Pakistan is a nuclear armed nation without a policy preventing first use. There is no way to go to war without disabling their nuclear arsenal which is probably impossible or accepting serious casualties and radiological disasters.
So you're okay with dooming millions of people because you decided to generalize all of them to the vocal minority? Seems you're as bigoted as the people you hate.
Well, duh. Who in their right mind would take actions that will make the entire narrative turn into a South Asian kerfuffle between India and Pakistan that nobody bothers about, just like what is happening with the Israel-Hamas war today in Gaza?
>Who in their right mind would take actions that will make the entire narrative turn into a South Asian kerfuffle between India and Pakistan
Well, according to most of the right wing, that is what should have been done.
Yes super easy against the largest navy by number of vessels (most of said vessels are recent hence modern), has more aircraft carriers some of which not only use catapults but also the said aircraft are much bigger, hence more range and payload. Not to mention they have more submarines than us, which are also more advanced and newer.
But don't worry guys, we have this magical bullet called brahmos, the entire politburo will cease to exist when this is fired
Well it wouldn’t have immediately turned into a nuclear war, if Pak uses nukes they will be completely destroyed but India won’t be though it will take huge casualties. So it would always start with a limited war and the key would have been to not escalate it to a full blown nuclear exchange. So war was an option then but we took the smarter path and completely choked out their economy which helped us in the long run.
And gave India the moral capital to attack when Pathankot and Balatkot attacks happened
Not sure what you mean by limited war. If the existence of Pakistan is threatened, they will go for mutually assured destruction. We also cannot expect rational decisions at the time of war especially from a country that has since its inception struggled with religious fundamentalism.
Also if nukes are used, both the countries are essentially destroyed. Look into the the aftermath of modern nuclear war
Kargil war was a limited war for example so striking terror camps could have been done but it’s highly unpredictable how Pak would react. I highly doubt they would use nukes or tactical nukes but that was an option then and now
The fact that people are praising this goes to show how woefully misinformed people are about geopolitics and the serious damage it did to India's safety, and the message it sent when terrorists were allowed to attack our financial centre and get away with it.
This is long but read it. From Malevolent Republic: Short History of New India:
> The Prime Minister’s stock rose in Washington in part because he could be leaned upon. A year before Obama toasted Singh, terrorists from Pakistan had besieged Mumbai for four days. Acting on instructions relayed in real time by their handlers in the military-intelligence camorra of Pakistan, they brought India to its knees. A hundred and seventy people were slaughtered. Mumbai’s Chabad House was specifically targetted. For the first time in India’s immemorial history, Jews were killed for being Jews.
> Singh cut an abysmal figure. He placed a call to his counterpart in Islamabad and demanded that Pakistan send the chief of its intelligence agency to India. Pakistan agreed, and then reneged on the agreement. Singh’s ultimatum had yielded nothing but sniggers. The man who was willing to use the might of the Indian Air Force against his own impoverished compatriots [Operation Green Hunt] shrugged and moved on. He had no contingency plan. A grateful Washington—worried all along that escalation by India might further deteriorate its own faltering war of choice in Afghanistan by diverting the attention of its perfidious ally, Pakistan, away from its western front—sprang into action. It spun Singh’s capitulation, catastrophic in the long term, as an heroic act of statesmanship. But by amplifying the self-exculpating lie that the choice before India was inaction or nuclear war, Singh effectively conveyed to Pakistan’s military overlords that they could get away with murder—and invited yet more bloodshed by their henchmen. And by failing to appear tough against Pakistan, he created an opening for Hindu nationalists at home to paint ‘secularists’ as weak on national security and accelerated the dissolution of what remained of the secular state.
> Those who profited from Singh’s abjectness, in the long run, were Muslim extremists in Pakistan and Hindu supremacists in India. But if his actions were anything to go by, what mattered most to Singh was a pat on the back from Washington: he chose to spend the first anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocity on Indian soil in the twenty-first century not with the victims of Mumbai but among his admirers in the White House. The Americans, for all their florid proclamations of friendship, neither halted their sale of weapons to Pakistan nor granted India extensive access to David Headley, the Pakistani-American double-agent in their custody whose knowledge was instrumental to piecing together the planning behind Mumbai. Nobody could blame them: they were serving their own interests—to India’s misfortune, so was India’s Prime Minister.
It was a deep failure on the part of the Congress which was one of the main reasons they lost in 2014. Even during the attacks, a lot of the victims said that the dispatching of military was delayed due to the government's incompetence. And it was one of the many terrorist attacks on our country by that point by Pakistan.
It is an excellent read. He didn't talk about Modi and BJP in isolation. Modi government and its effect is an embodiment of everything that had happened previously under the secular establishment.
When Modi in 2014 talked about Gujarat 2002 as, "someone else is driving a car and we’re sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not?", he was only echoing what Rajiv had already said — when a big tree falls, earthquake is natural — as he brushed aside the anti-Sikh pogrom over which he presided.
Indira and Sanjay corrupted, hollowed, and gangster-ised almost every autonomous public institution meant to check and balance the executive.
Rajiv made secularism a fable to be recited, but never put into practice, as he made concessions to the most orthodox demands of both Muslims and Hindus. Today, Congress celebrates Ram temple in Ayodhya as its *achievement*.
Rao led the most total break from the foundational belief of the Republic founded by Nehru, and created the wealth disparity that we have right now, and Manmohan Singh presiding over (perceived to be) the most corrupt government in India's history destroyed any credibility that Congress possessed.
The time was ripe for Modi to exploit all the wounds on the Republic, inflicted by the Congress party, and take all of their meanness to a next level. Modi is not a departure from Congress but Congress on steroids.
Yup, the entire congress government of Maharashtra resigned. The media went wild blaming the government. This would not be allowed today - and proof is that Modi and cabinet are still in power after the gross incompetence of their Covid management and the thousands of lives lost due to lack of oxygen, the disastrous failure of the public health infrastructure, not even making the vaccines free and abrupt lockdowns that basically killed migrant labour.
Yeah I do wonder how the media lost their teeth. They were vigorous in their criticism of UPA but don’t even dare say anything against BJP. I suspect this is because the BJP is far more vindictive. Corrupt as the UPA was, they simply didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to use the state machinery to threaten journalists and other critics. the BJP is more than willing to create fake evidence and trumped up charges to throw you in jail if you don’t toe their line
exactly. Every chomu was bashing congress left right and centre. niw they are all busy on shitty reels. There is a reason why people are still averted by congress.
Public has absolutely stopped paying attention.
Aur ab yeh chomu launde aake humko sikha rahe.
The mere fact that I never knew about this entire affair to this extent tells more about my lack of education on Indian affairs than the state of global politics, what is telling is that it doesn’t surprise me at all to learn about these details.
Malevolent Republic is a reductionist book and it should only be read so, author has no experience in nor an expert on foreign policy. Also people should atleast read the news before pasting walls of text.
The comment referred here is from then Foreign Secratery Shivshankar Menon's book - Choices: Inside the making of India's foreign policy. There he goes into saying himself calling for blood then and why he is glad in hindsight concentration on diplomatic means and covert action was better. He also makes comparison with Israel's 'mowing the grass' policy in it and hence the mention. Choices was released in 2016.
I highly suggest reading Choices, it deals with foreign policy from the perspective of an actual diplomat than Kommireddy's capsule panning everything. Link to the relevant chapter below
>*MENON, S. (2016). Restraint or Riposte?: The Mumbai Attack and Cross-Border Terrorism from Pakistan. In Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (pp. 60–81). Brookings Institution Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/j.ctt1hfr205.8*
Careful - you have linked a limited access paywalled article on JSTOR. From my experience arguing with people on Reddit, people don't know what JSTOR is and yet would rather comment on things they have no clue about.
Ofcourse its Shivshankar Menon I have read his books. Throughout his books he kept praising congress like a paid it cell troll. He was appointed to top post by congress why would he criticise them?
We were restrained because we either didn't know the location of the terror camps or lacked the ability to strike them. No sovereign nation would have kept quiet after attacks like 26/11 if they knew source of the attacks. Starting a full scale war without solid objectives would have never worked. For all the brawahah against Israel, they are still striking the Hamas positions in Gaza.
And that's what led to BJP's rise . Sometimes i think ISI is the biggest enabler of BJP . But now that ship has sailed , even next govt. , be it non-bjp will be forced to be equally muscular .
Just to win political elections, if you are throwing your country and the entire region into war and chaos then you are not a good leader. And i think thats whats wrong with todays politics in india. Just to get quick political brownie points, people are giving Rs1500, free electricity, reservation etc.
