Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned Pakistan that India will punish its neighbor if there are future attacks on India as he marked 79 years of independence from British colonial rule.
Modi’s remarks Friday come three months after nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan engaged in four days of intense fighting, their worst clash in decades.
Modi addressed the country from New Delhi’s 17th-century, Mughal-era Red Fort, saying India has established a “new normal” that does not differentiate between “terrorists” and those who support terrorism. He said he would not tolerate what he called Islamabad’s “nuclear blackmail.”
“India has decided that it will not tolerate nuclear threats. For a long time, nuclear blackmail had been going on but this blackmail will not be tolerated now,” Modi said.
Pakistan previously has rejected India’s statements about nuclear blackmail as provocative and inflammatory.
India celebrates its Independence Day one day after Pakistan. The two states came into existence as a result of the bloody partition of British India in 1947. The process sparked some of the worst communal violence the world has seen and left hundreds of thousands dead. It triggered one of the largest human migrations in history and some 12 million people fled their homes.
India and Pakistan exchanged tit-for-tat military strikes in May that brought them to the brink of a war. The fighting between the two countries was sparked by an April massacre by gunmen in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists. India blamed the attack on Pakistan-backed militants. Islamabad denied responsibility while calling for a neutral investigation.
Days after the massacre, India launched strikes on Pakistan and said it had hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites.
“Terror infrastructure was turned to rubble,” Modi said in his speech Friday.
Pakistan responded by sending waves of drones into India, as well as missile and artillery bombardments. Dozens of people were killed on both sides until a ceasefire was reached May 10 after U.S. mediation.
Pakistan immediately claimed it shot down six Indian aircraft during the clashes, including a French-made Rafale fighter. India acknowledged some losses but did not provide details.
Last week, India’s air force chief said India shot down five Pakistani fighter jets and one other military aircraft during clashes in the first such public claim by India. Pakistan rejected it, saying both sides should open their aircraft inventories to independent verification.
During his Friday speech, Modi also hinted India would continue its unilateral suspension of the Indus Water Treaty. The treaty, which India suspended after the April massacre, allows sharing of the Indus River that runs about 2,897 kilometers (1,800 miles) through South Asia and is a lifeline for both countries.
“Rivers from India were irrigating the lands of enemies while my country’s farmers and land faced a deficiency of water,” Modi said. “India has now decided that blood and water will not flow together.”
Pakistan has said any effort by India to stop or divert the water from flowing into Pakistan would be considered an “act of war.”
Modi did not directly mention U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on India in his Independence Day speech but said he would not compromise on the agriculture sector, one of the main sticking points in trade negotiations with the U.S.
Earlier this month, Trump imposed a 25% penalty on India in addition to 25% tariffs for buying oil and weapons from Russia.
India has resisted U.S. pressure to open its markets to some farm products as Modi’s government is unwilling to risk angering farmers, who are a powerful voting bloc.
“India will not compromise on interest of farmers,” he said.
Modi claimed India’s demography was being changed as part of a “conspiracy” through illegal migration and announced what he called a “high-powered demographic mission” to tackle the problem. He did not provide further details.
“No nation in the world can hand over itself to infiltrators,” he said.
Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has repeatedly described influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh as a “national security crisis” and claimed that unchecked Muslim infiltration from the country is leading to a demographic shift in India.
In recent months, Indian officials have conducted what they call a verification drive, which they say is intended to identify immigrants lacking legal status. Many people, most of them Muslim, have been detained or expelled to neighboring Bangladesh.
Source: AP
--Agencies
