune of branding terrorists as "Indian proxies" is part of the well-worn playbook the establishment uses to deflect blame on India. Earlier this week, the Pakistani Army, led by Munir, blamed India for a "terrorist attack" in Waziristan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, that killed 16 soldiers. India has swiftly hit back, firmly "rejecting the allegation with the contempt it deserves".BALOCH INSURGENTS RAMP UP ATTACKS ON PAK FORCESThe Baloch Liberation Army and other armed insurgent groups, fighting for an independent Balochistan, have intensified their campaign against Pakistani forces, with Balochis even raising the flag of freedom in defiance.Last week, days before the BLA killed three "death squad" members, it said its fighters killed another operative linked to Pakistan's military-intelligence apparatus.On July 23, BLA insurgents stopped and set fire to a vehicle transporting supplies to a military camp in Balochistan.Around the same time, a powerful blast targeted a railway track in Sibi district, causing damage to the rails and disrupting the Bolan Mail train service, reported The Balochistan Post. Rail operations have since been suspended. Earlier this year, the Bolan Mail was hijacked, with several Pakistan Army and Rangers personnel reportedly on board at the time.advertisementOn May 8, the BLA claimed responsibility for two attacks in Balochistan, killing 14 Pakistani soldiers, including two special operations commanders, using a remote-controlled IED.Coinciding with the surge in attacks on Pakistani forces and infrastructure, there has been a disturbing spike in the forced disappearances of Baloch activists, including elderly people and women, at the hands of state-backed operatives. In one chilling incident, three Baloch men abducted by the death squads were found dead, their faces mutilated with acid beyond recognition.This underscores the growing desperation and brutality of the Pakistani military under Asim Munir in the face of mounting pressure.BLAMING INDIA FOR TERRORISM IS PAK'S OLD TACTICPakistan's accusations against India appear to be a strategic move to externalise its internal security challenges."...In order to divert attention from its reputation as the global epicentre of terrorism and to hide its own gross failings, it has become second nature to Pakistan to blame India for all its internal issues. This attempt to hoodwink the world is doomed to fail," MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on May 21.advertisementThe BLA's increasingly sophisticated attacks, including the 71 coordinated strikes across 51 locations in May, have exposed vulnerabilities in Pakistan's military control over Balochistan. By blaming India, Munir and the establishment aim to rally domestic support and deflect criticism of their failure to address Baloch's grievances over resource exploitation and political marginalisation.The BLA, however, has rejected claims of being an Indian proxy, has asserted its autonomy and accused Pakistan's ISI of fostering terrorism.- EndsMust Watch
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Indian Express
11 minutes ago
- Indian Express
P Chidambaram writes: Military boldness, political timidity
During the debate in both Houses of Parliament last week, the government gave the impression that Operation Sindoor had been finally paused, the goals had been achieved, and it is back to the usual way of doing things. That would be wrong. The truth is, the military was playing a tough game when the civilian government forcibly snatched the ball. Operation Sindoor has busted some myths: that fighting a war against Pakistan will be easy, that India's superiority in conventional war will prevail, and that India has friends and Pakistan none. The military leadership was exemplary. Apparently, they asked for and got operational freedom. The Indian armed forces' first-mover advantage gave them early wins: 9 places that hosted terrorist infrastructure were demolished and several terrorists were killed. However, Pakistan's armed forces quickly recovered. They counter-attacked on May 7-8 using China-made aircraft (J-10), China-made missiles (PL-15) and drones acquired from Türkiye. Realising that 'tactical mistakes' had been made, the military leadership paused the operation and 're-strategised'. That is leadership. It re-launched the Operation on May 9-10, struck at 11 military airbases and severely damaged