AA Edit | PM’s Call To People Of Pak Signals Shift In Messaging
Despite its abject failure in the 1971 war, the Pakistani military has successfully made its vice grip on the country’s establishment comprehensive, and turned terrorism into a weapon to get back at India. Its doctrine of bleeding India by a thousand cuts has its roots in its realisation that a direct war is not winnable against India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s exhortation to the people of Pakistan to shun terrorism and live a peaceful life is a policy statement that goes well with the response of the Indian government to the latest Pakistani provocations and the message the country wants to communicate to the world.
India and Pakistan have a shared history but a troublesome post-Independence past. India chose to be a secular democratic republic and built and strengthened institutions to further its choice as a nation while Pakistan made itself into the antithesis of all that India represented. It has been reflected in the way the people of the two countries have lived their lives. All data would show the progress, however slow it is, India has made while it is the opposite for Pakistan. The sharp decline in indicators happened ever since it has allowed itself to be taken over by religious fundamentalists.
Despite its abject failure in the 1971 war, the Pakistani military has successfully made its vice grip on the country’s establishment comprehensive, and turned terrorism into a weapon to get back at India. Its doctrine of bleeding India by a thousand cuts has its roots in its realisation that a direct war is not winnable against India. The military was also successful in packaging its terror plans as support to the “cause of Kashmir” and selling it to the Pakistani public though the two countries had agreed to settle the dispute bilaterally under the Shimla Agreement.
But the Pahalgam terrorist attack was the last straw the Pakistani military put on the back of India. It had already fought four wars with its neighbour and faced a series of terror attacks. Murdering innocent tourists for their religion is an idea only terror groups can follow; the followers of no religion in India could stomach that. India survived that near-fatal blow with characteristic nonchalance but realised that it could not afford a repeat. Hence the Prime Minister’s advice to the people of Pakistan.