The sheer venom India holds for Pakistan can be judged from how it has delayed the approval of an ADB loan of $800 million by five days, even though this will not disturb the Pakistani Financing Plan, or the ADB loan’s role in it. The ADB Board of Directors was scheduled to give approval of the loan on Thursday, but postponed it by five days after the Indian government’s nominee demanded the extra time to examine the loan documents. This confirms that the Indian approach has not changed, and it will do its damnedest at international economic forums to do down Pakistan, and it can be expected to argue that the loan will be diverted to terrorism. As with the IMF, where it made the same argument, it will not offer any proof whatsoever, just as it offered no proof of any Pakistani involvement in the Pahalgam attack. At the IMF, it reiterated the tired old arguments it had put to the Financial Action Task Force, which had initially placed Pakistani on its grey list. By cooperating with FATF, Pakistan not only defeated all the dedicated Indian efforts to get it blacklisted, but it managed to get off the grey list.
Is there any reason for the purposeless and forlorn Indian attempts to get international financial institutions to discriminate against Pakistan? This delay will serve no real purpose. It will not derail Pakistan’s financial plan in any way, and it is going to meet all its targets for the fiscal year. Was India somehow trying to compensate itself for the humiliation inflicted upon it on the battlefield by the successful Pakistani defence against Operation Sindoor, and then its successful response in Operation Bunyanum Marsoos? Or was this some sort of compensation for its recent humiliation before the IMF?
If India wants to embarrass itself, Pakistan has no duty to stop it. However, India’s reducing itself to the regional gadfly ill behooves the major power it aspires to be. This is the sort of ‘motiveless malignity’ (as Shakespeare put it) that Hindus had showed under the Raj, that obliged Muslims to work for Partition. The BJP merely reflects that mentality of the Indian people. It is a sad reflection on India, as well as democracy, that the electorate has returned the BJP to office since 2014. The Hindutva party has won three elections on the trot. That means it reflects the will of the Indian people. And until they change, Indian hostility to Pakistan will keep being shown, even as pettily (and purposelessly) as at the ADB.
