PAHALGAM: Bold and resolute response is need of the hour

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi's mitti mein milaane ka samay - warning at a rally in Bihar's Madhubani has hugely galvanised the nation seething with anger and grief over the loss of 26 innocent lives in Pahalgam.

- HARVINDER AHUJA

But it has also led some to clamour for India to wage an all-out war on its recalcitrant neighbour responsible for exporting terror - and obliterate it in one go.

Such an expectation emanates largely from the crass jingoism fuelled by a section of the TV channels and divisive rhetoric expounded by a large chunk of social media. By going into hyperboles and trying to brush the carnage in communal colours, they are, unwittingly, falling prey to the evil designs of the perpetrators of this barbaric crime.

Reports of terrorists asking for the religion of the victims before shooting them are, no doubt, provocative; but there's no denying the fact that all those (except one) killed in the sylvan meadow of Kashmir were Indians and their killers had "cross-border linkages."