Do not escalate

Govt must continue to engage with Pakistan

The tragic death of five soldiers along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir has set off a predictable sequence of jingoism, name-calling and demands for retaliation. Some of this is perfectly understandable. After all, there appears to be absolutely no way to call the Pakistan army or its clients in various anti-India terrorist organisations to heel. Given the domestic frustration, and the apparent inability or unwillingness of Pakistan's civilian government to do so, demands for retaliation, whether military or civil, will of course be heard. And while a democratic government must always listen to such angry voices, it has a duty to be wiser, sometimes, than the loudest voices among the people it governs. And in this case, it must strike a balance in responding to such domestic outrage, in order to keep its eye on the prize: of a future when such incidents do not occur.

For the simple truth is that a military solution - a form of escalation - is very difficult to both control and pull off successfully. Indeed, the deaths of these five soldiers were themselves in a way the product of such an escalation: India always declares it will have a "calibrated response" to provocations from across the LoC, a term familiar from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The crucial point to note: "calibrated" never means "calibrated downwards". It always means "escalated". And so one Pakistani was killed by Indian firing a few weeks ago, and five Indians by a Pakistani squad this week. If India broadens the attacks and firing along the LoC, the cycle of escalation would very quickly reach dangerous levels. There is no doubt that India's armed forces are ready for such a confrontation, as well as they should be. But it is not in India's best interests.

Were India to rise to such obvious provocation, it would only strengthen the forces within Pakistan - the jihadis and the army - that are most inimical to Indian interests. The chance of allowing the new Nawaz Sharif government to clip the army's wings could slip away. Just last week, in Saudi Arabia, Mr Sharif said that his aim was for a South Asia in which both India and Pakistan felt able to reduce defence spending. While there are reasons to take such assertions from Mr Sharif with a pinch of salt, it is also important to note that this indeed was the context in which the attack on Indian soldiers took place. It, therefore, would be in India's interest to engage with Pakistan without being unduly swayed by popular sentiment and exhibit a necessary maturity in a complex situation. This would require the Indian government to convey to its neighbour its deep discomfort over the recent developments even as it should continue talks with Pakistan's civilian establishment, and work towards creating a stable, powerful, pro-India economic constituency in that country. That would be a fitting response to this horrific provocation.