Pakistan and the Neighbourhood - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 319

territory for sponsoring terrorism in India'. I also remember from my time in India in the
1980s that, within a few days of a major atrocity in the Indian state of Punjab, there would
frequently be civil unrest and bomb attacks in the Pakistani city of Karachi that exploited
local sectarian, ethnic and other divisions.
Musharraf admitted such mutual attacks in a speech in India after he had been ousted
from the presidency. In characteristically bombastic but semi-jocular style, he said that the
two countries had done 'a lot of meddling' in each other's internal affairs. 13 'Your RAW
does exactly what the ISI does, and the ISI does exactly what RAW does,' he said, referring
to both countries' secret services. 'The past has been dirty the past has been bad, but don't
put the blame on Pakistan'.
A new factor for the Indian government is growing pressure from an excitable media, es-
pecially television chat show hosts who have become more strident in recent years and de-
mand retribution rather than peace initiatives. Frequent cross-border clashes in 2013, after
a ten-year lull, led to the beheading of an Indian soldier and other deaths. 14 There was a
media frenzy after the beheading with the chat shows raising the tempo to such a pitch that
Manmohan Singh was forced to declare that it 'cannot be business as usual' with Pakistan.
There has also been pressure from the parliamentary opposition and it is likely that a
BJP-led government, if elected in 2014, would take a tough stance. It would probably re-
fuse to continue talks after terror attacks and instruct the army to react more aggressively to
Pakistan firing across the LoC. 'The biggest problem in our dealing with Pakistan has been
our defensive attitude, our unwillingness to retaliate against Pakistan so that a price is im-
posed on it for its infractions,' says Kanwal Sibal. He also lists as part of the problem 'our
reluctance to assume risks accompanying a tougher policy, our concerns about the reaction
of the international community if we acted against Pakistan, our fear that if we did that, our
policy of treating our differences with Pakistan bilaterally would be compromized as the
issues would get internationalised'. Pakistan is also a factor in India's internal politics be-
cause politicians believe that moderating reactions is assumed to win votes among India's
large Muslim population and 'denote a more “secular” and less “anti-Muslim” bias', says
Sibal.
My Missed Kargil Scoop
It is not clear how much a civilian government in Pakistan knows about what its army and
the ISI are doing. There has never been any doubt that the army dominates the government,
sometimes from behind the scenes and sometimes openly. This became especially pertinent
when Nawaz Sharif was re-elected prime minister in June 2013 - having been ousted from
an earlier period in office in October 1999 by a coup organized by General Musharraf, the