During his election rally in Rajasthan’s Barmer, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the ‘Urban Naxal’ jibe while launching an attack on the Congress party, its election manifesto, and Rahul Gandhi’s promise of ‘Wealth Redistribution‘. While these remarks have intensified political developments in India, a video of leading Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir is circulating on the internet. In the video, he is seen misquoting PM Modi and claiming that he said ‘Arab Nasal’ and not ‘Urban Naxal’.
In the clip of his show which has now gone viral on social media and attracted widespread criticism, he can be heard attributing wrong words to PM Modi and coming up with a bizarre theory to create a wedge between India and Middle East countries.
The recent incident started when PM Modi described the Congress as supporters of ‘Urban Naxals’ to slam the grand old party for advocating an ultra-leftist agenda of redistributing people’s property and wealth if it comes to power. It’s important to note that the term ‘Urban Naxal‘ was coined and is commonly used by the BJP, its allies, and non-leftist groups to refer to sympathisers, supporters, and collaborators of Naxalites who operate in “urban areas” such as the media, academia, and intelligentsia, as opposed to engaging in armed warfare in rural regions like Naxals.
However, in his show, Mir ‘comprehended’ the word ‘Urban Naxals’ as ‘Arab Nasl’ – which means Arab race. Further in the video, he peddled another blatant lie alleging that PM Modi described ‘Muslims as (Ghuspatiyas) illegal migrants’ which is far from the truth. PM Modi actually criticised Congress and the opposition for their lenient stance on illegal migration, regardless of religion.
Nonetheless, Mir continued further by lamenting that several Arab nations have conferred their highest honours on PM Modi. While detractors of PM Modi, BJP, and radical Islamists around the world try to paint an anti-Muslim stance on the Indian government, the country’s diplomatic ties with the Middle Eastern countries have deepened further. Incidentally, their erstwhile balanced or tilted relations with India viz-a-viz Pakistan have skewed further in India’s favour, prompting Pakistan to cry foul and peddle falsehoods to strain India-Middle East relations.
Several netizens trolled Hamid Mir and questioned his competence as a political commentator regarding India’s political affairs, especially since he failed to recognize ‘Urban Naxals,’ a commonly used term in India’s political discourse. Some also criticised Pakistan, suggesting that such attempts are habitual for the country to remain ‘relevant’.
An X user wrote, “Pakistan making a desperate effort to stay relevant. Arab Nasal is exactly what the Muslims of the sub-continent are not. They have been told this multiple times but ‘maante hi nahi’ (they don’t understand).”
However, some argued that the prominent political commentator, Hamid Mir, must have been aware of the term. They added that he deliberately misquoted PM Modi at the behest of ISI to propagate their false narrative regarding the Modi government’s alleged anti-Muslim stance and to damage India’s relations with the Middle East.
One X user tweeted, “Hamid Mir perhaps knew it but he plays in the hand of ISI, they hate Arab nations’ closeness with Modiji. While he gets conferred with the highest civilian awards, Pakistan doesn’t even get the alms from them. Hence, a deliberate ploy to spoil relations. Some Pakistanis masquerading as Arabs will quote-tweet him too. Maybe a news in one of the pliant media houses there.”
India’s deepening relationship with Muslim-majority Arab nations is a source of nervousness for Pakistan
Far from acknowledging his mistake, Mir doubled down on what now appears like a deliberate misinterpretation of ‘Urban Naxal’ in a malicious bid to imperil India’s deepening relationship with the Arab countries. Since the last two decades, most notably in the last 10 years of the Modi government, India has moved remarkably in forging strategic, cultural, and business ties with the Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East. India has emerged as an important partner for the Gulf nations in a global order that is in flux, partly because of tensions between the US and China, the Russia-Ukraine war, and in the wake of a pandemic that brought the entire world to its knees.
In such challenging times, India’s increasing capacity, economic growth, liberal business policies, and political leadership demonstrating a will to build key partnerships with like-minded countries in the Middle East have certainly rankled many in India’s neighbourhood, especially Pakistan, who see India’s rising global profile as a threat to its very existence. The fact that the Islamic countries have entered into a meaningful relationship with India has caused deep resentment among Pakistanis after their founding fathers, at the time of India’s partition, had pompously declared to build a country that would lead the Islamic world.
Instead, Pakistan is almost a failed state and is teetering on the edge of an imminent financial collapse. The social structure of the country, too, has deeply suffered from the ongoing conflict and economic cataclysm, with terrorism spreading its roots like never before and sectarianism flourishing unchecked. The sorry state of Pakistan, with a growing India that has replaced Pakistan in forging bonds with Arab countries, has naturally engendered feelings of resentment among Pakistanis, including the likes of Hamid Mir, who are so viscerally jaundiced against India that they refuse to allow facts inform their convictions.
Despite being repeatedly informed that PM Modi uttered ‘Urban Naxal’ and not ‘Arab Nasal’, Mir has dug his heels in, refusing to acknowledge his mistake and doubling down on his misinterpretation. His obstinance, nevertheless, reflects the frustration and helplessness that an average Pakistani feels as the relationship between India and Muslim countries in the Gulf deepens, offering New Delhi greater strategic depth in a host of domains, including crude oil, Kashmir, and more.