A day after Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi in response to India’s earlier comment on the country harbouring 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, New Delhi Friday termed the former’s remarks as “uncivilised” and a “new low, even for Pakistan”.
In an official statement, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the Pakistan foreign minister has “obviously forgotten this day in 1971, which was a direct result of the genocide unleashed by Pakistani rulers against ethnic Bengalis and Hindus”.
He said Pakistan does not seem to have changed much in the treatment of its minorities and that it “lacks credentials to cast aspersions at India, the Mother of Democracy”.
Bhutto, who was in New York to participate in the UN meetings, had said, “(I want to tell India) that Osama bin Laden is dead, but the butcher of Gujarat lives and he is the Prime Minister of India.”
He went on to say that PM Modi was banned from entering this country until he became the Prime Minister. “This is the Prime Minister of the RSS and the Foreign Minister of the RSS. What is the RSS? The RSS takes inspiration from Hitler’s ‘SS’,” he said.
The statements came after India targeted Pakistan at the UN Security Council Wednesday by asserting that a country that hosted slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and attacked a neighbouring Parliament does not have the credentials to “sermonise” in the power UN organ.
The remark by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had come after Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto raised the Kashmir issue while speaking in the Council debate on reformed multilateralism.
The MEA spokesperson, in the statement on Friday, said that Pakistan’s “indisputable role in sponsoring, harbouring and financing terrorist organisations remains under the scanner” , and added that Bhutto’s “uncivilised outburst seems to be a result of Pakistan’s increasing inability to use terrorists and their proxies”.