On Monday, 19 October, India’s Ministry of External Affairs rejected references to India in resolutions of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s Council of Foreign Ministers, adopted in Baghdad on 17–18 October. New Delhi’s wording: “malicious, biased and false”, “orchestrated by Pakistan”. This is a communiqué, not a UN ruling and not a repeal of the texts.

The MEA: “We categorically reject the anti-India references.” “We are disappointed that the OIC has once again allowed itself to be misused by Pakistan for its bigoted agenda.” Their lines. We have not written that the organisation is captured, as a fact found by us.

India: the OIC has no locus standi on its internal affairs. The Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are, in New Delhi’s position, integral parts. Politically motivated propaganda, the MEA writes, cannot alter that reality. An Indian position, not a finding of the International Court.

Since the abrogation of Article 370, the MEA says Jammu and Kashmir has seen economic growth, infrastructure, tourism, connectivity. The contrast, still on their account, is with the area India calls PoJK, where it accuses Pakistan of violence against civilian protesters, including women and children. That is the MEA’s charge; no names, no count of our own.

The only J&K files still to be addressed, on India’s telling: Pakistan vacating areas that New Delhi calls illegally occupied, and ending support for cross-border terrorism. Other hostile references, including insinuations about Islamophobia, are, again according to the MEA, an attempt by Islamabad to divert attention from minority persecution and sectarian violence. We have not checked the full text of the OIC resolutions.

The Hindu, 19 October: the same line. By repeating Pakistani narratives, the OIC puts its credibility in question, India hopes. Its members, the MEA writes, should reform the organisation. This is not India leaving a club it does not sit in.

Image: North Block, Rajpath, New Delhi, 6 November 2015, juggadery, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The secretariat, not the OIC hall in Baghdad.

Sources consulted: MEA rejects OIC’s ‘anti-India’ references, accuses Pakistan of orchestrating them — The Hindu; OIC being misused by Pakistan: India rejects ‘malicious’ remarks on J&K, flags credibility of agency — The Times of India.