Choices before India after Pahalgam

Hyper masculinity must give way to pacifism, people-to-people contact, engagement in sports, cultural,social, political, and economic cooperation between India & Pakistan, and a mutual resolve to end terrorism, writes Prof. SN Mishra

- 

JEAN Paul Sartre, the existentialist writer and philosopher of our times, had famously observed that: Man is condemned to be free.

He was alluding to the fact that freedom also carries a heavy burden of responsibility, of having to make a choice. Similar is the case with a nation like India, post the dastardly act of horrific and selective Hindu killings by militant Muslims, possibly in collusion with a sectarian rogue state like Pakistan, at the unsecured tourist spot of Pahalgam. Should we bleed Pakistan with a thousand cuts, as Pakistan threatened India, by choking off the water in Indus, Jhelum & Chenab, and recover the POK area of 13297 sq km (4.5 million population) purloined by Pakistan in 1947? Or should India's focus be on 'globalizing its fight against terrorism without internationalizing the Kashmir issue,' as Suhani Hyder has suggested. Should war mongering and the tirade of hatred against the Muslims in general go unabated, or should it be supplanted by peace initiatives and dialogues, and isolating the militants of any religious hue by beefing up our intelligence apparatus and propping up the security network?