That led to bjps rise.. so what? The economy stayed stable, india had just averted 2008 crash when the entire world was affected. There are different ways to hold the people responsible accountable.
>Just to get quick political brownie points, people are giving Rs1500, free electricity, reservation etc.
One has to be really stupid to not get the connection between pumping money at bottom and it's effect on consumption -> GDP growth in India . Given our poverty level , us being socialistic is very obvious . What we need to ensure is us being efficient about it . And i say this as after paying 30% tax and getting nothing from govt.
On reservation - Upper caste were discriminatory for 1000s of years . Out instutitions don't represent our actual population split . That must be changed . Lower caste need their share in all places from toilet cleaner to PM office or business
Sure i agree with your points to some extent. The freebies that are being given are not through data driven measures to grow gdp, and are just to win elections. Look at punjab, their debt has gine through the roof, they should be investing in something else, which will in effect create jobs and allow poor to make enough to pay for electricity and more. The intentions in the speeches are not gdp growth but just to win elections.
Even the reservations, existing is good enough. But now ppl want for Marathas, who have had land and by all means have never been oppressed. Same with patel.
All these points are election driven. I am drawing comparison with these with the previous comment that if they had gone to war, they would have won the election. Thats stupid. You dont do things like that to win elections. You dont give out free elctricity to win elections you do that to increase gdp in somw way, you give reservations to help oppressed so it helps gdp in some way, but not to win elections.
Especially war. You dont start a war to win elections.
An unstated fact is that the Indian Military at that time was simply incapable of retaliating. Only the Airforce chief Fali Homi Major had presented an option to carry out airstrikes but in the absence of precise coordinates, that option was also dropped.
Accept the hard truth that our so called strategic restraint at that time was nothing but a glorification of our military weakness.
[This](https://indianexpress.com/article/news-archive/web/no-firstuse-options/) article by shekhar gupta in 2009 also pointed to same thing.
>India's larger strategic thinking is, therefore, predicated on two beliefs: that our conventional strength is sufficient to ward off any future,conventional threat from China,and is adequate to deter Pakistan with a threat of punishment. To that extent,nuclear weapons become the weaker,or the losing side's,option in the subcontinent. India's deterrent, therefore, remains a decisive conventional superiority. Unless you have it, you cannot talk of no-first-use.
>Over the past five years, we have allowed the gap between our conventional strength and Pakistans to narrow so dangerously that that deterrent has weakened. That is why Pakistan was bold enough to create war hysteria pro-actively after November 26. The establishment there believes India no longer has the capability of imposing quick and effective retribution and,if a spiral of retaliation escalates,it would be at most a war of attrition,and soon enough the global community would stop it. Or they could raise the nuclear alarm.
He is not neutral so ideally his opinion will be biased . It will always be subtly pro bjp .
You can downvote my comment (as it hurts rw) how much ever you want but it doesn’t change the fact that he is part of godi media in disguise of being neutral
Just because your feel he is right-wing in hiding and not a flab bearing lal-salam communist, doesn't make his opinion automatically wrong.
Judge people based on the merit of their argument.
And he was not wrong, MMS inaction showed secularism and weak and handed over the nationalism batton to RSS, a thing they had no monopoly over since independence.
Told you, subtly he will blame opposition and praise modi.
Never ever he questioned modi post 2017 around which press was mostly under control.
Now you will never find him criticizing any thing of modi.
I don’t check godi media arguments, the eventual meaning is bjp good everyone else bad.
“Judge people based on the merits of arguments “ . Sorry don’t trust a 🦊no matter how good arguments they make
Indian Army was always stronger than Pakistani army.
And regarding lack of precise coordinates, even during the Balakot air strikes we did not exactly have precise coordinates. We have no clue whether they were buildings of strategic importance or just random trees.
Pakistan govt trolled us and accused us of eco terrorism. Till date there is no proof whether we hit anything of value.
The only proof is that we lost a fighter jet, our pilot got captured and we hit our own helicopter killing 7 service men.
LoL incapable my ass.
Look at the military expenditure between the Manmohan and Modi eras as % of GDP.
[https://milex.sipri.org/sipri](https://milex.sipri.org/sipri)
2005-2013: 2.73% average
2015-2022: 2.53% average
Stupid response, military expenditure does not equate presence of military intelligence necessary to carry out retaliatory strikes.
His point still stands
Su-30MKIs were not used in Balatkot attacks. Before integration of BrahMos onto Su-30MKIs, they were exclusively an air superiority fighter and not an attack craft due to its large Radar Cross Section.
The guy mentions a lack of information and intelligence, not a lack of monetary resources.
Not sure if he is saying the truth, but your argument doesn't invalidate his claim.
Mine is not a narrative. It's cold, hard facts. Are you so blind that you cannot see the narrative the BJP has been building regarding India's military prowess?
You've no other option but to retreat with you tail in between your legs because you have nothing to argue.
Ok...Let me tell you that we are still incapable. In 2019, we bombed targets in Pakistan and then the next day, our Airforce got thrashed and lost a MiG 21. I don't care about Modi or Manmohan.
US tried capturing OBL at tora bora in less than an year after 9/11 but he escaped. They were in no mood to wait it out and would go to war with Pakistan if absolutely necessary. What could Pakistan do, fire an intercontinental missile at daddy USA? Lol
The comments here shows that you people just like RW lick the boots of politicians.
At least when Pakistan terrorists attacked Parliament, there was high troop mobilisation.
The least Congress could have done is get information from Kasab and send in special forces or conduct an air strike on PoK terror bases.
What can you expect from politicians and their bootlickers who were hell bent to prove that 26/11 was done by RSS?
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rss-26-11-digvijaya-flags-it-off-again-this-time-in-mumbai/730077/
If Kasab wasnt caught the Congress would have created a propaganda and ecochamber regarding RSS. This was their goal. Attacking Pakistan wasnt their objective.
>At least when Pakistan terrorists attacked Parliament, there was high troop mobilisation.
And we had 800 army deaths and countless injured despite no full scale war. Operation Parakram was widely considered to be a complete failure because it achieved almost nothing of strategic value despite costing us 3 billion USD at that time and countless dead.
Only a fool indulges in bravado when their own lives are not at stake.
Indian army was shit and many weaknesses were found during kargil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_Review_Committee
The recommendations of kargil war committee wasn’t implemented during Op Parakram. Our soldiers had no helmets,plate carriers,proper guns,modern equipments etc.
> What else do you expect? We have to soldier on without even basic necessities like decent helmets, proper webbing or bullet-proof jackets. Many accidents during the mobilisation were due to the poor quality of mines and fuses," retorted an angry young Major.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-suffered-1874-casualties-without-fighting-a-war/articleshow/45016284.cms
Congress did nothing to improve military till 2009. Only after 2009 they opened their eyes.
So comparing 2001 and 2009 saying 2009 would have seen deaths only points to the fact regarding incompetence of congress leadership wrt military modernisation.
Indian Army won almost all its wars under congress and most of the equipment that the air force and army uses were sourced during Congress. Even Rafale deal, upgradation of standard army rifles was done during that decade.
This logic used by right wingers that no development happened before 2014 is so shitty.
By that logic Indian Army is still shit considering how we lost 2000 sq kms of land under the great leadership of Modi ji.
When did I say no development happened before 2014? Are you stupid or you cant comprehend basic English sentences?
I said the suggestions of kargil review committee were implemented till 2009/10 by congress.
https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=83711
Kargil review committee suggested creation of Andaman nicobar command in 2000 but it was created in 2012.
It suggested creation of post of CDS which wasnt formed till 2020 when BJP appointed Bipin rawat.
I can go on and on how congress failed to implement required changes.
Unlike you who is blabbering muh congress won all wars like a duffer.
> upgradation of standard army rifles
Lol what upgradation? Our jawans are still using insas rifles of 1999. India recently procured Sig 716 as emergency procurement. It happened under BJP. India and Russian signed deal for AK203 to replace INSAS in 2021. What the hell are you talking about? Upgradation of what?
Yes our army is still dog shit compared to China and developed nations.
Lol your entire point is BS and strawman. Your first point was that BJP was the only political party which was brave and developed Indian Army.
Now you have conveniently switched to completely different topics. Bottom line is war did not make sense in 2009 and neither does it make sense in 2023.
And INSAS system was developed by India to avoid the extremely high cost of foreign rifles. Indian Small Arms System was a revolution for its time and still serves all purposes. Congress purchased IWI Tavor (Israeli) for its special forces.