them. Inevitably, the Indian armed forces suffered some 'losses', and the Chief of Defence Staff and the Deputy Chief of Army Staff admitted the losses. That too is leadership. Contrast the political leadership. It will not admit the mistakes or the losses. Like an ostrich whose head is buried in the sand, it maintains that India scored a 'decisive victory' in Operation Sindoor. If there was a decisive victory, why did India not press its advantage, secure more military gains, and demand and obtain from Pakistan political concessions? Why was the first outreach by the DGMO, Pakistan accepted immediately and without conditions? There were no answers from the government. [A celebrated example of a decisive victory was the surrender of Pakistan's General Niazi to India's Lt General Aurora on December 16, 1971.] Nor will the political leadership acknowledge the reality: Pakistan and China have forged strong military and political bonds. China is supplying new generation fighter aircraft and missiles to Pakistan. Obviously, China was testing its military hardware in a battlefield in a real war. The military bond is visible. On the political front, China's foreign minister Wang Yi praised Pakistan's 'resolute action on terrorism'. China also voted in favour when IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank approved large amounts of loans to Pakistan. The other reality is that Pakistan's (at least the Pakistan military's) bonds with the United States are firmly in place. President Trump invited General Asim Munir, Pakistan's Army Chief, to lunch at the White House, an unprecedented honour to a person who is not Head of State or Head of Government. Mr Trump thanked General Munir 'for not going into the war and ending the war', and gloated again that he had brought about the ceasefire. The Prime Minister and the Home Minister do not miss an opportunity to rebuke the Opposition but dare not rebut or refute President Trump or President Xi or their foreign ministers. The overwhelming reality is that the US and China are on the same page in their support to Pakistan militarily, politically and economically. Keeping aside their differences, the US and China have decided to support and patronise Pakistan. Worse, every country to which India reached out offered sympathy for the victims of the Pahalgam attack and condemned terrorism but did not condemn Pakistan as the perpetrator. India's political leadership refuses to acknowledge the reality and continues to nurture the false belief that Pakistan is friendless and India has friends all over the world. The other delusion of the Indian political leadership is that the 'terror ecosystem' has been smashed in Jammu & Kashmir. The truth is different. Ministry of Home Affairs disclosed to the all-party meeting on April 24, 2025 (immediately after the Pahalgam attack on April 22) that, between June 2014 and May 2024, there were — Undeniably, there were terrorist incidents and casualties in the governments of A B Vajpayee (1998-2004) and Manmohan Singh (2004-2014) as well. The terror ecosystem is populated by Pakistan-based infiltrators and India-based extremists, especially in Kashmir. Often, they work together, strike together and help each other. On April 26, the government demolished several houses in Kashmir of suspected 'terrorists associated with the Pahalgam massacre' — the owners were obviously India-based. In June 2025, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested two Indians for harbouring the suspected terrorists. The suspected terrorists were neutralised on July 27-28 and identified as infiltrators. India-based terrorists have committed terrorist attacks in the past. For example, Mumbai witnessed terror attacks in 2006 (suburban train bomb blasts), 2008 (Tajmahal Hotel) and 2011 (Zaveri Bazaar). The 2006 incident was committed by India-based terrorists, the 2008 attack was by 10 Pakistani infiltrators including Kasab, and the 2011 incident was by India-based terrorists. The government's claim that the terror ecosystem in India has been dismantled is manifestly wrong. The failure of intelligence and the absence of security forces in Pahalgam led to the tragedy. No one in the government has taken responsibility. The military's gains in Operation Sindoor will have a deterrent effect on Pakistan but the political leadership's timidity before the US and China may cancel the gains and give encouragement to Pakistan.
