India-Pakistan-Anura, Easter massacre plots, economic earthquake, and Vietnam's victory recalled

THE attack which killed 27 civilians in Pahalgam, Kashmir, was an act of unbridled terrorism.

- By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

As a country which suffered terrorism, and cross-border, state-sponsored terrorism at that, against civilian targets (passenger trains, bus-stops, elderly worshippers, villages) for decades, Sri Lanka knows in its flesh, what such barbarism is like. Therefore, we cannot but agree with Prime Minister Modi's pledge to eradicate the perpetrators and strike at their backers. They deserve nothing else.

But there's a problem-mixing-up crucial categories. Eradicating terrorists and uprooting terrorism are entirely laudable, but escalation against another state without concrete proof that it is directly involved in or patronised this heinous attack, is something else altogether. Worse, it is brinkmanship with another nuclear power.

In 1984, Shekhar Gupta, at the time the crack reporter of the prestigious India Today magazine, scooped the story, photographs and all, of training camps of Tamil militants, many of whom turned out to be Tiger terrorists, in India. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa made a fiery speech in parliament, tabling the publication.

Prime Minister Modi's India is a high-tech superpower, unlike poor Sri Lanka then and now. And yet, it has produced no satellite images, heat signatures, or a shred of empirical evidence to prove its contention that Pakistani state authorities/agencies were in any way responsible for the attack. If such evidence were available surely it should saturate all international media, and be produced at the UN.

Pakistan has called for a neutral, independent inquiry into the attack and promised fullest cooperation. Unresponsive India maintains an ominous silence.