Manish Tewari | India’s Escalation Only To Deter Pak-abetted Terror
This is where the headlined dynamic first manifested itself. For the original provocation was not just the massacre itself; it was the very act of articulating the discredited two-nation theory
In any strategic or tactical situation there are three elements at play. The first is the original provocation, the second is the escalation, the third is the response to it — with the response being an attempt to establish deterrence usually by conventional means and the fourth is to avoid or mitigate escalation that is called de-escalation. All the four elements were at play in the 65 hours between the early morning of May 7, 2025, and the evening May 10, 2025, between India and Pakistan.
The original escalation in the present case was the speech delivered by the Chief of the Army Staff of Pakistan Gen. Asim Munir when he dragged out the apparition of the two-nation theory from some dark closet and presented it before a gathering of Pakistani expatriates. Gen. Munir articulated, “Our religion is different, our customs are different, our traditions are different, our thoughts are different, our ambitions are different, that’s where the foundation of the two-nation theory was laid. We are two nations; we are not one nation.” Munir also referred to the founding Islamic principles of Pakistan, saying that the country’s “basis was laid on the Kalima” and that Kashmir was their “jugular vein”.
A week later, there is a massacre of innocent tourists identified by their faith by Pakistan sponsored terrorists in the Baisaran Valley of Pahalgam in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir. Was this a mere coincidence? The answer has to be an emphatic no.
This is where the headlined dynamic first manifested itself. For the original provocation was not just the massacre itself; it was the very act of articulating the discredited two-nation theory. What was the need for Gen. Munir to try and echo what Muhammad Ali Jinnah had said on March 23, 1940, that “it is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature[s]. They neither intermarry nor inter dine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions…”
This theory was rejected by the people of East Pakistan in the December of 1971 when Bangladesh was created. For what is the relevance today of that inflammatory rhetoric when a nation born on the basis of faith could not hold together a linguistic group subscribing to the same religion for even two-and-a-half decades? This effectively blew and continues to blow the two-nation theory completely out of water.
Strategic thinkers and political leaders who try and establish a flawed equivalence between India and Pakistan are perhaps not acquainted with either the history or even the events around the Partition of India and what happened in 1971 that completely removed the fundamental basis of the Partition when the West Pakistan army commenced its atrocities on their own countrymen on March 26, 1971, that continued unrelentingly till the final liberation of East Pakistan and its subsequent rebirth as the independent nation of Bangladesh on December 16, 1971, when the Indian army ably aided by the Mukti Bahini inflicted a decisive defeat on the West Pakistani army.
Incidentally, even after the Partition of India, a very substantial number of Muslims consciously chose to stay back in India. It, therefore, is very evident that even much before the events of March to December 1971 the two-nation theory was rendered stillborn at the very cusp of Indian Independence and the establishment of a theocratic state of Pakistan. These are incontrovertible facts.
The massacre of April 22, 2025, convulsed the very soul of India. Across the nation people reacted with a sense of horror and extreme outrage as to how and in what dastardly manner innocent people were executed in front of their families. Pakistan obviously knew that India would not sit quietly.
The response came in the form of targeted strikes carried out at terror camps across Pakistan that had become an instrument of state policy now going back to 1980. India made it very clear from the commencement of Operation Sindoor that India was not looking to escalate.
The Press Information Bureau statement put out on May 7 at 1.44 am made that clear: “Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution. These steps come in the wake of the barbaric Pahalgam terrorist attack in which 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen were murdered. We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable.”
However, Pakistan chose to escalate the situation by sending drones, missiles and resorting to heavy firing across the Line of Control and the International Border including attempting to target India’s military installations. The drones and missiles were intercepted by the Indian air defence infrastructure and efficaciously neutralised. India then responded by retaliating against the source of those transgressions. The retaliation was also an act of self-defence and not escalatory in the classical sense of the term.
After having established conventional deterrence in terms of neutralising its original targets and in keeping with the statement of the early morning of May 7, 2025, there had to be a movement towards de-escalation.
That also happened when the director general of military operations (DGMO) of the Pakistan Army initiated a call to his Indian counterpart, thereby making it very evident that Pakistan was looking for a de-escalation. That is how things ended after 65 hours. The classical format of provocation, escalation, conventional deterrence and de-escalation played itself out in almost textbook precision.
Insofar as involvement of other nations in crisis management and mitigation is concerned, that is a given. When things become rather hot between two countries equipped with nuclear weapons, especially when Pakistan uses the nuclear shield to perpetrate terrorism, other state actors and stakeholders in the international system naturally become anxious. This is a natural order of crisis management and mitigation.