Opinion After Pahalgam, why India should use prudence to project strength

Indian Express

02-05-2025

The massacre at Pahalgam has reopened an old wound—and with it, a familiar and dangerous script. In the attack's aftermath, India's security forces have reportedly mobilised across the Line of Control, and major naval exercises have been launched in the Arabian Sea. War clouds, faint at first, now seem to be gathering in earnest. The national mood is one of anger and resolve. Yet amid the understandable calls for action, this moment demands strategic restraint, not escalation.
The Pahalgam attack was no random act of violence — it was a carefully choreographed strike aimed at the most visible manifestation of Kashmir's supposed return to peace: Its tourists. The attack's symbolism was chilling — violence against the backdrop of an official narrative of peace. Reports suggest the attackers, at least some of them local recruits, exploited a lapse in coordination between local authorities and security forces to carry out a devastating strike. Intelligence warnings, if they existed, were either missed or not acted upon. It is a pattern painfully familiar to India — from Pathankot to Pulwama to Mumbai —and a reminder, if one was needed, that the gravest failures are often not of strength, but of imagination.
There is little doubt that Pakistan's deep state bears responsibility. The Resistance Front, which initially claimed the attack but has now disowned it, is a known Lashkar-e-Taiba proxy. For Pakistan's military establishment, the growing narrative of normalcy in Kashmir presents a strategic setback — one that Rawalpindi seems determined to disrupt. Falling back on familiar tactics, Islamabad appears to have reactivated its terrorist proxies to stage a strike on Indian soil. But even as the resolve in New Delhi to strike back across the border gathers force, and military posturing intensifies along the Line of Control and in the Arabian Sea, it is worth asking: To what end?
As tensions rise, the temptation to resort to kinetic action is understandable. The desire to punish, to signal resolve, and to demonstrate that terror will not go unanswered is legitimate. Yet the belief that India can calibrate a 'limited' strike below Pakistan's nuclear threshold is a dangerous self-deception. Pakistan's military doctrine — articulated repeatedly by its leadership, most notably by generals like Khalid Kidwai — leaves little ambiguity: Any significant breach of sovereignty — or Pakistan's conception of it — risks a nuclear response. Islamabad's red lines are deliberately ambiguous; escalation is embedded, not bounded, and it cannot be cleverly managed. That reality ought to give Indian decision-makers pause.
Striking across the Line of Control would, in effect, cede control over the escalation ladder. Islamabad's response may not be predictable, proportionate, or even containable. In conflict, it is rarely the initiator who controls the trajectory once the shooting has begun. The risks of tactical action spiralling into a wider conflagration, especially against an unstable nuclear-armed adversary, are not abstract; they are real and tangible.
There are other ways to make perpetrators — and their enablers — pay a heavier price. A strategy of maximum pressure, carefully applied, could in the long run be far more effective than a quick retaliatory strike. Economic tools can be wielded to target Pakistan's already fragile financial system, exploiting its dependence on external support. Diplomatic isolation, pursued quietly but relentlessly, can shrink Islamabad's room for manoeuvre. Covert operations — targeted and plausibly deniable — can erode the operational sanctuaries of groups like the Resistance Front without triggering the escalatory spiral that overt military action would risk.
None of this precludes the visible signalling of resolve. India must demonstrate strength, but strength need not be defined by kinetic action alone. As some have rightly noted, credible deterrence lies less in the theatrics of retaliation and more in the cumulative imposition of costs. It is the long game that breaks adversaries, not the short, sharp blow that may be emotionally satisfying, but strategically irresponsible.
There is also a deeper lesson that Pahalgam reveals. Kashmir remains, fundamentally, a political question. Infrastructure, investment, and economic opportunity are necessary but not sufficient. Without political agency, without a meaningful compact between state and society, spaces for radicalisation will always persist. Militants, after all, do not need the loyalty of the majority; they require only the disaffection of the few. So long as that disaffection simmers, moments of complacency will be seized upon.
The tragedy of Pahalgam, then, is not simply that it happened. It is that the incident was, in retrospect, entirely predictable. If anything, this was a failure of imagination — of anticipating adversary behaviour, of foreseeing how fragile the normalcy narrative remains.
This is not a moment for posturing or hand-wringing. It is a moment for clarity. Rage, however justified, is not a strategy. War, however cathartic it may seem, would be an error without a strategic purpose. If India is to honour the memory of those killed in Pahalgam, it must do so not through reckless escalation, but through a patient, determined campaign — one that imposes costs, builds leverage, and denies the adversary strategic space. Prudence, at such moments, is not weakness. It is the highest form of strength.