I saw a Pak writer tweeting about bhakts/1000 year war.

Only part of “India” which was enslaved for that long approx is West Punjab (Sindh longer, rest much less). And it was violently converted much more than East Bengal. Wonder what it means for our writer’s ancestors. Tragic.

I have studied Pak online media discourse closely. It is difficult to explain what a shock the de facto removal of Art370 has been and what a master stroke it is. This kind of military and religious supremacist culture only changes after defeat which is what Pak faces in Kashmir.

The Pakistani calculation was that “Hindu India” will never have the clarity and courage to actually reverse this own goal of Kashmiri autonomy and demographic freezing. Modi-Shah’s attitude is a psychological shock. At least cricket was just cricket. This was real. This counted.

If you see their “NSA”‘s interview to Karan Thapar: he swears that LoC will become IB “over his dead body”. But they actually considered it as they assumed Kashmir will remain Sunni majority while they send Punjabis to GB. Were even willing to trade if Kashmir was kept frozen.

The Pakistanis have no love for the Chinese. They just have nowhere else to go. But the only way Pak economy really booms is if Pak makes peace with India and develops a normal commercial relationship. And for that they will have to accept Kashmir’s changed, and changing, status.

This explains Imran Khan’s cocky statement that Modi’s re-election might be good for India-Pak relations. They assumed Vajpayee-Sharif template would reapply. But the Ind-Pak power gap was now wide enough and Indian leadership bold enough that this “wish” backfired badly for Pak.

Moeed Yusuf all but made up a story that India had approached Pak for back channel talks. If India actually did, Pak wouldn’t sabotage it for they desperately want any reversal, any leverage. It was just showboating for a domestic audience back home. India now talks of POK, GB :)

Finally Pakistan leadership’s equating of RSS with Fascism etc while talking of Islamophobia never catches steam because every now and then some Pakistani is trying to kill in the name of religion, as it happened recently in France. Then its own atrocious record on human rights.