India’s decision not to send an official representative to the Pakistan High Commission’s National Day reception since Hurriyat leaders who are identified as Kashmir separatists have been invited to it reflects a hardening of this country’s stance towards Pakistan.
Coming close on the heels of the air strikes by the Indian Air Force on terror training and recruitment camps across the Indo-Pak border, the signal is loud and clear that India will no longer brook Pakistan-based terror groups wreaking havoc in India.
Under Congress regimes in the past, it was common for this country to tolerate Pakistani interference in Indian affairs by hosting leaders hostile to India. Now, however, India is in a pro-active mode and it has found that it has the backing of nations across the world in this.
In the last five years, though the NDA government objected to the Pakistani leadership engaging with the Hurriyat leadership, it did not boycott the National Day reception of Pakistan. As a symbol of its toughening stand, the Modi government had also recently arrested some top leaders and unmasked their funding of Indian separatists.
Coinciding with the Indian response to the flirtation of Hurriyat leaders with Pakistan is a warning that the Donald Trump administration has held out to the Pakistan government that another terror attack on India would prove to be “extremely problematic” and would cause “re-escalation of tensions.”
The US has also indicated that its government and the international community would need to see “irreversible, concrete and sustained actions” by Pakistan against terror groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. A US administration official also said that China has a responsibility not to shield Pakistan and that the US was disappointed over Beijing’s decision to block a bid in the UN against Jaish head Masood Azhar.