Indian Express
11 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Revisiting Chola grandeur with eyes wide open
Once again, public discourse is abuzz with the legacies of the Cholas — thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Gangaikonda Cholapuram, their erstwhile capital. The Cholas occupy a hallowed space in Indian imagination for their pioneering experiments in democracy, but one needs to look beyond their basilica-like monuments, gilded Natarajas and temple vimanas (the towering structure above the inner sanctum) piercing the skylines of Thanjavur, Gangaikonda Cholapuram, and Darasuram. From an intellectual standpoint, the political rhetoric around the Cholas seems to overshadow the works of historians like K A N Sastri, R C Majumdar, B D Chattopadhyaya, R Champakalakshmi, Ranabir Chakravarti, Y Subbarayalu, Jonathan Heitzman, Hermann Kulke, Tansen Sen, Rakesh Mahalakshmi, Noboru Karashima, Anirudh Kanisetti, etc. Relatively forgotten by nationalists, the Cholas underwent an image makeover around the 1930s. Kanisetti says Sastri and Majumdar found romanticised examples of enlightened Chola imperialism to counter Britain's pride in its Roman past. Unsurprisingly, Kalki Krishnamurthy's novel Ponniyin Selvan (1950-54) edified Chola king Rajaraja I as an amalgamation of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and C Rajagopalachari. While most historians date the Cholas between the 9-13th century, ambitious ones have gone back to the Sangam period (between 350 BC and 1279 AD). In the latter periodisation, the Tamil confederacy was defeated by Kalinga in 155 BC, and re-emerged in 850 AD under Vijayalaya, who, with Pallava approval and Velir solidarity, seized Thanjavur. His grandson Parantaka-I vanquished the Pandyas and Pallavas, before being defeated by the Rashtrakutas. Parantaka's grandson Raja Raja Chola-I and great-grandson Rajendra Chola-I came to personify what made the Chola Empire a subject of unwavering awe — their towering temples, intricate bronzes, maritime prowess and administrative infrastructure. History enthusiasts are generally captivated by Chola polity's three-tiered system, constituted by nadu (supra-village), ur (village) and brahmadeya (Brahminical agrahara) assemblies, with nagarams (merchant-towns) governed by nagarattars. Simultaneously, Chola temples emerged as economic hubs endowed with devadana (land grants), and empowered as rheostats of irrigation and artisanal production. Remarkable as Cholas were in record-keeping — from the minutiae of irrigation-tank maintenance to rice-paddy yields — they were also a regime obsessed with surveillance. Wordy deeds codified brahmadeya, devadana and duties of village assemblies. State-appointed naduvagai ceyvars (accountants) and kankani nayakas (overseers) ensured that communal decisions aligned with royal revenue imperatives. Rigorous audits reviewed revenue targets and exemptions, wherein every remission required centralised ratification. Much euphoria has revolved around the concept of Chola elections by kudavolai (lottery) among the local committees. These offered a democratic veneer, but the franchise remained narrowly circumscribed within clannish coteries, while state commissioners retained veto power. Chola patronage of merchant guilds (ayyavole and manigramam) forged expansive trade-relations with South-East Asia and Sung China, while ships requisitioned from those guilds enlarged Chola warrior fleets. Revenues were reploughed for naval expansion in a commercial empire spanning over 2,200 miles — from Bengal to Sri Lanka and the Malay Archipelago. Here lies a well-concealed narrative of Chola supremacy, of profit-driven plunder. The Lankan chronicle Culavamsa recounts desecrated temples and monastic reliquaries around the 10th-11th century, around the time when Rajaraja-I and Rajendra-I's Lankan and South-East Asian raids targeted portable wealth, comprising temple treasuries, in the name of territorial expansion. Chola naval ascendancy clubbed martial hegemony with mercantile collaboration, provisioning warships, recruiting mariners and amassing siege-equipment without democratic will. This was at odds with the dharmic ideal of righteous rule. Though 11th-century Chola navies realigned trade from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, their profits were not redistributed for the upkeep of coastal nagarams. The Cholas were not classical democrats. The real reason behind their return to public discourse is not democracy but the same political impulse that led Margaret Thatcher to turn to the Victorians, or the Victorians to turn to the Greeks. There is no need to shy away from marvelling at the fluid grace of a bronze dancing Shiva from Chola times. Indians, like the Greeks, Britons and Americans, too deserve to celebrate their antiquity's heritage. But an uncritical historicism marks the vanity of present-day ideologues while concealing past foibles. One cannot help but also ruminate on the fact that back in 1940, Vedic scholar Justice T Paramasiva Iyer revealed that in the 10th and 11th centuries, during the reign of Rajaraja-I, Rajendra-I and Kulottunga-I, the supposed location of the Ram Setu was shifted from the Korkai harbour to its currently famed site at Adam's Bridge. The consecration of the Rameswaram lingam at the Rameswaram temple officiated a new tradition of Vaishnavite and Shaivite synergism in southern India. Political pundits may feel tempted to join the dots keeping in mind that a 21st-century history of the Cholas is also a history of the present. The writer teaches at O P Jindal Global University and is the author of The Great Indian Railways, Indians in London and Adam's Bridge
