The Daily Fix: After Uri, Indian politicians must recognise that restraint is not weakness

The Big Story: After Uri

Early on Sunday morning, militants attacked the Indian army camp at Uri, on the Line of Control, killing 17 soldiers. It is a moment of grief. It is also a moment for careful recalibration in Indian security and diplomacy – the army has said that the attackers were foreign militants belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed, which operates primarily out of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. It is not, however, a moment for the sabre-rattling favoured by politicians and security officials who seem to mistake restraint for weakness.

Hours after the attack, Ram Madhav, national general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, said that "restraint in the face of terror betrays inefficiency and incompetence". "For one tooth, the whole jaw," he wrote in an angry Facebook post, while a minister in the prime minister's office said no response would be "cowardice". Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, chairing a meeting of army and intelligence officials, is believed to have said that India would "avenge the death" of its soldiers at a time of its choosing. Indeed, some observers feel that the recent show of aggression, both against Pakistan and protesters in Kashmir, flows directly from the "Doval doctrine", a martial nationalist agenda which sees virtue in the use of force.

But at this critical juncture, India must resist the temptation of a knee-jerk military response. Certainly, after the fog of bellicose jingoism clears, it must ask some tough questions of Pakistan. It must ask, for instance, why the heads of terror outfits – Lashkar-e-Taiba's Hafiz Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed's Masood Azhar – are given free rein in Pakistan. And why the Lashkar's Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi weaves in and out of jail, in spite of compelling evidence that he was the chief architect of the attack on Mumbai in November 2008.

But India must also bear in mind that the Pakistani establishment is fractured and pulled in different directions by its civilian and military leaderships. It is the civilian leadership that India must keep addressing, though Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's provocative statements on the Kashmir unrest have not been heartening. The dialogue between the two political leaderships has always seemed driven by the big photo-op moments and emotional gestures – the bonhomie at Ufa, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday surprise for Sharif – that are usually followed by violent upsets. India needs to invest in deeper dialogue, strengthen the currents of engagement that exist outside the glare of the cameras.

While India secures its borders and barricades itself against infiltration, it must separate the Kashmir protests from the violence at the frontier. As thousands of army troops are pumped into South Kashmir, it would appear that the Centre plans to stick to its policy of putting down the protests with force. The fear now is that the brunt of Uri will be borne by unarmed protesters across the Valley. Yet, if it wants to win back legitimacy in Kashmir, the Centre needs to listen to the discontent in the heart of the Valley. It needs to ask why a wide section of the youth felt so cornered that they were driven to stone-pelting, why taking up arms against the Indian state seems like an increasingly attractive option. Restraint in Kashmir is not weakness. It is the sign of a mature democracy, which is willing to listen to those it calls its own citizens.

The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's big story

Saikat Datta asks whether the attackers knew of the operational handover at the army camp, since they struck at that sensitive moment.

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan traces the change in government rhetoric, as Home Minister Rajnath SIngh calls Pakistan a "terrorist state".

Political pickings

1. Another senior leader from the People's Democratic Party, Nisar Ahmad Mandoo, has resigned from the party, in protest against civilian deaths in Kashmir over the last two and a half months.

2. Aam Aadmi Party legislator Amanatullah Khan, who faces allegations of sexual harassment, tried to surrender at Delhi's Jamia Nagar police station on Sunday but was denied arrest.

3. Less than a week after being sacked from the state cabinet, Gayatri Prasad Prajapati, the "most tainted" minister in the Uttar Pradesh government, looks set to return to his ministerial berth.

4. The Odisha government looks poised to take legal action to "protect the interests" of the state in the Mahanadi water dispute.

Punditry

1. India should avoid falling into the trap of impulsive indignation against Pakistan, writes Uday Bhaskar in the Indian Express.

2. In the Hindu, Lawrence Liang on how the Delhi High Court judgement in the photocopying case strikes a blow for the right to knowledge.

3. In the Economic Times, Pranab Dhal Samanta on how the Samajwadi Party churn illustrates the second generation problems of dynastic politics in India.

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