Families of the 18 soldiers killed in Sunday’s attack on the 12th Brigade headquarters at Uri are grieving and angry. The day after, they mourn the loss of a brother, a husband, a son, a father, a friend, and call for immediate retribution and vengeance on Pakistan. Their anguish — and their desperate rage — is understandable. It is a flailing for some sort of justice and closure. As the government thinks through its response, it must heed their voices. It must also listen to those who may not have lost a dear one at Uri but are frustrated still with the apparent impunity with which such attacks are mounted on Indian soil, time and time again, taking their terrible toll. Yet, in the difficult hours and days to come, it would be an abdication of the responsibility of leadership if the government were to allow itself to be led by this outpouring of raw emotion — or by the war-like noises of those who seek to dictate foreign policy from their perch in social media. For government, the calculus in this moment must surely be compassionate, but it must also be cold-eyed and level-headed. It must factor in the magnitude of what is at stake as well as the nature of consequences of any decision to come.

For India and Pakistan, Uri is a never-before milestone. Yet India has been here before. At least on three occasions since the Kargil war, an Indian government has had to calibrate its response in the face of grave provocation from Pakistan and mounting public pressure within. On two of these, after the 26/11 attack on Mumbai 2008 and after the Parliament attack in 2001, India’s government retreated from an outright escalation — with very good reasons. In the third instance, after the hijack of the IC 814 in 1999 with 176 passengers on board, the NDA government bent to the jingoistic clamour whipped up by private Indian TV channels that had earlier that year beamed a war live into India’s drawing rooms and arrogated to themselves the power to stoke nation-wide hyper-nationalism. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government released three terrorists — and that day has returned to haunt successive governments. Today, it hangs as a cautionary tale after Uri.

So far, the government’s sobriety has been reassuring. A path may already be taking shape, if it looks carefully. In the last two years, Prime Minister Modi has invested enormous political capital in forging equations and relationships with other world leaders. In the Uri aftermath, the unequivocal expressions of support for India and condemnation of terrorism sponsored by its neighbour are a dividend that India could now profitably build upon. As External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj heads to the UNGA, India must prepare to forcefully press home its case and rally global support in its attempts to corner Pakistan. That could be the way forward from Uri.

The Article First Appeared In The Indian EXPRESS

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