In Indus Treaty Pause, A Reality Check for Pak

The absence of any convergence in both the public and official narratives emerging from India and Pakistan underscores the seriousness of the post-Pahalgam situation

- TCA Raghavan

The dominant theme in Pakistani reactions to the Pahalgam outrage is that India has rushed to blame Pakistan for this as a default reaction, without pausing to consider other explanations or possibilities. Given the fact that a package of very significant diplomatic measures was announced against Pakistan soon after the terrorist outrage, such a reaction was inevitable.

Yet for many in Pakistan, the conclusion that India will invariably blame Pakistan as a means of coercion comes naturally. Thus, after every major terrorist attack, the issue of evidence is raised as a defensive reaction. In the past, the Pakistani position was often of a joint inquiry or a joint investigation. This time the position is a slight variant with the suggestion for an impartial third-party enquiry.

So adversarial is the current climate and so hyper-charged are sentiments, that there is little room for introspection on Pakistan's behavior in the past. The Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008 is a case in point. The reams of evidence then gathered and presented were being processed, although at a snail's pace, through the Pakistan legal system. Lack of evidence was not really the issue and a number of distinguished Pakistani police officers and prosecutors built a strong case. But an all-pervasive defensiveness where India is concerned, made blocking that case into a kind of patriotic duty for a certain Pakistani mindset.