WHAT PAKISTAN MIGHT BE SAYING ABOUT OUR GENERAL ELECTIONS

India has never spared any attempt to revile Pakistan as a terrorist state where the army and the ISI are more powerful than the elected government, where elections themselves are a farce, where Prime Ministers are rampantly thrown into jail, where the economy is perpetually in a shambles, where minorities in provinces like Baluchistan are at risk; in short, where the rule of law is non-existent, with the law of the jungle prevailing.

Now, as India’s general elections are underway, what might Pakistan be saying about our great country by way of revenge? Of course, there’s no way of knowing any of this for a fact, for our government will never allow us access to what it regards as post-truth, fake news, either in the so-called mainstream media, or even on social media. So, at best, we can only imagine what Pakistan might be saying about India at the present time.

The first thing that they might be saying is that, even as they speak, signatures are being sought by democracy-loving Indians to urge the Election Commission to ban the Prime Minister from contesting the elections. Why? Because although the Election Commission’s Moral Code of Conduct expressly prevents politicians from having recourse to caste, religion and ethnicity to garner votes, the Prime Minister did just that in a speech, now gone viral, in which he claims that if the country’s principal opposition party, the Congress, comes to power, they will distribute all its wealth, including the gold and mangal sutras of our mothers and sisters to infiltrators with many children (read Muslims). The Pakis would clearly take this to indicate that the Prime Minister has a chronic and pathological hatred for Muslims.

The next thing Pakistan would be saying is that no less an authority than the Finance Minister’s beloved husband, who is himself a distinguished economist (and they will emphasize the fact that he is the Finance Minister’s husband), has said that the Prime Minister is a dictator who has taken India back by 20 to 25 years in terms of its economy, and back to the Middle Ages in terms of secularism. The Prime Minister’s return to power would spell disaster for the country, the learned man believes, although his optimism makes him prophecy that the PM’s party will win no more than 220 to 230 Lok Sabha seats this time round, a far cry from the 370 to 400 seats that they fantasize about.

Coming to their favourite topic, press freedom, the Pakistanis will be letting their people know that Vanessa Dougnac, a French journalist who has lived and worked in India for a quarter of a century was threatened with expulsion and eventually deported to her country. In her own words, the Indian government has accused her of malicious and critical journalistic activities inimical to the…sovereignty and integrity of India, and to the interest of the general public. Foreign correspondents covering the elections are not allowed to do their work honestly, Dougnac has said. They are also banned from visiting Indian-occupied Kashmir (which is how Pakistan, in retaliation, likes to think of Kashmir). “This is what press freedom has become under PM Modi,” Dougnac laments, and adds, “I see this as part of a wider effort by the government of India to curb dissent from the OCI (Overseas Citizens of India) community.” The Indians, like the Americans, who never tire of saying that there is no press freedom in Pakistan must stop acting holier-than-thou, and put their own house in order first, the Pakistanis must be saying.

Television channels in Pakistan must be screaming out loud that the image of the Indian Prime Minister who portrays himself as a saint has taken a beating as the Electoral Bonds scam has come to light. The scam involves extorting money to the tune of millions from corrupt private companies to sweep their malpractices under the carpet, and use the ill begotten wealth to fund the ruling party’s election campaign. Again, it is the Finance Minister’s husband who has called the Electoral Bonds scam “the biggest scam in the world.” Nor would the scam have come to light had it not been for the intervention of the Chief Justice of India who insisted that all details of who paid how much money to whom, and when, are made public.

While the ruling party thus has unlimited funds at its disposal at election time, the Pakistanis must be alleging, it has gone and frozen the accounts of the Congress party, and put the Chief Minister of Delhi in jail without trial, so that they are unable to participate in the elections. Naturally, this will ensure that the Prime Minister’s party will return to power unopposed. And yet the Indians like to call themselves the world’s largest democracy. Laughable, the Pakis must be saying.

Laughable, because it may not be long, according to Pakistan, before India becomes the world’s largest autocracy, with the opposition virtually wiped out from the face of the country, what with scamster politicians quitting their own parties by the dozen, and flocking to the Prime Minister’s party. According to some You Tubers, the PM’s party serves as a washing machine here, into which the scamster politicians are thrust in dirty, only to emerge freshly laundered as they join the BJP. Once this process is complete, there would be no need, even, for elections. Already the Finance Minister’s husband has warned that if the Prime Minister’s party returns to power, this will be the last free and fair general election that the country may ever see. And yet they, the Indians, Pakistan would be saying, have the audacity to make a mockery of our elections!

So, this is probably what is being spoken across the border at this point of time. It may be an exaggeration; it may be not. But, from Pakistan’s point of view, India, certainly isn’t the utopia that it likes to think it is, where all is hunky dory, where the watchword is stability, where everyone is gainfully employed, where there’s no inflation, and above all, where Muslims have no reason to fear for their lives.