Trump has internationalised the Kashmir dispute: Tharoor

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on X wrote, “Mr Trump’s post is disappointing for India in four important ways: First, it implies a false equivalence between the victim and the perpetrator, and seemingly overlooks the US’ own past unwavering stance against Pakistan’s well-documented links to cross-border terrorism.

Second, it offers Pakistan a negotiating framework which it certainly has not earned. India will never negotiate with a terrorist gun pointed at its head.

Third, it “internationalises’ the Kashmir dispute, an obvious objective of the terrorists. India rejects the idea of a dispute and sees the problem as an internal affair of India’s. India has never requested, not is likely to seek, any foreign country’s mediation over its problems with Pakistan.

And fourth, it “re-hyphenates’ India and Pakistan in the global imagination. For decades now, world leaders had been encouraged not to club their visits to India with visits to Pakistan, and starting with President Clinton in 2000, no US President had done so. This is a major backward step.”

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump took to social media to announce that India and Pakistan - after four tense days of cross-border clashes - had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire”, brokered by the US.

Later, in another post he said: “I will work with you both to see if, after a thousand years, a solution can be arrived at, concerning Kashmir.” Meanwhile, The Shiv Sena (UBT) said the Modi government wasted an opportunity to realise Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar’s dream of ‘Akhand Bharat’ by agreeing to cease military action against Pakistan.

The editorial in the party mouthpiece `Saamana’ said had the fighting continued for four more days, the Indian armed forces would have seized Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), Karachi and Lahore, but US President Donald Trump played spoilsport. Before stopping the military action, India should have at least taken back PoK and separate Balochistan from Pakistan, the newspaper said. Savarkar dreamt of an undivided India extending from PoK to Rameswaram and the Indus to Assam, but “Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government missed the opportunity to realize Savarkar’s dream of Akhand Bharat,” the editorial said.

PM Modi has no longer any right to “do politics in Savarkar’s name”, the editorial added.

Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena are all proponents of Akhand Bharat but when the time came to make the dream true, they balked, it said. India and Pakistan on Saturday reached an understanding to stop all firings and military actions on land, air and sea after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes that brought the two countries to the edge of full-scale war.

Sena (UBT) MP and Saamana’s executive editor Sanjay Raut told reporters on Tuesday that Modi, who addressed the nation on Monday evening, did not sound like the leader of a victorious side. In a swipe at Modi and Shah, Raut said they can only break political parties and not Pakistan.