Optics Post Pahalgam

Time of India

30-04-2025

Nandita Sengupta is a senior editor with The Times of India. Her blog aims to be mainly about all matters women, which includes men on occasion. Share your ideas with her on [e-mail] and please keep comments and feedback civil. LESS ... MORE
The only point New Delhi will keep in mind when surveying its range of military options to strike at Pakistan following the Pahalgam attack on tourists is this: Can India afford to open a front with Beijing on its western flank too? Beijing is, reportedly, already kitting out Islamabad to counter any move from India. Beijing has reportedly made an 'urgent transfer' of fighter jets, from its own lot, not the ones that were due to be exported to Pakistan, after the Pahalgam attack. Turkey isn't far behind.
Modi, in the second CCS meet has distanced himself from military action – giving the army a free hand. Modi is eyeing a new profile of peacemaker. But in the Indian scheme of things, it makes little sense. Operational details have always been Army's bastion. Whether covert or overt is not going to be decided without Modi's nod. Making that statement itself was odd – Indian military takes orders from GOI. A carte blanche to military does not dim govt's responsibility or authority. But the optics of the statement suggests as if govt is at a remove from what Army decides.
It's understandable why Modi distanced himself some. The 2019 Balakot strike following Pulwama didn't end with New Delhi smelling of roses or Islamabad vanquished. The capture of an Indian pilot, a blue-on-blue hit whose casualties weren't acknowledged till months later, were outcomes better played down than trumped up. And that was before Indian troops were amassed at the eastern Ladakh front where China's sat for five years now. 'Surgical strikes', similar to the attack on an army post in Uri in 2016, are always on the table, but do not have the dazzle or spectacle of a 'fitting reply'.
Sacking diplomats, throwing out Pak citizens, and engaging in social media warfare is par for the course. Pakistan threatening the LoC deal or India suspending the Indus Water Treaty is not a game-changer. As a party, BJP is master at making a political capital out of any and every occurrence. So it is foolish to think that the seemingly irresponsible remarks made by Goa and Assam CMs are not born of party chats, Whatsapp or perhaps Signal. It's no coincidence, but perhaps a Freudian slip, that two CMs simultaneously referred to Balochistan's 'indigenous movement' – that has no link with Pahalgam's terror attacks. Except perhaps the tenuous point that Pakistan blames New Delhi for causing 'trouble' in Balochistan – an allegation New Delhi vigorously denies.
Islamabad has also accused India of the more than 20 random killings of baddies across Pakistan by masked men on motorbikes over the last couple of years. There's disquiet within Pakistan's intel rank & file that Islamabad didn't make an issue of it. Pakistan observers have commented that Islamabad is in no position to go all out and attempt the kind of 'adventurism' like the Pahalgam terror attack. That it has its hands full fighting TTP and Taliban terrorism, and the sharp uptick of insurgents in Balochistan – it's mere weeks since the train hijack on March 11. In the wheels between wheels in the Islamabad-army-ISI-terror complex, in the hydra-headedness that's always been Pakistan, it's difficult for India to ever know quite what or who to hit.
Pak PM Sharif has called for a 'joint investigation' into Pahalgam – because of course that worked out so well in Pathankot and Pulwama attacks. Reportedly, the other Sharif, Nawaz, has been deployed to ride the backchannel with New Delhi's seniormost. Pak army chief Munir, former ISI brass, who's seen as the present-day Zia and had a severe falling out with Imran Khan, has 'somehow' become fodder for Indian social media – awash with hashtag #MunirOut, suggesting that fear of India's counter has made the Pak army chief evacuate his family to UK. Optics is everything. Reading social media and watching television can make one believe a full-blown war is imminent. Anyone reading the tea leaves and not social media could conclude just the opposite.
It's never too much to labour the point that not only can Pakistan not afford a war right now, even India can't. Troops movement is prepping, much needed posturing, part of pre-war harrumph. In fact, if conflict was actually imminent, it would be very quiet.
Now, in Kashmir itself, it is no secret that things haven't been all tulips and apples since abrogation of Article 370. On March 6, CM Omar Abdullah spoke about 400 young Kashmiris swept up in police's draconian PSA net – without cases or evidence. Anguished, he still played smart post Pahalgam, reiterating in his 'with what face do I seek statehood' remark that as CM of a UT. Kashmir is second only to Manipur in internet shutdowns. Going back a few months to the elections, Kashmiris voted as one, cancelled all the so-called 'New Delhi proxies' that included unsavouries, and put their faith in the Old Guard. Post Pahalgam, they came out again as one – Not In My Name. But barbed wire looks like it's back, alleged terrorists' houses have been razed, arrests have reportedly crossed 1,500, the crackdown and tracking has a 1980s feel.
The point to labour then is this. Post Pahalgam, what's 'normalcy'? Could a barely-held fragile peace post 2019 be called the 'new normal'? Or is the decades old shadow of militancy that's morphed into terrorism what's 'normal' for Kashmir? The larger region's politics have metamorphosed into a 'headache' for New Delhi. Three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are led by slippery govts – then there's Myanmar, no less slippery a customer to deal with. In talking with Taliban and striking ties to only spite Islamabad, New Delhi does itself a disservice. Kabul must be engaged, but not from a point of need, but for influence. Fact is, despite the fraught ties between Kabul and Islamabad today, Beijing has both firmly girdered, its singular focus on OBOR projects (see map) and mining reserves in NWFP, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Pahalgam's attack and the hunt for perpetrators is best contained within Kashmir; Kashmiris are paying for it already, from livelihood to surveillance to restricted movement. While the attack's ripples have reached Kanyakumari and Kochi, there simply isn't enough reason to wage a new conflict over and above the one already in place against terror. What's been churned the last few days since the attack has whipped up enough anti-Pakistan frenzy to last till year-end.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.