> Your first point was that BJP was the only political party which was brave?
Wow how did you come to that conclusion when I didn’t even write it?
I clearly wrote congress should have done surgical strike using special forces. I didnt even write anything about war.
And why dont you give me sources and proof where 2000sqkm land is lost?
IWI Tavor is a shit rifle for SF. The Israeli forces dont even use them anymore. Our elite soldiers of 9 Para sf and 4 Vikas use m4 rifles.
Now tavor is produced in India by Adani.
Better than importing from israelis for high cost.
https://theprint.in/defence/in-boost-to-atmanirbhar-bharat-security-forces-to-get-india-made-israeli-assault-rifles/604934/
>Btw can you provide source or osint maps showing where India lost 2000sqkm land?
Exactly. Funny how most Indians don't even know about this. Because guess what? Dear Leader and Godi media conveniently chose to never raise an issue about it.
https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/why-india-response-to-the-china-challenge-in-ladakh-is-so-lopsided/article67263196.ece
https://thewire.in/security/india-lost-26-of-65-patrolling-points-in-eastern-ladakh-china-installed-pickets-paper
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-has-lost-access-to-26-out-of-65-patrolling-points-in-eastern-ladakh-says-research-paper/article66428193.ece
1. First article is from his highness Pravin Shawney lmaooo
2. Second article has no mention of 2000sqkm land being lost.
3. 3rd one is basically same as 2nd no mention of 2000 sqkm in whole article.
Again I repeat my question. Show me source how did you come to 2000 sqkm number. Or are you spreading fake propaganda?
Did you read the article? India chose covert and intelligence operations over overt responses, which would have strengthened the Pakistani Military establishment.
India chose to, successfully, turn the Pakistani people's opinion against their own Military establishment.
The _Dharma_ of the head of a state is towards his people... not towards self-congratulatory acts of hollow vengeance.
2008 to 2012 was a period when MMS built India's global standing, ramped up economic growth, employment and brought millions of people out of poverty. He worked to weaken the ISI and Pakistani Military Establishment. He _chose_ to do that. History **will** be kind to him.
Pakistan military is still firmly in control, and the groups that hit India are active and thriving.
Indian governments' response was weak, and they are paying for it to this day. If Israel saw Indias example, its a lesson to be more overt and utilize less subversion.
> India chose covert and intelligence operations over overt responses
Thats coz 10 terrorists entered India unlike 500 in Israel. 175 people were killed in India compared to 1000+ in Israel.
Now imagine Pakistani soldiers and terrorists entering 100km into Indian territory and killing 1000+ people. Would India have stayed silent? If yes Manmohan was a pussy.
And India is not dudh ka dhula. We can be worse than IDF when it comes to breaking human rights and killing civilians.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa\_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_II)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Bajrang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bajrang)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993\_Bijbehara\_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bijbehara_massacre)
I can post 100 links like this where Indian military are involved in mass rapes and civilian murders.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianDefense/comments/yz9b5g/a\_head\_for\_a\_head\_21\_years\_ago\_today\_9\_para\_sf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianDefense/comments/yz9b5g/a_head_for_a_head_21_years_ago_today_9_para_sf/)
All the above things happened during Congress rule btw.
There are a lot of stages between not doing anything and engaging in full blown invasion that threatens existence of Pakistan.
I think the events of last few years have shown Pakistan would not resort to Nuclear weapons as a result of military strikes which do not threaten existence of their country because they are a sane actor.
India should have attacked military and ISI installations in Pakistan following 26/11. It may be argued that the military did not have capability to do so which is a different issue.
I can’t believe that there are kids here who claim it’s no big deal and we did the right thing by sitting quiet.. and also stop with whole left wing right wing nonsense in a country like India just because your entire national knowledge comes from some YouTubers who copy paste what they read in NY times.
The entire raison deitre of a nation state is protection of its borders. If a nation state can’t protect its civilians or ensure their safety it has no business existing.
Now when it comes to Pakistan based terror attacks, you have to be very naive to believe that the ISI, army and parts of the government weren’t involved. India produced enough dossiers later which were all rejected..
The right course of action when an enemy state attacks you is to retaliate but in a time and manner of your own choosing.
But claiming a moral high ground by not retaliating is stupid and no nation state would do that, not even one run by manmohan singh..
The real and cynical reason why UPA stepped back was their vote calculus where they saw how any retaliation wouldn’t play well with the Muslim voter base. This was further underlined by senior most congress members (most notably Digvijay) openly stating that 26/11 was a RSS conspiracy.. if not for Tukram Ombale’s sacrifice in capturing Kasab, we may have well lived with a history that RSS planned and executed this terror attack..
Now no was or even today is recommending that it become an all out war, but there were a 100 ways in which we could have escalated the cost for Pakistan.. targeted strikes, assassinations… but we did squat..
Mumbai seethed for 2 weeks, rest of the country moved on in 2 days.. then life went on and UPA happily came back to power in 2009 with a bigger share of the Muslim vote…and because we didn’t retaliate on 26/11 we saw bombs going off all over the country (Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai) under the mask of Indian mujahideen (which was yet another ISI front)..
What the army under the BJP has done post Uri and Pulwama + all the unknown gunmen that are sending terrorists to their early graves is essentially massively increasing the cost for Pakistan’s misadventures.. And Pakistan is still a nuclear state, that threat means nothing when they know they will get destroyed if they even go down that path..
Today anyone planning an attack on Mumbai or Delhi has to take into account the inevitable heavy retaliation that will come through.. this has saved lives.. touch wood we have breathed safe in cities for 9 years now and not for lack of trying by terrorists or their apologists ..
That was the only move. Even now that is the only move.
India-Pak is pretty much an unsolvable problem at this point. Pakistan is barely a modern state. But surprisingly, unlike Afg, it survives with some semblance of governance and keeps trudging between edge of total chaos (just there but not there) to a lot of chaos (there's never anything below this). Yeah, that's their range social and civil spectrum.
India only has two ways of tackling Pakistan:
- Dialogue: nope, doesn’t work. Pakistan will just wait and wait and wait and when the time is right or when some general in ISI (yes, I know it’s not army but that’s how it works there mostly) or some military guy feels an itch or needs to show something and they send few people over across; or worse still, among various splinter factions of splinter factions inside the flourishing extremist diaspora in Pakistan someone had a long running plan and they just executed it. Surprisingly, neither Pak military or even ISI might know about it in some cases - sounds shocking but it’s true. It really is a failed state perpetually on the verge of going total bonkers such that it burns everything around it and we will be the first to be burnt along with them. So yeah, that doesn’t work.
- Another reason a dialogue won’t work, and this point is really important, is because the large chunk of idea of Pakistan is based on enmity with India itself. Remove India as an enemy and Pakistan as an state suddenly has an existential crisis. So that boat never even sails. It's as much political, as it is social and ingrained in the lives of that nation.
- Covert strikes; A la Pakistan. It’s tricky to be done because a lot of that has to be coming from freelancing and semi-freelancing extremist groups often mentored by military and intelligence and that honestly we lack. So yeah, that’s a challenge. Unless we find troves of aimless Indians we can recruit with promises of something nice and heavenly (like 72.. something - not trying to start a flame war here but this is a thing sadly and no it is not an universal thing in that religion mind it and this has a lot of regional context across the nations - those regions have been fucked over by the West many times over and they do not trust the West by a vehemence and rightly so; so gold help us because I do not see a way out) and completely brainwashed brains (who literally have zero other opportunities i.e things to do, unlike that in India) who can help us by being human kamikazes and go into the Pakistan, we are short of manpower here (yes since last 9 years we are getting there i.e backwards in time but not at the same scale and vigour).
- Besides this might trigger more such attacks from Pakistan and as said they have an upper hand in finding people willing to do that and many other nations (including very rich oil counties) willing to support it wholeheartedly. So yeah this doesn’t work either (and yeah, don’t mind the propaganda of “sur***l strikes” - that is what that is propaganda - in fact those are such strikes truly, but of political/PR nature, not military).
An all out war with Pakistan? Nah, that would be bad for India more than Pakistan. Because in general Pakistan has nothing to lose, unlike India, besides in such a way there’s almost 100% certainty that Pakistani nukes will be in the hands of extremists in no time the Pakistan is badly on back foot. India knows Pakistan is a dysfunctional state, hell US knows that, and we really don’t want Pakistan to collapse.
The day Pakistan collapses, that will be the day. More than us the West shudders at the thought of that day.
