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Kathmandu,Thursday June 08, 2000 Jestha 26, 2057.
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Indian venom
spewed again
After a lull of a few weeks,
India has once again spewed its venom against Nepal through an explosive publication of a
so-called secret report leaked to the news magazine India Today. Occasional concoction of
such slanderous media garbage by India is not anything new to the Nepalese people. What is
astonishing is the calculated timing and contents of the tirade when a high level task
force was in town for conducting official dialogues with a view to breaking the
no-dialogue stand off that has chilled the bilateral relation between the two close
neighbours for so long.
This is not the first time
that India Today has embarked upon an anti-Nepal campaign by bringing out slanderous
report with obviously tacit support from the Indian establishment. Some years ago, the
same magazine published similar unsubstantiated Jain report with the deliberate intention
to implicate some respectable members of the Nepalese Royal Family in the assassination of
former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. That time, too, Indian officials did not
hesitate to resort to palpable lies saying that the report did not have any official
endorsement. Therefore, Indian Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary Brajesh
Mishra’s denial of any such report should not be taken for granted. Blowing hot and
cold simultaneously is India’s well known attitude towards Nepal.
The despicable report
disseminated by India Today through its web site appears, undoubtedly, to be prepared by a
brigade of Indian agents with the help of a number of local renegades. It is obvious that
these people are bent upon maligning some members of the royal family, civil servants,
politicians, professionals, well established media houses, and several respectable people
of this country. It is now up to the leadership to assess how deep a wound has been
inflicted on Nepalese sentiment by the latest Indian diatribes before setting a stage for
the prime minister to set out for a pilgrimage to New Delhi to pay homage to nuclear
India.
Madhab P Khanal
Sano Gauchar, Kathmandu |
