INDIA CAN LEARN FROM ART OF WAR

By mastering the strategy of winning without all-out military conflict, India can emerge as a leading power

- BY MAKARAND R. PARANJAPE | Special to Gulf News

India has hit back after the Pahalgam terrorist strike of April 22. As this column goes to press, there are reports of at least nine sites hit across the border in the wee hours of yesterday. Quite significantly, India's manoeuvre has been named Operation Sindoor. Sindoor refers to the vermillion mark on a Hindu married woman's forehead, which was wiped out by terrorists who gunned down their husbands in front of their eyes.

What next? I hope there is no escalation of war between the two sub-continental nucle-ar-armed powers, which were one country before August 1947. As I argued in my last column, war, in any civilised society, is the option of last resort. The costs of war are too high for countries such as India and Pakistan, which have a long way to go to improve the basic living conditions of their large populations. Those who are baying for blood on both sides of the border are sure to rue the deadly costs of war when they themselves or their own near and dear ones are hurt.

Only death cults prefer wars; the rest of humanity loathes them.

I say this especially hoping that Pakistan will refrain from a senseless and precipitous tit-for-tat. As Indians, especially the strategically-minded ones, are fond of quoting Kautilya, better known as Chanakya, we have much to learn from his classical Chinese predecessor, Sun Tzu.

Options to all-out war