“India needs to come to terms with Pakistan’s rise and learn to coexist peacefully with it,” military says
Defense Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Babar Sidhu and Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Naveed Ashraf attend a ceremony at GHQ in Rawalpindi marking the end of a year of Pakistan’s victory in the Marka-e-Haq. Photo: ISPR
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Sunday slammed remarks by the Indian Chief of Army Staff (COAS), saying the statement reflected a “jingoistic and myopic mindset” and warned against pushing “South Asia towards wars and crises”.
In a statement, the ISPR said the Indian army chief had made a “provocative statement” during a recent interview that “Pakistan had to decide whether it wanted to be a part of geography and history”.
The military’s media wing said that, contrary to what it described as a “delusional and hallucinatory belief system” and “despite the ubiquitous ill-wishers prevailing in Hindutva-led India”, Pakistan was already “a country of global consequence, a declared nuclear power and an indelible part of South Asian geography and history”.
“The statement reflects that the Indian leadership has neither been able to come to terms with the very idea of Pakistan, nor has it learned the right lessons, even after the passage of eight decades,” the statement said.
The ISPR said the “hubristic, jingoistic and myopic mindset” had repeatedly pushed South Asia towards wars and crises.
“Threatening a sovereign nuclear neighbor with elimination from geography is not strategic signaling or brinkmanship; it is sheer bankruptcy of cognitive capacities, insanity and warmongering,” the statement said.
The military’s media wing added that any “geographical annihilation would certainly be mutual and comprehensive”.
“Responsible nuclear states reflect restraint, maturity and strategic sobriety. They do not speak the language of civilizational supremacy or national erasure,” it said.
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The statement further said that the Indian narrative ignored “India’s own historically proven record of being a harbinger of terrorism in the region, a state sponsor of terrorism, a key source of regional instability, perpetrator of transnational murder and a hotbed of disinformation campaign across the globe”.
According to the ISPR, India’s “aggressive stance” stemmed “less from confidence and more from frustration at its inability to harm Pakistan”, which has been brutally “exposed during Marka-e-Haq”.
The military’s media wing said the Indian leadership “will be wise not to try to push South Asia towards another crisis or war, the consequences of which would only be devastating for the entire region and beyond”.
“India needs to come to terms with the rise of Pakistan and learn to coexist peacefully with it,” the statement said.
The ISPR warned that “any attempt to target Pakistan could trigger consequences that would be neither geographically limited nor strategically or politically palatable to India”.
