Pakistan craves equivalence with India. It recognizes it can't claim parity economically, militarily or diplomatically, so it tries to match us 'ideologically' by picking fights with us. We must deny any platform where Pakistan is seen to be sharing the podium with India, be it Wagha border drama that happens everyday or cricket matches.
As expected Paki cockroaches deny consular access. It seems obvious that Mr Jadhav is either dead or so badly tortured that no one on the other side can be allowed to see him.
Lets see how far GoI has the guts to follow up on this. Can they take the required action when it really matters?
Captain Raghu Raman said a nice thing on WION yesterday. It is Pakistan who has the initiative despite losing the case. In a limited tactical sense, we won the ICJ case, but on a large scale, what does Pakistan actually risk losing? at the worst, they get a censure from ICJ, and have to return Kulbhushan. If they have killed him, then at the worst India will do some fire assaults on empty Pakistani bunkers to pacify domestic opinion, but does the establishment of Pakistan lose anything at an institutional level?
100s of fishermen are captured every month, no one even knows what happens to them, neither the government of Pakistan nor India makes a big deal out of it. But this time, Pakistan chose its battlefield, calculated its steps and escalated the matter. The point of escalation is not necessarily to hold on to Kulbhushan, but to send a message that Pakistan is engaged in a conflict with India. In that sense, they have already won the initiative battle. They set the agenda and lured us in. They have been trying it with stone pelters, beheadings, we have been on their hook after every single initiative they took.
Even when Clinton was visiting India in 2000, they did a massacre of Sikhs in Kashmir just to send a message that "there is some conflict going on here, don't forget that". (Chittisinghpura)
The Pakistani deep state gets realpolitick dividends in terms of the moral (from Ummah) and material (from Pentagon and China) support they receive for maintaining their USP of being the irritant that keeps India on its toes. By branding themselves as a power that can
take on India in a manner which restricts our rise and keeps us tied down to a regional role, Pakistan is able to bolster its strategic utility in the corridors of power and gain money and weapons. Please note the emphasis on the word 'take on' and not 'win'. They don't actually have to win any battle they start, they have won merely by initiating a conflict with India. Our inaction and squeamish attitude makes it worse, but even if we didn't respond, we are on the losing side, in fact, even if we do respond, we are on the losing side. The genius of their strategy is that they have scored merely by seizing the initiative. They have been seizing initiative when they sent raiders in 1948, when they attacked us in 1965, and when they started causing a flow of refugees into India in 1971, when they started mountaineering expedition to Siachen, when they attacked is in Kargil, then the parliament in 2003, then 26/11, then Gurdaspur, Uri, and now this. Look at their risk taking appetite to take initiative and look at the pattern of how we are always caught napping.
It has dented our national narrative which claimed that India will not talk to the deep state in Pakistan and will only talk to the elected members. It has also dented our narrative that India can go on to become a superpower by simply ignoring Pakistan. The pigs have managed to get us down to their level and wrestle with them. This itself is a victory for them. Many Indians don't realize this.
We will either get Kulbhushan back or we wont, but what does Pakistan lose from losing him? nothing. What does it gain from running our nose in international forums? lot of things. Could India have done such a thing to China? one cannot even imagine. Then how is it that Pakistan has the guts to do it to us? after all the power differential between Pakistan and India is the same as that between India and China, then how come Pakistan isn't terrified of taking these risks unlike India which is terrified to take on China in a similar out-of-the-box manner?
We have only changed our tactics, but our strategy remains the same as that during Congress era. Pakistan initiates the fire and we do fire fighting retrospectively.
