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China-India relations
ChinaDiplomacy

What ‘Wuhan spirit’? Kashmir suicide attack reopens Modi’s China wound

  • Pakistan-based group’s claim of responsibility poses foreign policy challenge to Indian prime minister
  • Questions raised on claims of a ‘reset’ in relations following the summit meeting in Wuhan

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Indian security officers inspect the site of the blast in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on Thursday. Photo: EPA-EFE
Debasish Roy Chowdhury
A terror strike on Indian security forces in the country’s restive Jammu and Kashmir province has raised renewed questions in India on China’s continued protection of the Pakistan-based terror outfit behind the attack, threatening to unravel a thaw between the Asian giants forged last year.
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In the deadliest ever attack in the region, over 40 Indian personnel were killed and many injured in the province’s Pulwama district on Thursday, when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy of 78 vehicles carrying the troops with a car bomb packed with more than 350kg of explosives.

Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which claimed responsibility for the attack, has been a bone of contention between China and India for years.

India has been trying to get Jaish chief Masood Azhar – who is allowed to travel and preach freely in Pakistan – listed as a United Nations-designated terrorist, but has been repeatedly blocked by Pakistan’s staunch ally, China. Since 2017, China has kept the listing of Azhar on “technical hold” citing “lack of consensus” in the UN sanctions committee.

“China surely has blood on its hands. In blind pursuit of its policy of friendship with Pakistan at any cost, China has become a partner in all its crimes,” said former foreign minister Yashwant Sinha, an outspoken critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose ruling Bharatiya Janata Party he recently left.

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