Chanakya to Modi

Express Tribune

29-04-2025

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Chanakya Kautilya was a 300 BCE alumnus of the Takshashila (university) at Taxila. He is known for his epic Sanskrit exposition Arthashastra, an empire-running guidebook. In 1532, Niccolo Machiavelli authored his epic political treatise The Prince. Emanating from it, the term 'Machiavellian' remains synonymous with double-dealing, treachery and deceit.
Noted German philosopher and jurist Max Weber asserts in his famous essay 'Politics as a Vocation': "Truly radical Machiavellianism in the popular sense of that word is classically expressed in Indian literature in the Arthashastra of Kautilya; compared to it, Machiavelli's The Prince is harmless".
Written 1800 years before Machiavelli was born, Chanakya propagated the 'Raj Mandala' as a governing model. Based on collusion, spies, assassinations and destruction through misinformation, it also advocated the necessity of murdering family members to gain or retain power. One of Chanakya's favorite maxim was: "Your neighbor is your natural enemy and the neighbor's neighbor is your friend". Tellingly, Delhi's diplomatic enclave was named Chanakyapuri a few years after independence.
Since independence, Pakistan has borne the brunt of India's Chanakyan machinations. India still gloats about dismembering Pakistan. It has, apart from fomenting terrorism, also undertaken a spate of killings targeting Sikh and Kashmiri leaders here. Pakistan stood vindicated when Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian naval officer, was arrested in Balochistan and admitted to acts of terrorism.
Based on reports from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau held India responsible for Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar's murder. The US charged a former Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, for attempting to have Sikh dissident Gurpatwant Singh Pannun assassinated on its soil. India is also blamed for the murder of Sikh activist Avtar Singh Khanda in Britain.
India has been dubbed the disinformation capital of the world. The World Economic Forum's 2024 Global Risk Report ranks India as the number one purveyor of disinformation. India Hate Lab, a Washington-based research group, describes Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah as the most frequent purveyors of hate speech. Muslims are the main target with 98.5% of recorded instances of hate speech directed against them.
In December 2020, EU DisinfoLab unearthed India's 15-year-long subterfuge operation of undermining Pakistan through 500 fake media outlets operating in 95 countries. This audacious campaign saw forged EU documents fed to the UN and global news outlets.
Amplifying this fake barrage, ANI, India's largest news agency, created reports based on this feed and disseminated it to a global audience. Despite these incriminating revelations by the Brussels based organisation, bizarrely, Pakistan was subjected to punitive measures like placement on the FATF's grey list. Modi reveled in his unbridled Chanakyan power.
In his memoir A life in the shadows, former Indian spymaster AS Dulat describes Modi and India's NSA Ajit Doval, as being "made for each other; a match made in heaven". Doval crafted a ruthless operational and disinformation policy under the tutelage of Modi, his "heaven mate".
The tragic loss of innocent lives at Pahalgam is incriminatingly similar to the sinister false-flag operations of Pulwama, Pathankot and Uri. The eerie pattern sees the same ease of attack in a fortressed Kashmir, the immediate post-attack charge-sheet alleging Pakistan as the mastermind and the ever-belligerent Indian media's frenzied war-mongering. A Pakistan-centric India refuses to let go of this RAW-drafted hackneyed script to maliciously malign and (unsuccessfully) browbeat Pakistan.
It took minutes after the Pahalgam incident for the Indian media to unleash a ferocious barrage targeting Pakistan. Instead of much-needed consolation to the traumatised families, this vitriol spread like an all-enveloping fire. Many social media handles urged the "Israel way" in Occupied Kashmir, a genocide that has seen the horrific murder of over 50,700 in Gaza, 17,000 of them children.
Satya Pal Malik was the Modi-installed governor of Occupied Kashmir at the time of the Pulwama attack. The resulting death of 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) soldiers brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. In a damning revelation Malik later said that he had called Prime Minister Modi immediately after the attack and told him that "it happened due to our lapses".
Malik also told Modi that the CRPF had asked for aircraft because such a large military convoy had never gone by road. India's Home Ministry refused the same. Malik revealed that he was told by Modi and Ajit Doval, the NSA, to remain quiet so that the government could blame Pakistan for political gains. Chanakya to Modi, the Raj Mandala remains the same.
In an interview with Karan Thapar, Malik said that "the 2019 Lok Sabha elections were fought on the bodies of our soldiers. I fear these people can do anything (to win the next election). They can orchestrate an attack on Ram Temple. They can plot to kill a BJP leader. If they can do Pulwama, they can do anything." He further said Modi is "ill-informed and ignorant about Kashmir".
The world remains mute to India's atrocities in Occupied Kashmir, its sponsoring terror in Balochistan, which Doval described as Pakistan's soft underbelly, and its hegemonic designs. "Non vedo, non sento, non parlo" - I see nothing, I hear nothing, I say nothing, is not a motto espousing serenity; it is Omerta, the code of silence enforced by the Mafia.
The West's Omerta is India's carte blanche that has seen its unbridled and unfixed obsession with Pakistan morphing into a nuclear flashpoint. Persistent misadventures and false-flag operations by the Hindutva-driven Modi dispensation can prove to be a nightmare for the whole region and beyond.
Conversely, guaranteeing the people of Occupied Kashmir their inherent right of self-determination may well be the key to peace, amity and prosperity. Not exactly a Rubik's Cube, the choice is elementary and in the best interest of nearly 2 billion people. That is, only if sanity prevails in the Hindutva zealots' minds.