A billboard seen in Houston, USA, announcing the upcoming 'Howdy, Modi' event on September 22. (PTI)

WASHINGTON: Angry and overwrought exchanges and charges of genocide, terrorism, human rights violation, sexual abuse and worse are erupting between Pakistani and Indian partisans in the US in the run-up to the “Howdy, Modi!” event in Houston on Sunday where pro-India activists say hundreds of protestors are being bussed in by organisers from mosques and Islamic centers in the region.

Supporters of the Modi rally where President Trump will also be in attendance are tagging Houston Police, the FBI, US Secret Service, and immigration authorities to highlight the fact that places of worship are being used for political activism, leading to furious exchanges on the salience of religion in exposing purported civil liberties and human rights abuse.

The issue first surfaced on social media when an activist posted a list of 13 pick-up locations for protestors being bussed in for demonstrations against the 'Howdy, Modi' rally with the remark, “SUPRISE SUPRISE the bus pick-ups for those protesting against Modi & Trump are the mosques of #Houston. See how this works yet? Mosques are not simple places of worship. They are places of co-ordination & control”

“Much like churches, village galls, town halls, schools and many other buildings that serve a local community. Your point?” asked one protest supporter who saw nothing wrong in the pick-up from mosques.

“Her point is why only mosques? Why not other local community buildings like churches, villages halls, town halls school etc.?” came one response. And from another: “Imagine the horror had these pickups were from temples, then it would have labelled ‘Hindu terror.’"

India partisans also pointed to violence that accompanied such protests by Pakistanis in London and Pretoria while alerting local authorities.

Undeterred by the solid endorsement by the Trump administration for the rally and for India’s narrative on Kashmir amid stray concerns about the human rights situation in the valley, Pakistan and its supporters have cranked up their efforts to embarrass Modi with a fervid campaign that involves constant references to genocide, Hitler, Nazism, nuclear war etc.

The overwrought Pakistani narrative supported by a some liberals goes: India is conducting a “genocide in Kashmir” with a “million troops” who have turned it into the “world’s biggest prison camp” leading to the region becoming a “nuclear flashpoint” with an imminent war because the world is not heeding Pakistan’s narrative and its warning that Narendra Modi is like “Hitler” and RSS is “fascist” and they are bent on exterminating 200 million Muslims and other minorities in an India that is stewing with unrest, discrimination, poverty, violence etc.

The high-pitched campaign has had little effect so far on the Indian Prime Minister’s program or the global attention he is getting.

The rest of the world is treating the shrill rhetoric, much of it from the playbook of Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan, with the diplomatic equivalent of an eye-roll- notwithstanding concerns in some quarters about the human rights situation- while signaling it will be business as usual as long as New Delhi can manage to address civil liberties issues in the Kashmir Valley.

In fact, even as Pakistan is trying to turn the tables on India on the issue of terrorism, Modi’s engagements in New York include a ‘leaders' dialogue on strategic responses to terrorist and violent extremist narratives’, jointly hosted by King of Jordan, New Zealand PM, French President and UN Secretary General.

The Indian Prime Minister is also slated to attend an event to commemorate 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi at UN, at a time he is being accused of the most un-Gandhian approach to problems.

In fact, several Modi engagements and trips in recent weeks has seen a repudiation by the global leaders of Pakistan’s shrill charges against India. While the Indian Prime Minister recently breezed through the Gulf region collecting national honors and signing business deals, his Pakistan counterpart labored through Riyadh on Thursday, very much a supplicant, seeking to apprise the Saudi Crown Prince- who cleared a $ 20 billion business deal with India in the days after it announced its action in Kashmir- of the situation in the region.

Showing no sign of relenting, the Pakistan campaign will arrive in New York this weekend even as Modi and Trump head there from Houston.