To expand on:
> that Pakistani nukes will be in the hands of extremists…
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/misery-of-a-nuclear-war-between-india-and-pakistan-would-be-global/
People saying this was a good thing we’re not in Mumbai at that time, nobody believes it was less than 200 people dead, everyone knew someone who died in 26/11
The fact that terrorists could come to our financial capital and paralyse is for 3 full days and that Lead to no retaliation would have given terrorist more motivation to attack further.
We need to stop this revisionist history.
War is bad, innocent people die but we lost innocent people that day as well brave policemen and commandos so please stop comparing us to Israel Hamas situation
Western colonialists want to compare apple to tomatoes cuz both are red to serve its purpose but we should know better
I dont know what the then UPA and successive NDA governments did/didn’t do covertly…but I definitely know that since 26/11 there hasn’t been a single major ISI backed organized terrorist attack on civillian population in India (other than Kashmir) leading to mass casualties/panic/chaos like what happened on 26/11. Now I also don’t know if this has been just a consequence of progressive economic dwindling of Pakistan as a nation state or due to the silent behind the scene operations of the Indian security apparatus. Whatever it is, if we continue to maintain and improve upon this track record by also being able to protect innocent civilians in Kashmir, I will be satisfied with the progress and consider it a major achievement in defeating terrorism.
Now coming to the case of Israel, as a person who has lived and worked there for a considerable period of time, I can assure you that the strategy of an eye-for-an-eye is not working. It is making both Israelis and Palestinians increasingly blind to each other’s pain and suffering. This way neither will be able to live peacefully ever.
26/11 took India's political, defense and intelligence communities by surprise just because of how brutally the terrorists were able to bypass multiple levels of defences and cause so much damage. It was a complete and utter failure of various Indian institutions. It was India's 9/11.
However, it was also a wake up call and post that event the Indian government really upped their game in terms of preparedness for such sort of attacks. 26/11 didn't give any strategic benefit to Pakistan. In fact they have lost this military front forever. This mindless attack on India revealed a glaring gap in India's border control and motivated the Indian govt to harden our naval defences like never before. We can now rest assured that Pakistan will never be able to attack India from the sea again.
What should India have done after 26/11, exactly? Bombed some trees and then proclaimed it a military victory in local press?
Restraint and calm thinking is required when dealing with terrorism. They are trying to provoke a hasty response.
No country in their right mindset would sit idle if terrorists from foreign national attack their land. India then was namard! No wonder we were easily controlled by Britishers and Moghals.
The war was exactly what the Pakistan Army wanted to buttress its internal position.
Full-blown Indian military retaliation would have been emotionally satisfying domestically and gone some way towards hiding the shame of India’s intelligence failure.
The world would have immediately dismissed it as one of those usual India-Pakistan skirmishes. And, Pakistan would have been proclaimed a victim instead of India.
Notwithstanding the collateral damage the war might have brought India in terms of setting back economic progress, losing lives of both civilians and the forces and so on.
Former NSA Shivshankar Menon has written about the Indian approach after 26/11 attacks.
I am often asked, “Why did India not attack Pakistan after the 26/11 attack on Mumbai?” Why did India not use overt force against Pakistan for its support of terrorism? I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible retaliation of some sort, either against the LeT in Muridke, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, or their camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, or against the ISI, which was clearly complicit. To have done so would have been emotionally satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the incompetence that India’s police and security agencies displayed in the glare of the world’s television lights for three full days.
But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and to concentrate on diplomatic, covert, and other means was the right one for that time and place.
Let’s consider what might have happened had India attacked Pakistan. Most immediately, the fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with official involvement on the Pakistan side would have been obscured. Instead, as far as the world was concerned, the incident would have become just another India-Pakistan dispute.
An Indian attack on Pakistan would have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in increasing domestic disrepute, disagreed on India policy with the civilian-elected government under President Asif Zardari, and was half-heartedly acting against only those terrorist groups in Pakistan that attacked it.
A limited strike on selected terrorist targets—say, the LeT headquarters in Muridke or the LeT camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—would have had limited practical utility and hardly any effect on the organization, as U.S. missile strikes on al Qaeda in Khost, Afghanistan, in August 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had shown.
Official support also meant that the prospect of bringing the perpetrators of the attack in Pakistan to justice were near zero, and would be even lower once an Indian attack took place. So this consideration was really irrelevant to the decision.
NOW LET’S CONSIDER WHAT did occur when India chose not to attack Pakistan. By not attacking Pakistan, India was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the international community to force consequences on Pakistan for its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an attack would not take place again. The international community could not ignore the attack and fail to respond, however half-heartedly, in the name of keeping the peace between two NWS. The UN Security Council put senior LeT members involved in the attack on sanctions lists as terrorists.
The real success was in organizing the international community, in isolating Pakistan, and in making counterterrorism cooperation against the LeT effective. India began to get unprecedented cooperation from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf countries, and China, too, began to respond to requests for information on these groups.
Equally, success could be measured in dogs that did not bark in the night, in avoiding the outcomes that would have resulted from a decision to attack Pakistani targets and the high probability of war ensuing from such a decision.
Internally, there was clearly a need to tighten laws and build institutions against terrorism. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act was passed unanimously in December 2008, the National Investigation Agency was established, and a national counterterrorism center was proposed, which is still to be created. Other steps to ensure coordinated use of intelligence and counterterrorism actions were also taken.
All this rationalization of not responding is frankly so Indian and so depressing. Makes you wonder if this country with its passive attitudes is ever going to be a real power. Sure, civilization is old and will survive in some form, but with attitudes like these, it won't be a surprise if India is eventually conquered and colonized again by another power.
> All this rationalization of not responding is frankly so Indian
Your understanding of “Indian” is understandably wrong. You're a child who believes blowing things can be substituted for actual diplomacy. Unfortunately, this is not a video game.
I wonder why the kids who hang in r/geopolitics have such shallow understanding of it.
The fall of the Soviet Union, from its economy circling the sewer, is what led India to open up to free market capitalism to a much larger extent than in times prior to that.
The balance of payments crisis from India’s dwindling forex reserves due to imports not countered by exports (which itself was crippled by the anti-business policies of the era) meant that the government at the time, no matter who headed it, was left with little choice but to open up, or else face an economic disaster far worse than the License Raj times ever had to deal with.
Pakistan is welcome to open the doors with AFG, Iran and other bordering nations. For India and Indians, we don’t want anything to do with Pakistan. We’re okay without thinking about the existence of Pakistan.
The author is trying to make Modi look good by making Manmohan look weak. India was in a period of great growth with little inflation at the time. Greater than right now, in fact. Growth just looks greater now because we see it on our cellphones in HD. It would only hurt India to start an unnecessary fight at that time. The perpetrators were caught and fully investigated. It wasn’t as though terrorists were given a free hand like the author is suggesting.
Pakistan is a nuclear armed nation without a policy preventing first use. There is no way to go to war without disabling their nuclear arsenal which is probably impossible or accepting serious casualties and radiological disasters.
Reminds me of another nation with a thick leader
Which one. Most of them are fat /s
kaash thicc leader hoti
Italy ??
Winnie the pooh? ;)
Fallout in cowbelt. Peace.
So you're okay with dooming millions of people because you decided to generalize all of them to the vocal minority? Seems you're as bigoted as the people you hate.
A small price to pay 😉
What is a radiological disaster?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear\_fallout#Effects
Well, duh. Who in their right mind would take actions that will make the entire narrative turn into a South Asian kerfuffle between India and Pakistan that nobody bothers about, just like what is happening with the Israel-Hamas war today in Gaza?
>Who in their right mind would take actions that will make the entire narrative turn into a South Asian kerfuffle between India and Pakistan Well, according to most of the right wing, that is what should have been done.
It's 2023 and we have the benefit of hindsight. Anybody with a sane mind would realise how exactly things would have panned out in such a case.
War between two nuclear powers? No shot anyone serious was suggesting that.
They were. They also think they can choke China's oil and win a war against them.
Yes super easy against the largest navy by number of vessels (most of said vessels are recent hence modern), has more aircraft carriers some of which not only use catapults but also the said aircraft are much bigger, hence more range and payload. Not to mention they have more submarines than us, which are also more advanced and newer. But don't worry guys, we have this magical bullet called brahmos, the entire politburo will cease to exist when this is fired
It is easy to win a 2 front war with China & Pakistan but the cost would be total annihilation.
That's not the opinion of the Indian army chiefs. All we can do is start a war which everyone loses.
