7 min readApr 25, 2025 05:40 AM IST
First published on: Apr 24, 2025 at 04:29 PM IST
The horrific killing of tourists that has left the meadows of Pahalgam stained with the blood of more than two dozen corpses produces a sickening sense vertigo — like the fall of the falcon, “turning and turning in the widening gyre,” to borrow W B Yeats’ metaphor. The moral issue in this attack is clear. There are no root causes, no mitigating circumstances, that can contextualise its enormity. People were targeted for their religion. We can speculate on the logic of this attack: Was it timed to coincide with a visit by an American leader? Was it planned to divert attention from Balochistan? To wreck Kashmir’s economy? Is the attack part of the Great Game, meant to draw in the Great Powers by creating a sense of crisis? But there is no point speculating on motives. In the end, it is the effect of this act that will matter.
The nature of this attack is such that any state reserves the right to take whatever action is necessary to bring the perpetrators, and those who aid them, to justice. Yet, as India chooses the next course of action, it will be difficult to shake off the sense of despair this kind of terrorism produces. A successful military operation might be an act of justice. It might restore a sense of confidence in the capabilities of the state, and, in some quarters, satiate a desire for revenge. But even if these actions were successful in a limited sense, we will remain close to the edge of an abyss. One only hopes that whatever action we take is prudent, in the largest sense of the term, not merely performative or reckless. But the tragedy of the moment is that the bloody frontier this act in Pahalgam has drawn will still shadow our political destiny, whichever way we act.
We are at the edge of an abyss that has three dimensions. The primary one is the state of Pakistan. India is convinced that there is a significant Pakistani hand behind this attack, and it will proceed on this assumption. But the challenge of dealing with Pakistan is this: Alfred Cobban once called Partition a “non-solution to an insoluble problem”. But Pakistan has become an even more insoluble problem. Its ability to position itself as indispensable to one or the other superpower, first the United States, and now China, has given it the comforting belief that eventually it will be protected by its major patrons. They may not support its actions, but in the end, they will not let it down. India has done well to diplomatically marginalise Pakistan more. But the patronage of one or the other power has meant that the world’s ability to put pressure on Pakistan has always been limited.
The second, even greater, challenge in dealing with Pakistan is that it is difficult to imagine another state structure so deeply entrenched with an elite that is also so delusional about Pakistan’s prospects that it is willing to inflict suffering not just on others but on its own people. Pakistan is facing a deep security crisis in Balochistan, which it blames on India. General Asim Munir’s recent speech outlining Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir and calling it a “jugular vein” was a reminder that the only game the Pakistani establishment has going for it is to remain stuck in the past, even if it comes at the expense of its own people.
The Pakistani army has not, for a long time, had an even minimally imaginative view of the country’s future. Its greatest strength is not honourable negotiation with adversaries. It is proxy wars, the use of chaos and terror to substitute for its strategic failures and dalliance with religious fundamentalism. The problem with such a state is that it is not clear what counts as deterrence or punishment. At best, it positions itself for tactical reprieves. Like its economic programme, which lets it do the bare minimum till the next IMF tranche becomes available, its response to its own geo-strategic and internal conundrum is tactical adjustments that leave basic weaknesses and resentments in place. Punishing such an establishment is not easy; in fact, it fuels the very chaos it thrives on. So, while the Pakistani state may deserve to be weakened, it does not produce the solution. The paradox of Pakistan is how much its establishment thrives on its own implosion and humiliation. It manages to lose every war yet destroys every peace. This is not a problem that will be solved merely with military action.
The second abyss is now in Kashmir itself. Again, the silver lining is the unanimous condemnation of terrorism in Kashmir, and the sense that Pakistan is destroying Kashmir’s future. But the point of the attack seems to be to underscore Kashmir’s vulnerability: How fragile any sense of normalcy will be so long as a combination of Pakistan and some home-grown militancy remains a feature of the political landscape. Speaking in instrumental terms, the securitisation of Kashmir will again deepen, pushing the state towards the vicious circle out of which it has struggled to emerge.
The third dimension is the larger communal arc of South Asia as a whole. There have been terrorist actions in the past. But the context has changed drastically. For one thing, the view that while these acts are horrible, acting in retaliation would produce worse consequences is no longer tenable. After Balakot, the norms on how to deal with these incidents have changed. Having the strategic patience to diplomatically grind out Pakistan is no longer a politically viable option. So, action there will be, even if there is no “solution”. Terrorism does not directly produce domestic communalism in India. Quite the contrary: It also unites India across communities in anger and grief. But what it more subtly does is reinforce the idea that so long as India remains besieged by states like Pakistan, with weaponised religious identities, the 1947 modus vivendi of a secular India is no longer viable. Either the logic of 1947 must be completed, or it must be undone. This is the dominant mood in contemporary India. The consequences of either option are too dire to contemplate. The falcon of peace and secularism is in free fall, and there is no falconer to whose call it can respond. The perpetrators of Pahalgam will be brought to justice. But a sense of foreboding about religious violence in South Asia will remain. The terrorists in Pahalgam have put our collective future more beyond our grasp.
The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express
The nature of this attack is such that any state reserves the right to take whatever action is necessary to bring the perpetrators, and those who aid them, to justice. 
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