‘Indian intelligence agency destabilising neighbouring states to gain control over them’

Islamabad : Bangladeshi-American researcher, author and former Mukti Bahini guerrilla leader Mohammad Zainal Abedin has claimed that the Indian intelligence agency, RAW, is actively involved in destabilising the neighbouring South Asian states in order to gain control over them and the region as well.

“All South Asian countries should not trust India and instead, they should form a united alliance to prevent New Delhi from exploiting, subjugating or oppressing them,” he told an international webinar organised by the Institute of Policy Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank.

The event titled 'India: Past, Present & Future: Perceptions of the Muslim World' had leading international experts from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Nigeria as panellists.

IPS executive president Khalid Rahman chaired the webinar, while senior research fellow Syed Muhammad Ali moderated it.

Mohammad Zainal Abedin, who was trained in India to fight against Pakistan in 1971, said trusting India was a grave mistake by the Bengali Muslims as the act converted East Pakistan into Bangladesh, which later became an Indian proxy state.

He said India had systematically occupied several formerly princely states, including Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, Sikkim, Junagadh and Manavadar, since 1947.

An author of several books on Indian involvement in Bangladesh, the former Mukti Bahini guerrilla leader said Hindu extremist ideology led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslim in 1947, looting of Bangladesh by Hindu extremists after 1971, subsequently led the BJP to destroy Babri mosque and in 2002 allowed Narendra Modi to once again slaughter thousands of Muslims in the Gujarat massacre.

Delivering the keynote address, Azad Jammu and Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan said without ideological muscle the Muslims would collapse. He warned Muslims around the world that their history was being distorted through books, think tanks, movies and social media.

The AJK president urged the OIC member states to boycott Indian goods and impose economic sanctions against India.

He said it was a great tragedy that the United Nations was observing a day against torture, while nowhere there was greater use of torture as a state policy as by India in the occupied Kashmir.

Sardar Masood declared India an artificial state, which, he said, has never existed as one state with the current territory and was unified only by the Muslims first and later by the British. He said India was currently waging three wars; one against its minorities inside its own borders, the second one against Kashmiris in the occupied territory of Kashmir and the third one against all its neighbours. The AJK president compared the Indian policy towards Kashmiri Muslims with the one followed by Nazi Germany against the Jews, based initially on economic strangulation, followed by demonization and marginalization and eventually physical extermination.

He said India was a foreign colonial power, which had occupied and colonized Kashmir and was vying to colonise littoral states of the Indian Ocean region.

"India not only considers Pakistan to be its enemy number one but it has also not spared any neighbor in its ambitious quest for expansionism," he said.

Sardar Masood called India the biggest hurdle to the progress of SAARC and regional economic integration.

American Muslim scholar Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid said that RSS is just like ISIS and the reality of Hindu extremists cannot be hidden behind peaceful symbols like Gandhi, Taj Mahal and vegetarianism anymore.

He said India was not immune from pressures but the onus was on the Indian Muslims to raise their voices and rise up and they would receive help from the Muslims around the world.

"The Muslims in the West particularly the US, UK, France, Germany should organise themselves and support their brothers suffering inside India," he said.

Senior Saudi journalist and South Asia analyst Khaled Almaeena called upon the Muslims to unite, seek knowledge and globally promote their story with logic and clarity, in order to be taken seriously by major powers.

Nigerian scholar Dr Bakare Najimdeen warned against the international Islamophobia project to systematically dehumanise and victimise Islam and the Muslims.

Professor Haroon Khatibi, a senior official of Kabul-based think tank Centre for Strategic and Regional Studies, said the current rise of Far-Right extremism globally has hit the US and India the most.

He said the exclusionist RSS and its offshoots including BJP in India wanted every Indian to become a Hindu.

IPS executive president Khalid Rahman termed RSS the world’s largest terrorist organisation, which, he said, was internationally exploiting Indian economic clout and secular and democratic outlook to promote its expansionist agenda.

He urged the Muslims around the world to develop positive thinking, innovative strategies and patience to organise themselves and meet their growing and complex challenges.