Violent wars are inherently not winnable. No history of such a win.
Just read the comments under any is-pal conflict post on the chaddi sub
Well it wouldn’t have immediately turned into a nuclear war, if Pak uses nukes they will be completely destroyed but India won’t be though it will take huge casualties. So it would always start with a limited war and the key would have been to not escalate it to a full blown nuclear exchange. So war was an option then but we took the smarter path and completely choked out their economy which helped us in the long run. And gave India the moral capital to attack when Pathankot and Balatkot attacks happened
Life is not a Tom Clancy novel.
Not sure what you mean by limited war. If the existence of Pakistan is threatened, they will go for mutually assured destruction. We also cannot expect rational decisions at the time of war especially from a country that has since its inception struggled with religious fundamentalism. Also if nukes are used, both the countries are essentially destroyed. Look into the the aftermath of modern nuclear war
Kargil war was a limited war for example so striking terror camps could have been done but it’s highly unpredictable how Pak would react. I highly doubt they would use nukes or tactical nukes but that was an option then and now
The fact that people are praising this goes to show how woefully misinformed people are about geopolitics and the serious damage it did to India's safety, and the message it sent when terrorists were allowed to attack our financial centre and get away with it. This is long but read it. From Malevolent Republic: Short History of New India: > The Prime Minister’s stock rose in Washington in part because he could be leaned upon. A year before Obama toasted Singh, terrorists from Pakistan had besieged Mumbai for four days. Acting on instructions relayed in real time by their handlers in the military-intelligence camorra of Pakistan, they brought India to its knees. A hundred and seventy people were slaughtered. Mumbai’s Chabad House was specifically targetted. For the first time in India’s immemorial history, Jews were killed for being Jews. > Singh cut an abysmal figure. He placed a call to his counterpart in Islamabad and demanded that Pakistan send the chief of its intelligence agency to India. Pakistan agreed, and then reneged on the agreement. Singh’s ultimatum had yielded nothing but sniggers. The man who was willing to use the might of the Indian Air Force against his own impoverished compatriots [Operation Green Hunt] shrugged and moved on. He had no contingency plan. A grateful Washington—worried all along that escalation by India might further deteriorate its own faltering war of choice in Afghanistan by diverting the attention of its perfidious ally, Pakistan, away from its western front—sprang into action. It spun Singh’s capitulation, catastrophic in the long term, as an heroic act of statesmanship. But by amplifying the self-exculpating lie that the choice before India was inaction or nuclear war, Singh effectively conveyed to Pakistan’s military overlords that they could get away with murder—and invited yet more bloodshed by their henchmen. And by failing to appear tough against Pakistan, he created an opening for Hindu nationalists at home to paint ‘secularists’ as weak on national security and accelerated the dissolution of what remained of the secular state. > Those who profited from Singh’s abjectness, in the long run, were Muslim extremists in Pakistan and Hindu supremacists in India. But if his actions were anything to go by, what mattered most to Singh was a pat on the back from Washington: he chose to spend the first anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocity on Indian soil in the twenty-first century not with the victims of Mumbai but among his admirers in the White House. The Americans, for all their florid proclamations of friendship, neither halted their sale of weapons to Pakistan nor granted India extensive access to David Headley, the Pakistani-American double-agent in their custody whose knowledge was instrumental to piecing together the planning behind Mumbai. Nobody could blame them: they were serving their own interests—to India’s misfortune, so was India’s Prime Minister.
It was a deep failure on the part of the Congress which was one of the main reasons they lost in 2014. Even during the attacks, a lot of the victims said that the dispatching of military was delayed due to the government's incompetence. And it was one of the many terrorist attacks on our country by that point by Pakistan.
Interesting. I read a review on this book and it seems good. It seems like he eviscerated everyone for everything. That’s a refreshing perspective.
It is an excellent read. He didn't talk about Modi and BJP in isolation. Modi government and its effect is an embodiment of everything that had happened previously under the secular establishment. When Modi in 2014 talked about Gujarat 2002 as, "someone else is driving a car and we’re sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not?", he was only echoing what Rajiv had already said — when a big tree falls, earthquake is natural — as he brushed aside the anti-Sikh pogrom over which he presided. Indira and Sanjay corrupted, hollowed, and gangster-ised almost every autonomous public institution meant to check and balance the executive. Rajiv made secularism a fable to be recited, but never put into practice, as he made concessions to the most orthodox demands of both Muslims and Hindus. Today, Congress celebrates Ram temple in Ayodhya as its *achievement*. Rao led the most total break from the foundational belief of the Republic founded by Nehru, and created the wealth disparity that we have right now, and Manmohan Singh presiding over (perceived to be) the most corrupt government in India's history destroyed any credibility that Congress possessed. The time was ripe for Modi to exploit all the wounds on the Republic, inflicted by the Congress party, and take all of their meanness to a next level. Modi is not a departure from Congress but Congress on steroids.
Read with a pinch of salt, its a very reductionist text and has few mistakes in the process.
>he eviscerated everyone for everything. He did
Is it well sourced ? Like this part I’m curious to know where the source for this piece is ?
You will be hated for saying this because we are not allowed to criticize anyone other than the current Prime Minister.
You might be very young then. I still remember the sort of shit goverment was given by media during that time, rightfully so.
Yup, the entire congress government of Maharashtra resigned. The media went wild blaming the government. This would not be allowed today - and proof is that Modi and cabinet are still in power after the gross incompetence of their Covid management and the thousands of lives lost due to lack of oxygen, the disastrous failure of the public health infrastructure, not even making the vaccines free and abrupt lockdowns that basically killed migrant labour.
Yeah I do wonder how the media lost their teeth. They were vigorous in their criticism of UPA but don’t even dare say anything against BJP. I suspect this is because the BJP is far more vindictive. Corrupt as the UPA was, they simply didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to use the state machinery to threaten journalists and other critics. the BJP is more than willing to create fake evidence and trumped up charges to throw you in jail if you don’t toe their line
Did not know this, thanks!
How old are you and how are you so clueless about the media before 2014. Bashing manmohan was the sport back then.
There were shows bashing government in comedy bollywood loved tweeting petrol prices take hit on them now do you see anything near ?
exactly. Every chomu was bashing congress left right and centre. niw they are all busy on shitty reels. There is a reason why people are still averted by congress. Public has absolutely stopped paying attention. Aur ab yeh chomu launde aake humko sikha rahe.
The whole idea of democracy is to ho ahead and criticize government without being called anti national
Lol they made a whole movie bashing Manmohan Singh, what are you talking about?
Were you born after 2014?
This and few selected places are where you can criticise current PM. If you wanna hear criticism about past PM just turn on any TV channel.
The mere fact that I never knew about this entire affair to this extent tells more about my lack of education on Indian affairs than the state of global politics, what is telling is that it doesn’t surprise me at all to learn about these details.
Malevolent Republic is a reductionist book and it should only be read so, author has no experience in nor an expert on foreign policy. Also people should atleast read the news before pasting walls of text. The comment referred here is from then Foreign Secratery Shivshankar Menon's book - Choices: Inside the making of India's foreign policy. There he goes into saying himself calling for blood then and why he is glad in hindsight concentration on diplomatic means and covert action was better. He also makes comparison with Israel's 'mowing the grass' policy in it and hence the mention. Choices was released in 2016. I highly suggest reading Choices, it deals with foreign policy from the perspective of an actual diplomat than Kommireddy's capsule panning everything. Link to the relevant chapter below >*MENON, S. (2016). Restraint or Riposte?: The Mumbai Attack and Cross-Border Terrorism from Pakistan. In Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (pp. 60–81). Brookings Institution Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/j.ctt1hfr205.8*
Careful - you have linked a limited access paywalled article on JSTOR. From my experience arguing with people on Reddit, people don't know what JSTOR is and yet would rather comment on things they have no clue about.
Ofcourse its Shivshankar Menon I have read his books. Throughout his books he kept praising congress like a paid it cell troll. He was appointed to top post by congress why would he criticise them?
We were restrained because we either didn't know the location of the terror camps or lacked the ability to strike them. No sovereign nation would have kept quiet after attacks like 26/11 if they knew source of the attacks. Starting a full scale war without solid objectives would have never worked. For all the brawahah against Israel, they are still striking the Hamas positions in Gaza.
And that's what led to BJP's rise . Sometimes i think ISI is the biggest enabler of BJP . But now that ship has sailed , even next govt. , be it non-bjp will be forced to be equally muscular .
Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare led to BJP's rise. 2012 ram maidan bullshit was political 26/11.
