BJP MP Baijayant Panda spoke to NDTV in an exclusive interview
The Centre's decision to send delegations abroad to brief world powers on Operation Sindoor and expose Pakistan is part of an ongoing reset in India's response to terrorism, senior BJP leader Baijayant 'Jay' Panda has said.
Mr Panda, who heads one of the seven delegations, told NDTV in an exclusive interview that there is a "heaven and hell difference" in the support received by New Delhi and Islamabad during the ongoing conflict that was triggered by the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam.
A BJP national vice president, Mr Panda, heads the delegation to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria and Bahrain. The seven-member team comprises BJP MP Dr Nishikant Dubey, AIMIM's Asaduddin Owaisi, BJP's Phangnon Konyak, BJP's Rekha Sharma, nominated MP Satnam Singh Sandhu, former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and former foreign secretary Ambassador Harsh Shringla.
Asked about the significance of this outreach, Mr Panda said, "This is a very important part of an ongoing reset. We have been suffering from cross-border terrorism sponsored by Pakistan for nearly 80 years. The world is against terrorism and everybody knows Pakistan is the epicentre of terror."
"But the fact is that while we are continually facing the brunt of these perfidies by Pakistan, other nations may not have that level of bandwidth because they have other issues going on, there is a war in Europe, a war in Middle East, there is a trade reset happening all over the world," he said.
Elaborating on how Operation Sindoor was part of a reset in how India responds to terror, Mr Panda said, "What has happened is that this new normal that has been defined by the Modi government has a military component to it. Pakistan, especially its Army, has been made to pay a very costly price."
"There is a reset in the perspective of how people look at it. For instance, Pakistan's nuclear blackmail: in a series of events starting from the surgical strikes, Balakot airstrikes and this time, the Modi government has made it very clear that there is a very big distance between retaliating and going anywhere near the nuclear threshold and Pakistan must be made to pay that price.
Modern conflicts, Mr Panda said, are "not just about battlefields but also about the narrative". "The Prime Minister himself has done a phenomenal job. For more than a decade, he has tirelessly slogged, gone to dozens of countries and built rapport with the top leadership of all the major countries. This needs to be taken further now," he said, explaining how the delegations build on this rapport.
"These delegations are multi-party; we have not just politicians, but domain experts too. In the team I am going with, there are very senior leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Nishikant Dubey, Asaduddin Owaisi, there is Harsh Shringla, one of the most important parts of this messaging is the unity. In India, we have seen this unity, everybody across the political spectrum stood up for Bharat's interests, that's the spirit with which we are going. We are all going out there as Indians rather than government or opposition," he said.
Responding to reports that former Pakistan minister Bilawal Bhutto will lead the country's delegation as part of a copycat exercise to counter India's move, the senior BJP leader referred to Mr Bhutto's speech in Pakistan's National Assembly. Calling the speech "childish", he said even Pakistanis are "poking fun at it". "There is another video of him dancing that has also gone viral. I think he is better at that. That's probably something he should concentrate on."
"Apart from having studied in England, he is not able to speak out about the same system that killed in mother (Benazir Bhutto). What is he going to say when people ask him that Pakistan has a track record, you sheltered Osama Bin Laden, you are openly sheltering UN-sanctioned terrorists? I think he should stick to dancing."
Mr Panda said Saudi Arabia is undergoing a major transformation and one of Prime Minister Modi's biggest successes has been the outreach to the Middle East. "The attitude towards India has dramatically changed. What used to be the case with Europe and other nations has also become very similar. They all see India as the future, they all see India with high potential, they all have a vested interest in India succeeding and they see Pakistan as a problem," he said.
Pakistan, he said, cannot compete with India's global outreach because "they have decimated their minorities". "In Middle Eastern countries today, there is a great deal of tolerance and acceptance. Hindu temples are being built and in Pakistan, you will see ancient Hindu traditions crushed, temples destroyed, minority population decimated. If you look at the attitude of these countries, the Indian diaspora is valued; that's not necessarily the case with Pakistan. I think we do have tremendous leverage that we probably didn't have a few years earlier."
On China and Turkey supporting Pakistan, he said, "There was a time when Pakistan used to get the support of many more countries. Today, only two countries openly came out and supported. But several of Pakistan's so-called closest friends did not support them. The ground realities have changed for Pakistan."
Mr Panda also responded to a question on objections raised by opposition parties, Congress and Trinamool Congress, to the government's choices for the delegations. "I won't comment on their responses, but I will say that these delegations are very broad-based. Most of the important political parties are represented. I want to emphasise one thing: we are not going out here as parties, we are going out as Indians. There should not be any party politics in representing India to the rest of the world. All these people are senior people, I don't think they need a stamp of approval from any authority to either explain their clout or to justify their Indianness. We have every religion, region, political party represented. We have several very important women leaders. I think we should focus on that," he said.
