“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”
(Führer Adolf Hitler)
Since ancient times, false flag operations were a part of every government. In this pursuit, India is continuously using malicious campaign in constructing a narrative and declaring Pakistan a source of violence in the region. From the incident of plane hijacking, attacks on their own parliament, Mumbai, Pulwama or Uri, New Delhi always used fictious and falsehood claims to malign Pakistan. All of this has been done to make political gains and divert international attention from the insurgencies and religious bigotry happening inside India.
Ikram Sehgal in his book very aptly described in his preface that:
“India has a proven penchant for false-flag operations and is always busy hatching conspiracies to damage Pakistan not only from the east but also from the west through its Afghan proxies. Never accepting the existence of Pakistan as an independent sovereign state, its foreign policy remains anti-Pakistan centric.”
Once again, the Indian blatant propaganda was badly exposed, where, Pakistan warned the international community of a real threat of India staging another false flag operation. Foreign Office spokesman in a weekly briefing stated that “We are also concerned and we are continuing to alert the international community about India’s track record. There is a real possibility that India might stage another false flag operation to complicate the current situation. So, we continue to alert our friends in the international community about this prospect.”
In March 2000, following the Chittisinghpura massacre of 36 Sikhs, a fake encounter was carried by Indian forces while misguiding and misinforming the world. According to a CBI probe, the Indian Army killed five innocent Kashmiri civilians in a fake encounter at Pathribal in Anantnag district.
Similarly in 2000, Indian government accused Pakistan of being behind the hijacking of an Indian plane. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee blamed Pakistan for backing the hijackers and forced the U.S. and other major countries to declare Pakistan a terrorist state. Till today, India failed to provide any evidence to prove Pakistan’s involvement in the hijacking.
On 31st December 2001, Parliament was attacked in New Delhi. The drama of the Indian Parliament attacks was not the first time New Delhi had used a false flag operation to execute its hidden agenda against Pakistan. Later in July 2013, the ex-investigating officer of CBI, Satish Verma, uncovered the secret that the Indian government killed hundreds in Mumbai and Parliament attacks just to strengthen the counter-terror legislation. Furthermore, the former Indian Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde also exposed that BJP and RSS were running training camps to promote Hindu terrorism. In the past, these extremist groups were also responsible for Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Malegaon blasts.
The 2008 Mumbai attacks are another classic example of false-flag operations carried by Indian government. The only aim with which Mumbai attacks were taken was to portray Pakistan as a state sponsoring terrorism and to divert international community attention from atrocities being committed by the occupation forces in IIOJ&K. Interestingly, on the day of the Mumbai attacks, Chief of the Anti-Terrorist Force Hemant Karkare was assassinated in Maharashtra. He headed the 2008 Malegaon terror investigation. Additionally, in late October 2008, he detained 11 suspects, most of whom had a previous connection to an extremist Hindutva party – Abhinav Bharat. Hemant Karkare was exposing that Hindutva groups in India were promoting terrorism. Hence, he was assassinated.
In 2016, the BJP government without any investigation, swiftly blamed the banned “Jaish-e-Mohammad” when the Pathankot Air Base in Indian Punjab was allegedly targeted by so-called militants. Nevertheless, an internal probe refuted the Indian Government’s statements within hours. Subsequently, Director General of National Investigation Agency (NIA) Sharad Kumar said, “No evidence to show that Pakistan government or Pakistani government agency was helping Jaish–e–Mohammed or Masood Azhar or his aides carry out Pathankot attack.”
Again in 2019, India used the self-created Pulwama incident, dropped a payload in Balakot and fled in haste. Immediately after the incident, the Indian Prime Minister accused Pakistan and threatened it with surgical strikes without any inquiry or evidence. Pulwama was a false flag operation that was politically used by Modi’s government to gain sympathy of Hindutva followers, thereby, gaining political mileage. The Pulwama attack and ensuing debate amply proved that Modi was the primary beneficiary of the resultant escalation.
Above flashback of Indian false flag operations shows that India is trying to construct an ill-informed narrative about Pakistan by thriving on chaos in its periphery. It also shows that India has an exhaustive volume of directory that consists of numerous ‘false flag’ operations subjected against Pakistan. The reason is to place unprecedented pressure on Pakistan with an aim to label it as a terrorist-sponsoring country. However, time and again, India has failed to prove it on all forums.
Usman Ali Khan
M.Phil Scholar from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad
E-mail: Usmanalikhan6@gmail.com