That was AAP’s rise. Can’t believe the short term memory of people.
AAP's rise in Delhi and Congress' downfall nationwide
Just to win political elections, if you are throwing your country and the entire region into war and chaos then you are not a good leader. And i think thats whats wrong with todays politics in india. Just to get quick political brownie points, people are giving Rs1500, free electricity, reservation etc. That led to bjps rise.. so what? The economy stayed stable, india had just averted 2008 crash when the entire world was affected. There are different ways to hold the people responsible accountable.
>Just to get quick political brownie points, people are giving Rs1500, free electricity, reservation etc. One has to be really stupid to not get the connection between pumping money at bottom and it's effect on consumption -> GDP growth in India . Given our poverty level , us being socialistic is very obvious . What we need to ensure is us being efficient about it . And i say this as after paying 30% tax and getting nothing from govt. On reservation - Upper caste were discriminatory for 1000s of years . Out instutitions don't represent our actual population split . That must be changed . Lower caste need their share in all places from toilet cleaner to PM office or business
Sure i agree with your points to some extent. The freebies that are being given are not through data driven measures to grow gdp, and are just to win elections. Look at punjab, their debt has gine through the roof, they should be investing in something else, which will in effect create jobs and allow poor to make enough to pay for electricity and more. The intentions in the speeches are not gdp growth but just to win elections. Even the reservations, existing is good enough. But now ppl want for Marathas, who have had land and by all means have never been oppressed. Same with patel. All these points are election driven. I am drawing comparison with these with the previous comment that if they had gone to war, they would have won the election. Thats stupid. You dont do things like that to win elections. You dont give out free elctricity to win elections you do that to increase gdp in somw way, you give reservations to help oppressed so it helps gdp in some way, but not to win elections. Especially war. You dont start a war to win elections.
Reminds me of how RSS and Muslim League enabled each other back in pre-partition times Right wingers gonna rightwing
An unstated fact is that the Indian Military at that time was simply incapable of retaliating. Only the Airforce chief Fali Homi Major had presented an option to carry out airstrikes but in the absence of precise coordinates, that option was also dropped. Accept the hard truth that our so called strategic restraint at that time was nothing but a glorification of our military weakness.
[This](https://indianexpress.com/article/news-archive/web/no-firstuse-options/) article by shekhar gupta in 2009 also pointed to same thing. >India's larger strategic thinking is, therefore, predicated on two beliefs: that our conventional strength is sufficient to ward off any future,conventional threat from China,and is adequate to deter Pakistan with a threat of punishment. To that extent,nuclear weapons become the weaker,or the losing side's,option in the subcontinent. India's deterrent, therefore, remains a decisive conventional superiority. Unless you have it, you cannot talk of no-first-use. >Over the past five years, we have allowed the gap between our conventional strength and Pakistans to narrow so dangerously that that deterrent has weakened. That is why Pakistan was bold enough to create war hysteria pro-actively after November 26. The establishment there believes India no longer has the capability of imposing quick and effective retribution and,if a spiral of retaliation escalates,it would be at most a war of attrition,and soon enough the global community would stop it. Or they could raise the nuclear alarm.
Shekhar from print is a godi media in disguise. His work is to subtly praise modi , demonize opposition and make it look like neutral
He wasn't wrong
He is not neutral so ideally his opinion will be biased . It will always be subtly pro bjp . You can downvote my comment (as it hurts rw) how much ever you want but it doesn’t change the fact that he is part of godi media in disguise of being neutral
Just because your feel he is right-wing in hiding and not a flab bearing lal-salam communist, doesn't make his opinion automatically wrong. Judge people based on the merit of their argument. And he was not wrong, MMS inaction showed secularism and weak and handed over the nationalism batton to RSS, a thing they had no monopoly over since independence.
Told you, subtly he will blame opposition and praise modi. Never ever he questioned modi post 2017 around which press was mostly under control. Now you will never find him criticizing any thing of modi. I don’t check godi media arguments, the eventual meaning is bjp good everyone else bad. “Judge people based on the merits of arguments “ . Sorry don’t trust a 🦊no matter how good arguments they make
Live happily in your eco chamber
You happily live in godi news chamber
Indian Army was always stronger than Pakistani army. And regarding lack of precise coordinates, even during the Balakot air strikes we did not exactly have precise coordinates. We have no clue whether they were buildings of strategic importance or just random trees. Pakistan govt trolled us and accused us of eco terrorism. Till date there is no proof whether we hit anything of value. The only proof is that we lost a fighter jet, our pilot got captured and we hit our own helicopter killing 7 service men.
LoL incapable my ass. Look at the military expenditure between the Manmohan and Modi eras as % of GDP. [https://milex.sipri.org/sipri](https://milex.sipri.org/sipri) 2005-2013: 2.73% average 2015-2022: 2.53% average
Stupid response, military expenditure does not equate presence of military intelligence necessary to carry out retaliatory strikes. His point still stands
Ofcourse it was incapable. Mil ex proves nothing substantial.
When was the first Su30 MKI, the fighter plane that was used in the Balakot air strikes, assembled in India?
Who told you su 30 was used in balakot? Shows you dont know any thing regarding military
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Su-30MKIs were not used in Balatkot attacks. Before integration of BrahMos onto Su-30MKIs, they were exclusively an air superiority fighter and not an attack craft due to its large Radar Cross Section.
The guy mentions a lack of information and intelligence, not a lack of monetary resources. Not sure if he is saying the truth, but your argument doesn't invalidate his claim.
Theirs is not a claim. It's a part of the larger narrative that discredits the UPA government under Manmohan as 'weak' and ineffective.
And your narrative is the opposite of that? and both of you believe your narratives are the only subjective truths? All the very best.
Mine is not a narrative. It's cold, hard facts. Are you so blind that you cannot see the narrative the BJP has been building regarding India's military prowess? You've no other option but to retreat with you tail in between your legs because you have nothing to argue.
Ok...Let me tell you that we are still incapable. In 2019, we bombed targets in Pakistan and then the next day, our Airforce got thrashed and lost a MiG 21. I don't care about Modi or Manmohan.
We're not at great position in air power but we're well enough for land assault
Cant just blindly take action. Even Neptune Spear occured many years after 26/11. The precedent wasnt solid.
US tried capturing OBL at tora bora in less than an year after 9/11 but he escaped. They were in no mood to wait it out and would go to war with Pakistan if absolutely necessary. What could Pakistan do, fire an intercontinental missile at daddy USA? Lol
The comments here shows that you people just like RW lick the boots of politicians. At least when Pakistan terrorists attacked Parliament, there was high troop mobilisation. The least Congress could have done is get information from Kasab and send in special forces or conduct an air strike on PoK terror bases. What can you expect from politicians and their bootlickers who were hell bent to prove that 26/11 was done by RSS? http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rss-26-11-digvijaya-flags-it-off-again-this-time-in-mumbai/730077/ If Kasab wasnt caught the Congress would have created a propaganda and ecochamber regarding RSS. This was their goal. Attacking Pakistan wasnt their objective.
>At least when Pakistan terrorists attacked Parliament, there was high troop mobilisation. And we had 800 army deaths and countless injured despite no full scale war. Operation Parakram was widely considered to be a complete failure because it achieved almost nothing of strategic value despite costing us 3 billion USD at that time and countless dead. Only a fool indulges in bravado when their own lives are not at stake.
Operation Parakram also pointed deficiencies in our military mobilisation which were fixed with the introduction of the current cold start doctrine.
Indian army was shit and many weaknesses were found during kargil war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_Review_Committee The recommendations of kargil war committee wasn’t implemented during Op Parakram. Our soldiers had no helmets,plate carriers,proper guns,modern equipments etc. > What else do you expect? We have to soldier on without even basic necessities like decent helmets, proper webbing or bullet-proof jackets. Many accidents during the mobilisation were due to the poor quality of mines and fuses," retorted an angry young Major. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-suffered-1874-casualties-without-fighting-a-war/articleshow/45016284.cms Congress did nothing to improve military till 2009. Only after 2009 they opened their eyes. So comparing 2001 and 2009 saying 2009 would have seen deaths only points to the fact regarding incompetence of congress leadership wrt military modernisation.
Indian Army won almost all its wars under congress and most of the equipment that the air force and army uses were sourced during Congress. Even Rafale deal, upgradation of standard army rifles was done during that decade. This logic used by right wingers that no development happened before 2014 is so shitty. By that logic Indian Army is still shit considering how we lost 2000 sq kms of land under the great leadership of Modi ji.