Indian Express
11 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Tavleen Singh writes: Trump and his trumpeter
This week I was planning to write about Narendra Modi's image both here and in foreign lands. Readers of this column regularly berate me for writing more often about the Dynasty than the Prime Minister. They charge me with 'hatred' of the Gandhi family and troll me viciously. I was planning to bow to the demands of the box office and comment on Modi's stature at home and abroad. Especially abroad where on the world stage the most powerful leaders today are a collection of clowns, tyrants and brutal warmongers. This subject will have to be postponed for another time because Rahul Gandhi, always irresistible, said something that was so weird and mysterious that I found it hard to ignore. Days after he challenged the Prime Minister to say 'Donald Trump, you are a liar' inside the Lok Sabha, he suddenly found himself on Trump's side. The President of America, as has now been widely reported, said that the Indian economy was dead. A comment that in the eyes of most political analysts was both offensive and foolish but not in the opinion of the Leader of the Opposition. When reporters accosted him outside Parliament House and asked what he thought about Trump's remark, he said, 'But the Indian economy is dead. Trump is right. Everybody knows that the Indian economy is a dead economy…except the Prime Minister and the finance minister.' He added that the BJP had destroyed the Indian economy to help Gautam Adani. Now I am no economist, but you do not need to be one to know that this remark is both bizarre and bewildering. But, very much in keeping with the economic ideas Rahul Gandhi expressed during the election campaign in 2019 when it was Anil Ambani he was obsessed with. Remember those days when he and his sister campaigned with toy fighter jets in their hands to make the point that Modi made money out of buying Rafale jets. Mr. Ambani, in his view, was the launderer of this bribe. This was never established. Never proved. So Ambani was forgotten. To come back, though, to the 'dead Indian economy', may I say that Rahul Gandhi appears not to have any memories of those years when Granny was prime minister and the Indian economy was dead, dead, dead. Ask anyone who lived through those times, and they will tell you what shopping for groceries used to be like. There were shortages of the kind that countries experience only when there has been a war or a massive natural disaster. We queued and queued and queued. Daily necessities like bread, milk and sugar were always in short supply. And, when it came to 'luxuries' like cars, you could remain in the queue for ten years. The richest Indians did not dare invest for the fear that if they exceeded their quotas to produce cars, scooters and air-conditioners, they could be fined and sometimes jailed. The only businessmen who thrived in those times were smugglers. They smuggled in gold and household goods like toasters, irons, kettles, coffee makers and mixers and sold them for a huge profit. As for us ladies, we would sneak off to smugglers in Karol Bagh to buy cosmetics, perfumes and fancy underwear. Things began to change only when the license raj ended. And one of the beneficiaries of this was Narendra Modi. I have never forgotten that first campaign of his when he talked of how government had no business to be in business. One of the reasons why people like me supported him was because of the hope that he would dismantle what remains of the licence raj and curb the evil officials who end one regulation only to make two more. They lived better in those central planning days than big businessmen and they had more power. They could destroy major industrialists with just a single signature. And they knew that they would get away with this because the political leaders who were their bosses were all lefties of the most committed kind. If the Leader of the Opposition wants to understand the real meaning of a 'dead economy', he needs to go back to his economics tutor and ask him to loan him some books on Nehruvian socialism. A short course is all he needs, not a degree, but a short course is essential because he leads our oldest political party and the only one that can challenge the BJP. Meanwhile, he would do well to keep his economic ideas to himself because they are ideas that are truly dead. My grievance against Modi is that he has failed to dismantle the remnants of the licence raj. He allows his bureaucrats too free a hand to make rules and regulations that crush real enterprise. Government-sponsored startups and unicorns are just a new incarnation of the public sector. What we need is a new generation of economic reforms that would truly make it easier to do business and India will take off beyond anyone's imagination. Trump's tariffs could turn into a real opportunity for India instead of being the threat that they currently appear to be. But for this to happen, Modi needs to remember that he once believed that the government had no business to be in business. Meanwhile, Rahulji can go back to his economics tutor and ask him to explain clearly why the Indian economy is not dead.
