Karan Thapar wants India to make the visa regime for Pakistanis easy and smooth. His arguments in favour of this are not only weak but are faulty, flimsy, hollow, impotent, inept and superficial. Let’s look at what Karan Thapar’s arguments are.
Proud democracies should distribute visas
Karan Thapar in his recent Hindustan Times article says that India is “nasty” toward Pakistanis. He goes on to say that India takes pride in being the world’s largest democracy and therefore we should be more lenient to Pakistanis in granting visas. He cites his own example to point out that the Pakistanis don’t treat us with the same “nastiness”. What he fails to realise or deliberately ignores is the fact that an easy visa regime for Pakistanis would almost invariably translate into more Khalistan-like problems for India. In fact, in the same newspaper, there is an article about ISI supporting Amritpal Singh. Karan’s unenviable eye for detail compels him to ignore this overt fact.
Should our neighbour’s behaviour determine ours?
Karan’s second argument is actually a case for India to showcase its magnanimity and benevolence toward Pakistan ignoring or overlooking its terror plans for India. Karan says ” Should we allow our neighbour’s behaviour to set the standard for our own?” Ironically, Karan goes on to cite Akhand Bharat or Greater India, the idea of an undivided India—which is the object of ridicule of the left ecosystem and Karan’s ideological compatriots—to describe Pakistanis as former fellow countrymen, conveniently omitting that it was the fanatic Muslims who were responsible for the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The answer is a big “Yes”. Why should India not be vigilant when Pakistan and Pakistanis have a terror history of 70+ years? Why should not India learn from its past mistakes of indulging Pakistan and receiving a betrayal in response to our magnanimity? A nation that does not learn from its history, is condemned to repeat it. Does Karan Thapar want India to underwent a social upheaval currently witnessed in Pakistan or does he wish India to face another partition and the attendant wave of violence it triggers?
Usman Khwaja and his Pakistani connection
Usman Khwaja is an Australian cricketer of Pakistani origin. He was born in Pakistan and later moved to Australia, and now he has dual citizenship. Karan says that it’s petty, spiteful and belittling of ourselves that we didn’t give an easy Visa to Khwaja because of his Pakistani origin. While the case for Usman Khwaja seems legitimate, it cannot be ignored that prior to 2014 India witnessed many terror attacks and Pakistani ISI’s involvement in these attacks was very evident. India has a right to pursue its self-interest and keeping the Visa regime tight for Pakistanis helps keep a check on terrorism in India.
David Coleman Headley was an American citizen of Pakistani descent. He visited India on a legal Visa several times and planned the terror attack of 26/11. He is currently serving life imprisonment in an American jail. This single incident is enough to tighten the Visa regime for Pakistanis.
India has lost lakhs of lives to terrorism since 1947, Pakistan sponsored terrorism is the biggest issue for our security forces. Should we be naive enough to let our guard down just because we want to please a section of the Indian media which is Islamophile?
Karan’s historical dalliance with Pakistan and his favourable bias toward Pakistanis
Karan Thapar, who is a news presenter with The Wire, attended Islamabad Security Dialogue via video conferencing a year ago. The discussion titled ‘Navigating disinformation and discourse in the information age’ was an attempt to discuss the impact of disinformation and fake news on the current political structure of South Asia.
During the discussion, which was attended by members of several think tanks from Pakistan, Thapar ranted against the Modi government and referred to the Hindu God Hanuman as ‘Humayun’, the second emperor of the Mughal dynasty.
Mosharraf Zaidi, founder of the think tank Tabadlab, moderated the session. He asked Thapar about his views on how the people of India are being misled by the politicians, particularly Hindutva leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the RSS and the BJP. He pointed out that such leaders being in power is, in a sense, a collective failure of ‘secular, enlightened, progressive India’.
Agreeing with his thoughts, Thapar said that since PM Modi came to power, the “problem” was on the rise and the alleged crisis is at its peak today. He said, “I’m not saying that it’s all going to go higher but compared to the situation of 2014, the situation today is considerably worse than most people imagine.” He had alleged that BJP was deliberately instigating Hindus, which comprise 80% of the population, in the name of religion. “People are very religious. Religions pervade their life, their thinking, their relationship, and their psychology very close to them, and that tends to be the case in countries where economic development is limited.
He further alleged that BJP knows where to scratch and open old wounds, such as the partition that happened in 1947. In that process, they demonised another religion.
