Gurdaspur attack: India may retaliate with heavier dossiers

The Dinanagar attack has riled the Narendra Modi government, already under pressure to prove that it is better than the Manmohan Singh government in responding to terrorism. In what looked like a change of strategy, home minister Rajnath Singh threatened Pakistan with a befitting reply.

This clearly means this government will not stop until it achieves the goal of condemning Pakistan in the strongest possible terms. However, the UPA government used to condemn such "dastardly acts" in the strongest possible terms. Needless to say that there is no stronger term than the strongest terms. Dr Manmohan Singh remained uncannily unperturbed by frequent attacks by infiltrators. How can Narendra Modi beat that? By remaining more unperturbed? How much more? Is that even a thing?

Knowing Modi’s image of a strong and aggressive leader, there’s a strong possibility of exchange of fresh sets of dossiers. That’s India’s chosen weapon in retaliation, if not talking to Pakistan for three-and-a-half months fails to achieve the objective. Lack of warm handshakes should teach them a lesson, since war is not an option.

The logic, the ever unfailing logic, is that India cannot attack a neighbour for the excesses of its wayward child. Pakistani political establishment can always say it’s not their handiwork. It’s the ISI, which is an independent organisation that orchestrates more attacks inside Pakistan than it manages outside. Afghanistan and India are its other favourite places.

Since India, which is in talks with Pakistan for better relations, cannot attack the ISI without attacking Pakistan, how do you attack a non-state actor within a state?

The other argument involves the N-word. That levels everything. What if Pakistan, under threat from its bulkier neighbour, used the N-bomb. This argument assumes India developed the bomb to use as an ingredient in grandma’s pickle.

India definitely needs to raise the issue of the new-found sneakiness spotted among the latter’s terrorists. Yes, they often succeed in sneaking across to this side, walk about ten-15 kilometres and then hijack a car to get to a police station. In Samba, Kathua and other border areas, this was the accepted pattern. But this time they walked southeast, instead of in the northeast direction.

This surprising and unfair change of strategy is just too much to handle for our infantile political class and sleeping intelligence apparatus. On the latter’s part, an intelligence alert was duly sent about some terrorist outfit planning a terrorist attack somewhere in northern India. That’s too specific to act upon.

Timing is everything. Five-thirty in the morning, when the most alert man on duty is not at his best. But look at the timing from the ISI’s point of view. India’s Parliament is in session. We are the most dysfunctional around this time. The government is too busy fighting off extremely vocal attacks from the Opposition to deal with external threats.

A real terrorist attack has the potential to throw our political class into a tizzy. The attacks on each other can become sharper. This is going to get bloodier, with newer resignation demands. The Congress has already demanded Parkash Singh Badal’s resignation. The citizens have long resigned to fate.