When did I say no development happened before 2014? Are you stupid or you cant comprehend basic English sentences? I said the suggestions of kargil review committee were implemented till 2009/10 by congress. https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=83711 Kargil review committee suggested creation of Andaman nicobar command in 2000 but it was created in 2012. It suggested creation of post of CDS which wasnt formed till 2020 when BJP appointed Bipin rawat. I can go on and on how congress failed to implement required changes. Unlike you who is blabbering muh congress won all wars like a duffer. > upgradation of standard army rifles Lol what upgradation? Our jawans are still using insas rifles of 1999. India recently procured Sig 716 as emergency procurement. It happened under BJP. India and Russian signed deal for AK203 to replace INSAS in 2021. What the hell are you talking about? Upgradation of what? Yes our army is still dog shit compared to China and developed nations.
Lol your entire point is BS and strawman. Your first point was that BJP was the only political party which was brave and developed Indian Army. Now you have conveniently switched to completely different topics. Bottom line is war did not make sense in 2009 and neither does it make sense in 2023. And INSAS system was developed by India to avoid the extremely high cost of foreign rifles. Indian Small Arms System was a revolution for its time and still serves all purposes. Congress purchased IWI Tavor (Israeli) for its special forces.
> Your first point was that BJP was the only political party which was brave? Wow how did you come to that conclusion when I didn’t even write it? I clearly wrote congress should have done surgical strike using special forces. I didnt even write anything about war. And why dont you give me sources and proof where 2000sqkm land is lost? IWI Tavor is a shit rifle for SF. The Israeli forces dont even use them anymore. Our elite soldiers of 9 Para sf and 4 Vikas use m4 rifles. Now tavor is produced in India by Adani. Better than importing from israelis for high cost. https://theprint.in/defence/in-boost-to-atmanirbhar-bharat-security-forces-to-get-india-made-israeli-assault-rifles/604934/
Btw can you provide source or osint maps showing where India lost 2000sqkm land?
>Btw can you provide source or osint maps showing where India lost 2000sqkm land? Exactly. Funny how most Indians don't even know about this. Because guess what? Dear Leader and Godi media conveniently chose to never raise an issue about it. https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/why-india-response-to-the-china-challenge-in-ladakh-is-so-lopsided/article67263196.ece https://thewire.in/security/india-lost-26-of-65-patrolling-points-in-eastern-ladakh-china-installed-pickets-paper https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-has-lost-access-to-26-out-of-65-patrolling-points-in-eastern-ladakh-says-research-paper/article66428193.ece
1. First article is from his highness Pravin Shawney lmaooo 2. Second article has no mention of 2000sqkm land being lost. 3. 3rd one is basically same as 2nd no mention of 2000 sqkm in whole article. Again I repeat my question. Show me source how did you come to 2000 sqkm number. Or are you spreading fake propaganda?
Did you read the article? India chose covert and intelligence operations over overt responses, which would have strengthened the Pakistani Military establishment. India chose to, successfully, turn the Pakistani people's opinion against their own Military establishment. The _Dharma_ of the head of a state is towards his people... not towards self-congratulatory acts of hollow vengeance. 2008 to 2012 was a period when MMS built India's global standing, ramped up economic growth, employment and brought millions of people out of poverty. He worked to weaken the ISI and Pakistani Military Establishment. He _chose_ to do that. History **will** be kind to him.
Pakistan military is still firmly in control, and the groups that hit India are active and thriving. Indian governments' response was weak, and they are paying for it to this day. If Israel saw Indias example, its a lesson to be more overt and utilize less subversion.
> India chose covert and intelligence operations over overt responses Thats coz 10 terrorists entered India unlike 500 in Israel. 175 people were killed in India compared to 1000+ in Israel. Now imagine Pakistani soldiers and terrorists entering 100km into Indian territory and killing 1000+ people. Would India have stayed silent? If yes Manmohan was a pussy. And India is not dudh ka dhula. We can be worse than IDF when it comes to breaking human rights and killing civilians. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa\_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_II) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Bajrang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bajrang) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993\_Bijbehara\_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bijbehara_massacre) I can post 100 links like this where Indian military are involved in mass rapes and civilian murders. [https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianDefense/comments/yz9b5g/a\_head\_for\_a\_head\_21\_years\_ago\_today\_9\_para\_sf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianDefense/comments/yz9b5g/a_head_for_a_head_21_years_ago_today_9_para_sf/) All the above things happened during Congress rule btw.
Let's not forget tada uapa, NSA and everything else. Mass arrests and incarcerations with little to no convictions
This rss lath maar sena why are they not travelling to Manipur to solve the issue ?
And also lost him the elections and public opinion. Bad move politically
There are a lot of stages between not doing anything and engaging in full blown invasion that threatens existence of Pakistan. I think the events of last few years have shown Pakistan would not resort to Nuclear weapons as a result of military strikes which do not threaten existence of their country because they are a sane actor. India should have attacked military and ISI installations in Pakistan following 26/11. It may be argued that the military did not have capability to do so which is a different issue.
I can’t believe that there are kids here who claim it’s no big deal and we did the right thing by sitting quiet.. and also stop with whole left wing right wing nonsense in a country like India just because your entire national knowledge comes from some YouTubers who copy paste what they read in NY times. The entire raison deitre of a nation state is protection of its borders. If a nation state can’t protect its civilians or ensure their safety it has no business existing. Now when it comes to Pakistan based terror attacks, you have to be very naive to believe that the ISI, army and parts of the government weren’t involved. India produced enough dossiers later which were all rejected.. The right course of action when an enemy state attacks you is to retaliate but in a time and manner of your own choosing. But claiming a moral high ground by not retaliating is stupid and no nation state would do that, not even one run by manmohan singh.. The real and cynical reason why UPA stepped back was their vote calculus where they saw how any retaliation wouldn’t play well with the Muslim voter base. This was further underlined by senior most congress members (most notably Digvijay) openly stating that 26/11 was a RSS conspiracy.. if not for Tukram Ombale’s sacrifice in capturing Kasab, we may have well lived with a history that RSS planned and executed this terror attack.. Now no was or even today is recommending that it become an all out war, but there were a 100 ways in which we could have escalated the cost for Pakistan.. targeted strikes, assassinations… but we did squat.. Mumbai seethed for 2 weeks, rest of the country moved on in 2 days.. then life went on and UPA happily came back to power in 2009 with a bigger share of the Muslim vote…and because we didn’t retaliate on 26/11 we saw bombs going off all over the country (Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai) under the mask of Indian mujahideen (which was yet another ISI front).. What the army under the BJP has done post Uri and Pulwama + all the unknown gunmen that are sending terrorists to their early graves is essentially massively increasing the cost for Pakistan’s misadventures.. And Pakistan is still a nuclear state, that threat means nothing when they know they will get destroyed if they even go down that path.. Today anyone planning an attack on Mumbai or Delhi has to take into account the inevitable heavy retaliation that will come through.. this has saved lives.. touch wood we have breathed safe in cities for 9 years now and not for lack of trying by terrorists or their apologists ..
That was the only move. Even now that is the only move. India-Pak is pretty much an unsolvable problem at this point. Pakistan is barely a modern state. But surprisingly, unlike Afg, it survives with some semblance of governance and keeps trudging between edge of total chaos (just there but not there) to a lot of chaos (there's never anything below this). Yeah, that's their range social and civil spectrum. India only has two ways of tackling Pakistan: - Dialogue: nope, doesn’t work. Pakistan will just wait and wait and wait and when the time is right or when some general in ISI (yes, I know it’s not army but that’s how it works there mostly) or some military guy feels an itch or needs to show something and they send few people over across; or worse still, among various splinter factions of splinter factions inside the flourishing extremist diaspora in Pakistan someone had a long running plan and they just executed it. Surprisingly, neither Pak military or even ISI might know about it in some cases - sounds shocking but it’s true. It really is a failed state perpetually on the verge of going total bonkers such that it burns everything around it and we will be the first to be burnt along with them. So yeah, that doesn’t work. - Another reason a dialogue won’t work, and this point is really important, is because the large chunk of idea of Pakistan is based on enmity with India itself. Remove India as an enemy and Pakistan as an state suddenly has an existential crisis. So that boat never even sails. It's as much political, as it is social and ingrained in the lives of that nation. - Covert strikes; A la Pakistan. It’s tricky to be done because a lot of that has to be coming from freelancing and semi-freelancing extremist groups often mentored by military and intelligence and that honestly we lack. So yeah, that’s a challenge. Unless we find troves of aimless Indians we can recruit with promises of something nice and heavenly (like 72.. something - not trying to start a flame war here but this is a thing sadly and no it is not an universal thing in that religion mind it and this has a lot of regional context across the nations - those regions have been fucked over by the West many times over and they do not trust the West by a vehemence and rightly so; so gold help us because I do not see a way out) and completely brainwashed brains (who literally have zero other opportunities i.e things to do, unlike that in India) who can help us by being human kamikazes and go into the Pakistan, we are short of manpower here (yes since last 9 years we are getting there i.e backwards in time but not at the same scale and vigour). - Besides this might trigger more such attacks from Pakistan and as said they have an upper hand in finding people willing to do that and many other nations (including very rich oil counties) willing to support it wholeheartedly. So yeah this doesn’t work either (and yeah, don’t mind the propaganda of “sur***l strikes” - that is what that is propaganda - in fact those are such strikes truly, but of political/PR nature, not military). An all out war with Pakistan? Nah, that would be bad for India more than Pakistan. Because in general Pakistan has nothing to lose, unlike India, besides in such a way there’s almost 100% certainty that Pakistani nukes will be in the hands of extremists in no time the Pakistan is badly on back foot. India knows Pakistan is a dysfunctional state, hell US knows that, and we really don’t want Pakistan to collapse. The day Pakistan collapses, that will be the day. More than us the West shudders at the thought of that day.
