Pakistan instigating terrorism in India, not acceptable to us: Rahul Gandhi

“There will be problems if Pakistan does not stop carrying out terrorism in our country,” Gandhi said at an event in Washington DC.

Commenting on the relationship between India and Pakistan, Rahul Gandhi, currently in the United States on his maiden overseas visit as the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, lashed out at Pakistan for ‘instigating terrorism in India.'

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. (Congress-X)

“Pakistan's instigation of terrorism in our country is holding the two countries back. We simply are not going to accept Pakistan carrying out terrorism in our country. Until they (Pakistan) keep doing that, there will be problems,” Gandhi told his audience at an event in Washington DC.

Gandhi's remarks come ahead of next month's Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of Government Meeting, to be held in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, and for which Islamabad has sent a formal invitation to prime minister Narendra Modi to attend.

Modi was also the last Indian premier to visit Pakistan, when he made an impromptu stopover in Lahore to meet his then counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, in December 2015. The prime minister, then serving his first term, was returning to Delhi after completing his visits to Russia and Afghanistan.

The last Pakistani leader in India was the then foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who attended SCO's foreign ministers' meeting, held in Goa in May last year.

In February 2019, following the terrorist attack on Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama, New Delhi revoked the ‘Most Favoured Nation’ accorded by it to its neighbour. Then, the two nations nearly had a full-blown war, the first since Kargil 1999.

The same year, in August, Islamabad protested after India abrogated Article 370, that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, an Indian Union territory also claimed by Pakistan.