Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s illegal annexation of occupied Kashmir is not just a regional aberration. With each passing day it is becoming clearer that the Indian misadventure poses a threat to world peace itself. With two nuclear powers facing each other eyeball to eyeball, Kashmir is like a tinderbox which may explode at any time with consequences too horrendous to contemplate.

With the superpowers looking the other way, the Indian aggressiveness has been increasing by the day. A few days ago, Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat boasted that the Indian army was ready to occupy Azad Kashmir and was just waiting for the go-ahead from Narendra Modi’s government. According to the India Today magazine, General Rawat said the next matter on the Indian army’s agenda was to take over Azad Kashmir and “make it a part of India”.

Nothing better reveals the belligerent Indian mindset than the hegemonic statement by the Indian army chief. It shows that Indian hunger for territorial aggrandizement is insatiable and it can go to any length to quench its devilish appetite. It is against this background that Pakistan President Arif Alvi, talking to a delegation of Turkish journalists a few days ago, said that the Indian leadership had become a threat to regional and world peace. The President said the belligerent Indian leadership, with its finger on the nuclear button, is frenziedly Hinduizing India and persecuting the minorities. He said that what India was doing in occupied Kashmir was analogous to Israeli brutalities in Palestine.

It is disappointing to note that the world has not yet fully realised the gravity of the Nazi-like rise of the RSS, the mother party of the BJP now ruling India. It is RSS that is behind the Hindutva philosophy of barbarity and cruelty being pursued by Modi’s BJP government against the minorities, inside the country generally and the people of Kashmir in particular.

The Kashmir valley has been subjected to an unbridled policy of torture and genocide of Kashmiris under the blanket cover of curfew. The 700,000 strong Indian army has deployed thousands of additional troops in Kashmir, closed all educational institutions, expelled tourists from the valley and shut down telephone lines and communication systems. Thousands of activists, political leaders and young Kashmiris have been jailed without due process of law.

It is time the world woke up to the menace of the RSS that is an exact replica of the Nazi party which with its racist ideology plunged the world in a frightening war in the 1940s. The RSS-dominated Modi government is following the same Nazi policy of ethnic cleansing of minorities to turn India into a pure Hindu country as Hitler did to ensure the supremacy of the Aryan race. Under Modi, the torture and lynching of members of Muslim, Christian and other minority communities has become commonplace. RSS fanatics openly declare that there is no place in India for non-Hindu people.

As happened in Nazi Germany, a racist, ultranationalist ideology, like the RSS, is aggressive by its very nature. After establishing its sway inside a country, it soon spills over its borders and tries to enslave other nations. This is what is happening in Kashmir.

If India is not restrained in occupied Kashmir, it will soon spread its tentacles in the region with Pakistan being its primary target. To be sure, Pakistan will not take it lying down and retaliate with all the might at its disposal. If war breaks out in South Asia, the use of biological and nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out. In this context, one can recall the statement of the Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who recently warned darkly that in case of emergency, his country could use nuclear weapons against Pakistan. On August 16, Rajnath Singh said; “India has stuck to its commitment of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons against Pakistan, but the future will depend on the evolving situation”.

Nothing better illustrates the state of mind of India’s ruling junta headed by Narendra Modi, who poses a grave danger to the international security and world peace. Modi is another Hitler in the making, who is spearheading the disastrous agenda of the nuclear-armed RSS hungry for territorial expansion.

The realization has not yet dawned on the world’s nations that India is the only country among those possessing nuclear weapons in the world that is being led by a terrorist, racist organization, like the RSS. Needless to emphasise, the world is not safe with a Hindu extremist organization which is in control of large nuclear arsenal.

The only way to ensure peace in South Asia and save the world from a possible nuclear holocaust is for the world community to put pressure on India to stop repression in occupied Kashmir and sit down with Pakistan to hammer out a peaceful settlement acceptable to all parties to the dispute. And the sooner this is done the better for world peace and security.