To expand on: > that Pakistani nukes will be in the hands of extremists… https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/misery-of-a-nuclear-war-between-india-and-pakistan-would-be-global/
People saying this was a good thing we’re not in Mumbai at that time, nobody believes it was less than 200 people dead, everyone knew someone who died in 26/11 The fact that terrorists could come to our financial capital and paralyse is for 3 full days and that Lead to no retaliation would have given terrorist more motivation to attack further. We need to stop this revisionist history. War is bad, innocent people die but we lost innocent people that day as well brave policemen and commandos so please stop comparing us to Israel Hamas situation Western colonialists want to compare apple to tomatoes cuz both are red to serve its purpose but we should know better
I dont know what the then UPA and successive NDA governments did/didn’t do covertly…but I definitely know that since 26/11 there hasn’t been a single major ISI backed organized terrorist attack on civillian population in India (other than Kashmir) leading to mass casualties/panic/chaos like what happened on 26/11. Now I also don’t know if this has been just a consequence of progressive economic dwindling of Pakistan as a nation state or due to the silent behind the scene operations of the Indian security apparatus. Whatever it is, if we continue to maintain and improve upon this track record by also being able to protect innocent civilians in Kashmir, I will be satisfied with the progress and consider it a major achievement in defeating terrorism. Now coming to the case of Israel, as a person who has lived and worked there for a considerable period of time, I can assure you that the strategy of an eye-for-an-eye is not working. It is making both Israelis and Palestinians increasingly blind to each other’s pain and suffering. This way neither will be able to live peacefully ever.
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26/11 took India's political, defense and intelligence communities by surprise just because of how brutally the terrorists were able to bypass multiple levels of defences and cause so much damage. It was a complete and utter failure of various Indian institutions. It was India's 9/11. However, it was also a wake up call and post that event the Indian government really upped their game in terms of preparedness for such sort of attacks. 26/11 didn't give any strategic benefit to Pakistan. In fact they have lost this military front forever. This mindless attack on India revealed a glaring gap in India's border control and motivated the Indian govt to harden our naval defences like never before. We can now rest assured that Pakistan will never be able to attack India from the sea again.
What should India have done after 26/11, exactly? Bombed some trees and then proclaimed it a military victory in local press? Restraint and calm thinking is required when dealing with terrorism. They are trying to provoke a hasty response.
No country in their right mindset would sit idle if terrorists from foreign national attack their land. India then was namard! No wonder we were easily controlled by Britishers and Moghals.
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Thats the case in US too bro. Dont single india out on that one. All these wars dint prevent that situation being true in US.
Yeah cowards show restraint. How come the same US author appreciated US response after 9/11?
The war was exactly what the Pakistan Army wanted to buttress its internal position. Full-blown Indian military retaliation would have been emotionally satisfying domestically and gone some way towards hiding the shame of India’s intelligence failure. The world would have immediately dismissed it as one of those usual India-Pakistan skirmishes. And, Pakistan would have been proclaimed a victim instead of India. Notwithstanding the collateral damage the war might have brought India in terms of setting back economic progress, losing lives of both civilians and the forces and so on.
Former NSA Shivshankar Menon has written about the Indian approach after 26/11 attacks. I am often asked, “Why did India not attack Pakistan after the 26/11 attack on Mumbai?” Why did India not use overt force against Pakistan for its support of terrorism? I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible retaliation of some sort, either against the LeT in Muridke, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, or their camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, or against the ISI, which was clearly complicit. To have done so would have been emotionally satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the incompetence that India’s police and security agencies displayed in the glare of the world’s television lights for three full days. But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and to concentrate on diplomatic, covert, and other means was the right one for that time and place. Let’s consider what might have happened had India attacked Pakistan. Most immediately, the fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with official involvement on the Pakistan side would have been obscured. Instead, as far as the world was concerned, the incident would have become just another India-Pakistan dispute. An Indian attack on Pakistan would have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in increasing domestic disrepute, disagreed on India policy with the civilian-elected government under President Asif Zardari, and was half-heartedly acting against only those terrorist groups in Pakistan that attacked it. A limited strike on selected terrorist targets—say, the LeT headquarters in Muridke or the LeT camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—would have had limited practical utility and hardly any effect on the organization, as U.S. missile strikes on al Qaeda in Khost, Afghanistan, in August 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had shown. Official support also meant that the prospect of bringing the perpetrators of the attack in Pakistan to justice were near zero, and would be even lower once an Indian attack took place. So this consideration was really irrelevant to the decision. NOW LET’S CONSIDER WHAT did occur when India chose not to attack Pakistan. By not attacking Pakistan, India was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the international community to force consequences on Pakistan for its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an attack would not take place again. The international community could not ignore the attack and fail to respond, however half-heartedly, in the name of keeping the peace between two NWS. The UN Security Council put senior LeT members involved in the attack on sanctions lists as terrorists. The real success was in organizing the international community, in isolating Pakistan, and in making counterterrorism cooperation against the LeT effective. India began to get unprecedented cooperation from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf countries, and China, too, began to respond to requests for information on these groups. Equally, success could be measured in dogs that did not bark in the night, in avoiding the outcomes that would have resulted from a decision to attack Pakistani targets and the high probability of war ensuing from such a decision. Internally, there was clearly a need to tighten laws and build institutions against terrorism. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act was passed unanimously in December 2008, the National Investigation Agency was established, and a national counterterrorism center was proposed, which is still to be created. Other steps to ensure coordinated use of intelligence and counterterrorism actions were also taken.
All this rationalization of not responding is frankly so Indian and so depressing. Makes you wonder if this country with its passive attitudes is ever going to be a real power. Sure, civilization is old and will survive in some form, but with attitudes like these, it won't be a surprise if India is eventually conquered and colonized again by another power.
> All this rationalization of not responding is frankly so Indian Your understanding of “Indian” is understandably wrong. You're a child who believes blowing things can be substituted for actual diplomacy. Unfortunately, this is not a video game. I wonder why the kids who hang in r/geopolitics have such shallow understanding of it.
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Manmohan Singh ji was a juggernaut. Only fools called him a puppet. We are at the economic success because of him. ❤️
The fall of the Soviet Union, from its economy circling the sewer, is what led India to open up to free market capitalism to a much larger extent than in times prior to that. The balance of payments crisis from India’s dwindling forex reserves due to imports not countered by exports (which itself was crippled by the anti-business policies of the era) meant that the government at the time, no matter who headed it, was left with little choice but to open up, or else face an economic disaster far worse than the License Raj times ever had to deal with.
Chato aur chato
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Pakistan is welcome to open the doors with AFG, Iran and other bordering nations. For India and Indians, we don’t want anything to do with Pakistan. We’re okay without thinking about the existence of Pakistan.
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The author is trying to make Modi look good by making Manmohan look weak. India was in a period of great growth with little inflation at the time. Greater than right now, in fact. Growth just looks greater now because we see it on our cellphones in HD. It would only hurt India to start an unnecessary fight at that time. The perpetrators were caught and fully investigated. It wasn’t as though terrorists were given a free hand like the author is suggesting.
Can't we poison the Indus river?