 "India and Indians must target Pakistan at every level")
If there is ever a time for a nation to test its collective will, it is now. What is the limit of our endurance of jihadi provocation and Pakistani intransigence? Days after Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir’s inflammatory rhetoric about the irreconcilable differences between Hindus and Muslims and his vow to support his “Kashmiri brothers in their heroic struggle”, 28 male Hindu tourists were mowed down in cold blood. Can or should any Indian remain unmoved?
The time for India’s magnanimous attitude towards a failed nation like Pakistan to cease. It needs to be identified as a rogue state, now being additionally backed by China to carry on a dirty war with India to undermine or slow down our relentless progress. Hopefully, it will not come to light that India took its eyes off the ball when it came to jihadi intentions—despite Gen Munir’s reiteration of the two nation theory—and hence facilitated the latest deadly attack in Pahalgam.
The very fact that an officer like Munir was elevated to head the Pakistan Army should have been evidence enough of the descent of our neighbour into a final fanatical madness. When a uniformed soldier speaks of the two nation theory, there is absolutely no reason to think that anything but a jihadi attack is imminent. And there can be no two answers to the question of dealing with a dangerously unhinged, armed and belligerent entity hellbent on massacre and mayhem.
It is surely no coincidence that the massacre happened when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Saudi Arabia—the fount of Islam—on a state visit and the US Vice President JD Vance was in India with his wife and children. It is calculated to not only terrorise but also embarrass India, as it cannot act in the same reckless manner as Pakistan is wont to do, with a wide choice of jihadi groups that act as willing proxies to earn their place in heaven among houris.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) was responsible for the Pahalgam attack though it may operate through an outfit called The Resistance Front (TRF). Should any Indian forget—or claim to not know—that it was the LeT that carried out the Mumbai attacks of 2008, killing 166 people? That it was LeT that murdered 23 Kashmiri Hindus in Wandhama in 1998, killed 35 Sikhs in Chittishinghpura in 2000, attacked Red Fort in Delhi the same year and India’s Parliament in 2001?
They also killed 30 Hindus at Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar in 2002, besides 31 Hindus in Kaluchak the same year, 24 Hindus in Nadimarg in 2003, then 60 in Delhi during the 2005 Diwali bombings. Serial blasts in Varanasi in 2006 killed 37, and 34 in Doda. LeT was also behind the 2006 Mumbai serial blasts that killed 211 people. Islamist terror groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, Harkat ul Jihad and Indian Mujahideen have also been active in later years.
In Uri in 2016 and Pulwama in 2019, Pak-trained jihadis targeted Indian armed forces. India retaliated with the targeted attacks on jihadi bases across the Line of Control in 2016 and in Pakistan’s Balakot in 2019. But that was clearly not decisive enough because in 2024 nine tourists including two children were killed when jihadis opened fire on a bus in Reasi in Jammu. Besides these, smaller incidents resulting in deaths of terrorists and Indian soldiers have continued.
The shift from soldiers only to civilians has been deliberate because the intent is to chip away at the national resolve of India and the personal resolve of each and every Indian. Particularly Hindu Indians. Because the accounts of the survivors of the horrific terror attack on April 22 reiterate that the targets were Hindu men. The jihadi murderers claimed that Islam was in danger due to the current Indian government and the women were told to go back and “tell Modi” about this.
There have been candlelight vigils across Kashmir condemning the jihadi killing of Hindu tourists but there will be answers sought about why the movement of terrorists escaped the notice of locals—both the police and civilians. If the men in fatigues were from across the border, then locals should have noticed strangers in their midst. If they were not strangers then the implications are even more grim. The extent of Pakistani and jihadi infiltration has to be ruthlessly ascertained.
The intention behind this latest outrage by these jihadis is very evident: first to destroy efforts to integrate and normalise Kashmir, and second to instil fear in the Hindu tourists from all over the country about not only about them but, inevitably, about the wider Muslim community on whose behalf the terrorists claim to speak and act. No one can blame those survivors—now bereft of their loved ones—for thinking that all Hindus are now walking targets for any opportunistic jihadis.
That is why it is crunch time for India’s 200 million Muslims today—now more than six times the number that stayed back in 1947 post-Partition when about two-thirds joined or emigrated to Pakistan. If anyone can counter the divisive narrative of Munir, jihadis and others of their ilk, it is Indian Muslims, who must stand as one to reiterate why their forebears chose to stay in India rather than the new Islamic state. They need to tell Pakistan that jihad is not their common credo.
With Islamists joining hands and voices with fundamentalist forces across both India’s eastern and western borders, Indian Muslims are in the spotlight. Unfairly, perhaps, but nevertheless it is up to them to tell Pakistan and its jihadi proxies that they do not speak for them. Proactively. Loudly. Unequivocally. By targeting Hindus in particular, Pakistan has diabolically lit a fire under Indian Muslims which needs to be addressed by that community head-on, and with clarity.
Finally, can India afford to remain ever the reactive state, not a pro-active one now? Outrages seem to adhere to a similar dreadful pattern of Pakistan-trained jihadis killing Indians—military and/or civilian—and India retaliating by taking out terror camps. On every civilised metric (economic, social and political) Pakistan lags behind India except when it comes to action against its enemy. India has to snatch the initiative on this count too. Avenging Pahalgam is the first step.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views
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