India: After the Pahalgam attack options for peace are diminishing

A beautiful hilltop, enclosed from all sides except for a narrow entrance, strewn with the dead bodies of tourists. A garden of Eden or heaven on earth turned into a blood-drenched death trap for innocents. Newly-wed couples separated by the cold-blooded murder of husbands. Untimely widows and shattered families. Religious slogans shouted by killers or their supporters. Burning pyres all over India.

As lurid and horrifying images from survivors’ cell phones flood social media, the initial numbness and shock turn to blood-boiling rage and calls for revenge. War-mongering rhetoric is ratcheted up on both sides of an already incendiary border.

After Ukraine and Gaza, the two lethal war-zones on our troubled planet, will there be a third in the Indian sub-continent? Will the home of age-old doctrine of ahimsa or non-violence, the land of the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi go up in flames? The entire region resembles a tinderbox. Who will light the match or ignite the proverbial spark?

The paradox of the on-going Indo-Pakistan conflict is that India has fought many wars with its neighbour, but it has not won the peace. Because peace, like shaking hands or clapping, takes two hands. And, in a sense, both India and Pakistan are like two hands of one body. For them constantly to beat up each other is like pummelling one’s body with one’s own hands.

Now that belligerents seem to have the upper hand and when passions have been inflamed to feverish pitch on both sides, the question on everyone’s minds and lips is predictable. Will there be another war? Before we try to answer this question, we might ask a more basic, even fundamental, one: should there be a war? The most definite, certainly the most sensible, answer to the latter question is, “No. No, there should not be a war.”

Does this mean that the death of innocent tourists should go unavenged or that the surviving members of their bereaved families should get no justice? Or that India should take lying down all these attacks? Again, the answer, most certainly, is no.

But even if we agree that necessary, even strong, action on India’s part is expected, even unavoidable, should such an action be an all-out war? An all-out war would be MAD—for it would be tantamount to mutually assured destruction. Because both states have nuclear arsenals. Some irresponsible politicians have even called for the use of such weapons and the use of stock-piled missiles.

We cannot be sure, of course, but I believe that neither side would like to trigger such a firestorm even if both sides must have contemplated it over and over again in their war games and strategic modelling. So, if we rule out the N-option, which is no option at all, then what remains? A no-holds-barred conventional offensive?

Again, what would this accomplish?

Will Indian tanks roll into Lahore or even father, which is far more unlikely, to the Pakistani army headquarters in Rawalpindi? Will India bomb the Pakistan capital, Islamabad itself? Again, the answer is no or not likely. What would be accomplished by such measures? India cannot hold these territories even if inflicts heavy damage on Pakistan. Therefore, even a conventional war is useless, if not unlikely. And both parties know it.

In any war, it is the common people who suffer. The conmen, with bejewelled spouses or paramours, and, of course, stashes of gold and dollars, get away in private jets. Wars inflict unbearable tragedies and hardships on ordinary men and women, who have no enmity to each other. Wars offer no remedies, nor do they satisfy our thirst for revenge. Both India and Pakistan are, moreover, poor; they can ill afford such mis-adventurism on account of the flimsy excuse of national pride.

In the Indian subcontinent, the futility of war was recognised long back, in what is undoubtedly the world’s longest and most powerful anti-war epic, the Mahabharata. Yet, let us not forget that the philosophical jewel that lies at the heart of the epic, the Bhagavad Gita or Song Celestial, exhorts us not to cringe or recoil from the good fight if it is thrust upon us by evil adversaries.

That seems to be India’s moral position—I will not call it dilemma—just now. It must act, but how? What can—and should—be done?

For India, the terror supporters inside its own territory, the sleeper cells and the support for terrorism, must be dismantled. Improved intelligence and operatives on the ground, with much more investment in surveillance, is the minimum desideratum. But, in the longer run, deradicalising the support system of terrorists and their ideology, religious fanaticism, is imperative.

Across the border, India’s options become much more limited and dangerous. Blocking water and food, imposing an economic blockade, and turning the Line of Control into a hot border are options for India, some of which have already been operationalised.

But the bottom line is that religious extremism and violence are a threat to both countries. Both the ideology and the infrastructure of such terrorists must be dismantled and shut down. Above all, local populations must resist the use of religion for political and strategic ends.

Else, war both undesirable and avoidable, might turn out to be inevitable.