Pahalgam is Bharat’s October 7 moment: Time to act strongly, decisively, Israel-like

They say terrorism doesn’t have a religion. But terror victims, especially in Kashmir, do have one: Most of them are Hindus. No caste concessions are given to them. They are merely told to reveal their identity. If doubt persists, they are told to recite an Islamic verse, and in extreme cases, forced to lower their pants. And then, a shot in the head at point-blank.

This is the story of 26 tourists killed in Jammu & Kashmir’s Pahalgam district. They were killed because someone in Kashmir—and their patrons in Pakistan—thought they didn’t belong to the right religion and so should not be allowed to live any further. The dastardly attack on April 22 was Bharat’s October 7 moment. Israel, in retaliation, flattened Gaza and turned it into ruins. What will Pahalgam—or for that matter, Pakistan—be turned into?

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Maybe nothing will happen! Already, a section of the intelligentsia is coming up with articles saying how Bharat should be careful in its reaction, especially vis-à-vis Pakistan. They remind the government that Bangladesh and China are already waiting in the wings to exploit the situation. The truth is, these are all semantics. It’s no one’s idea that Bharat should go into a war with Pakistan immediately. It should instead come up with a plan to not just neutralise terror infrastructure flourishing across the border but also make it costly for Pakistan to be a part of any such jihadi exercise. This may take six months, or even a year. But the people and the government should not forget Pahalgam. It has to be avenged. And it should be avenged.

Maybe Bharat would conduct another surgical strike. Such strikes are good for the morale of the country, but they don’t change much on the ground if Bharat doesn’t come up with a long-term plan to deal with the terror factory called Pakistan. If not done that way, terror infrastructure re-emerges across the border and jihadi ecosystem continues to flourish in Kashmir. Temporarily, there will be strategic silence. There would be attempts to let Delhi believe all’s well now. Even the terror suspects would make the right noises. They would swear by democracy and human rights. Candle marches in memory of the victims would be organised. (In fact, one candlelight vigil has already taken place in Pahalgam, demanding justice for the victims!) And everything would then be forgotten.

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Democracy worldwide has been misused by anti-democratic forces to their advantage. In Europe, while looking at the immigration crisis, author Pallavi Aiyar, in her book Punjabi Parmesan: Dispatches from a Europe in Crisis, found a Deobandi scholar based in Brussels telling her matter of factly: “Europeans have become victims of their own laws.” When asked what he would do if he were “a European policymaker”, pat came the reply: “I would change their laws and stop all this immigration.”

Bharat has become a victim of its own innate dharmic nature (when you don’t have the notion of the other, the others are bound to get away with such assaults) and of course democratic laws. Even the enemies know it very well. No wonder the Ghazis of the Islamic world vow jihad against democratic Bharat, but seek common ground with communist China, even though if there’s one country that has treated Islam with utter disdain and wantonly persecuted its followers, it has to be China. In China, not only have mosques been forcibly sinicised, but also the content of the holy Quran has been distorted to suit the agenda of the Communist Party. More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. And their women are often forced to sleep with the Chinese troops supposedly guarding the region from insurgency. Yet, China remains a friend of Islam!

Why? Because China speaks from the barrel of a gun, while Bharat pursues the path of dialogue and democracy. The enemy is well aware of this distinctive—as well as instinctive—nature of the two. It knows very well that Bharat will press the force button only after a point—and up to a point. And then, given its democratic/dharmic instinct, it will revert to talks. Kashmir is a perfect manifestation of this mindset. This explains why after such a brilliant start to the revocation of Article 370, the government has gotten stuck in Kashmir’s snake-and-ladder game, with talks of statehood gaining ground now. The fact is that the statehood for Kashmir would be a regressive step. If anything, the government should think about divorcing Jammu from Kashmir, thus not just narrowing down the ‘disturbed areas’ but also untangling Jammu from the perverse Kashmiri influence. Last but not least, the government should come up with a durable Kashmiri Pandit settlement plan. For, at the end of it all, the battle is demographic. Bharat cannot afford to cede one land after another to jihadi forces.

As for Pakistan, the sooner we realise that “they are not like us”, the better it will be. It’s a country that has convinced itself to be in a perpetual warfare with Bharat. It has created heroes who have been Bharat’s civilisational villains. It is this innate anti-Bharat mindset that has made Islamabad officially declare Mohammad bin Qasim — the Arab invader who invaded Sindh in 712 BC and killed, maimed, raped and enslaved the very ancestors of today’s Pakistanis — the “first citizen of Pakistan”. This also explains why Pakistan has named its missiles after Qasim, Ghori and Ghazni. Since Independence in 1947, writes Husain Haqqani in Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, “Pakistanis have been told that their country is a ‘citadel of Islam’, that its destiny is to be an Islamic state, and that its army is the ‘sword of Islam’.” A sword of Islam cannot be friendly with Bharat, which is Dar ul-Harb.

In this backdrop, Pakistan Army Chief Gen Asim Munir’s ‘two-nation’ statement won’t be surprising. Anyone willing to join the Army in Pakistan goes through a course that makes them convinced about Islamic invincibility vis-à-vis Hinduism, and thus Pakistan’s military superiority over Hindu Bharat. Gen Munir, therefore, should be thanked for bringing this Pakistani thinking out of the closet.

According to author C Christine Fair, as she writes in Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, the Pakistan Army views its struggle with Bharat in existential terms. “For Pakistan’s men on horseback, not winning, even repeatedly, is not the same thing as losing. But simply giving up and accepting the status quo and Bharat’s supremacy, is, by definition, defeat… Pakistan’s generals would always prefer to take a calculated risk and be defeated than to do nothing at all,” she says.

This mindset explains Pakistan’s incessant support to terrorism in Bharat, besides its tendency to resort to reckless military adventurism. It is simply not prepared to accept status quoism, thus explaining Pakistani misadventures either in Kargil or Pulwama and Pahalgam. It’s the Pakistani military’s endeavour to “take a calculated risk and be defeated than to do nothing at all”.

It’s now up to Bharat to make this war so costly that it hurts Pakistan dearly. The first obvious decision—a low-lying fruit too—should be the suspension, if not total scrapping, of the Indus Water Treaty with Islamabad. Alongside, the Modi government should come out of the ceasefire drama being enacted for years now along the Line of Control. Finally, it should look at all options, including military, to not just dismantle terror infrastructure on the other side of the border but also regain the part of Kashmir Pakistan had illegally occupied way back in 1947-48.

Pahalgam is Bharat’s October 7 moment. The government should act accordingly—strongly, decisively, Israel-like.

The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.