The failed state of Pakistan and its terror surrogates have very limited agendas. “Bleeding India with a thousand cuts” is perhaps one of the foremost of objectives. The attack on the Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001 by five Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists, the 2008 Mumbai attacks in Mumbai, also termed as the 26/11 attacks by Lashkar-e-Toiba, and recently Baisaran 22/4 were all handiwork of Pakistan and its minions. It’s nothing new.
Despite the fact that India has adopted “retaliatory action” against Pakistan and the terror actors that it supports almost every time after they perpetrate belligerent anti-India action, the reality is that Pakistan’s sole reason for existence does not permit it to conclusively close a chapter that is detrimental to India’s peaceful existence. It will go on until the end of time, or Pakistan self-destructs as a result of its own inner contradictions.
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But unfortunately, there would be more attacks against India in the future. Op Sindoor was only able to momentarily halt Pakistan’s belligerence. Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammad are still sitting pretty in Pakistan and it is a matter of time that yet another tanzeem, albeit with a new name emerges to disturb India’s slumber.
If one were to deconstruct Baisaran, it would be seen that it was Pakistan’s way of prodding India onto action. Such seasonal spurs are required by both Islamabad and Rawalpindi in order to keep its constituency in check. Pakistan also wanted to use Baisaran as a tool to divide India on religious lines. It probably felt that the right-wingers were tom-tomming Hindutva to “unacceptable limits” in India, and if Pakistan and the terror actors that it provides sustenance to could intervene and “accentuate” the Hindu-Muslim divide then India could face a civil warlike situation.
The modus operandi was quite simple. Identify victims on the basis of religion and attempt to communicate to the whole of India that Hindus and Muslims cannot co-exist. The womenfolk among the tourists were spared because they wanted witnesses to a “religion inflicted massacre”. The male Hindu counterparts were killed—twenty-six of them—with a clear statement in mind. They wanted India to buckle under vulnerability. That is why the women were told, “Go tell Modi”. It was thought that Hindus of India would rise in revenge against Indian Muslims. That was the plan.
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Gratefully that didn’t happen. In fact, the Baisaran episode has visited the student of geopolitics and religion in me in a rather interesting manner. I am now convinced that religion in the Indian context is only skin deep. There is great resilience among the people of India, and this cuts across caste, creed and religion. It was a happy development that people who condemned the Baisaran attack most vociferously were Indian Muslims. However, the development might have come as a disappointment for many inside India. But the India of many a rightful dream had come together and had held hands of unity and togetherness!
Satish Chandra, former Secretary of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), Government of India, as also a former ambassador to Pakistan recently chaired a seminar titled “Op Sindoor: Starting a New Narrative” in the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), New Delhi. A former boss of mine in the NSCS and virtual mentor, Chandrahad sent me the recording of the seminar that was held on 13 June 2025.
The panelists included Lt Gen (Retd) Ata Hasnain, former General Officer Commanding of the Indian army’s Srinagar based 15 Corps. Hasnain’s fondness for “using” phrases such as “strategic pause” and earlier “strategic patience” is well known. There was also a journalist by the name of Aditya Raj Kaul and a renowned academician from Presidency University, Kolkata—who I felt was the best of the lot—Tanwir Arshed.
It was a good discussion as Hasnain and Kaul sought to correctly demonise Pakistan for its outrageous acts of sponsoring terror. But what was even more interesting were some of the questions that were posed after the panelists had aired their initial views.
Right in the beginning of the Q&A, a retired Sikh Indian Foreign Service, Preet Malik stated that none of the panelist touched upon intelligence which he termed as a weakness.
The question was, even for a budding student of India’s national security in me, the most pertinent of questions in the context of Op Sindoor. I have attempted to question it in my earlier columns. How was it that Baisaran happened so blatantly without the Indian intelligence getting a whiff of it? After all, the ingredients for the plot that had unfolded in the Meadows on 22 April 2025 were clear even to an unschooled fool like me! Kashmir was experiencing a tourism boom, Asim Munir was facing trouble inside his army in Pakistan and most of all the Lashkar-e-Toiba had to be let off the leash—they were raring to go.
The last point needs some fleshing out.
Therefore, I must digress and give the readers an indication about the mind of the Islamist terror actors. It is probably the same for terrorists of any religion, but the endogenous character of an Islamist terrorist is markedly different. I have read the Quran when I began research on Islamist terrorism and radicalisation as a student in the United States, spoken and interrogated Islamist terrorists and have conferred about the matter with Islamist terror experts throughout the world. I have discerned that for an Islamist terrorist who is completely radicalized the “life hereafter” is far more appealing than the present one. This is especially so if the life they are enduring currently is sacrificed for the cause of Islam.
Therefore, once indoctrinated, trained and tasked, Islamist terrorists of even the least motivated sort, cannot endure inaction for longer than it is necessary. Yes, I know that “sleeper cells” are created whereby “accomplished” terrorists disappear for prolonged periods only in order to surface at the right time when they are activated by their handlers. But the allure of both Ghazihood (victorious Islamist warrior) and Shahadat(martyrdom for Islam) is so strong that it is not possible to muzzle such an actor for long.
The impatience might actually make such an actor turn against his/her trainer/handler if they are not allowed to prey against the Kafirs that they were trained to pursue, maim and eliminate. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the Interior Minister of Benazir Bhutto during her second term as Prime Minister of Pakistan (1993-1996), Naseerullah Khan Babar, who played a crucial role in supporting the Taliban, gave “his boys” The Seekers (The Taliban) a new country, Afghanistan. The Taliban was getting out of hand inside Pakistan.
In any event, the question about intelligence by Preet Malik was answered by the panelists in a manner that was less than convincing. Ambassador Satish Chandra responded by stating that there was a “near perfect sync” of all the government action that acted against the adversary during Op Sindoor. But that was post Pahalgam. Pahalgam was the trigger for Op Sindoor! The question about intelligence in the entire episode including what led to Op Sindoor in the first place (which was actually at the heart of the query by Preet Malik)was evaded.
Ata Hasnain tried to wriggle out by saying that advancements in Signal Intelligence and lesser dependence on Human Intelligence were the reasons. He said to my great horror, and I am quoting him almost letter-perfect in this article. He said, “25 years ago, I was Colonel General Staff of the Victor Force in South Kashmir. In the morning at 5:30, I used to geta Potha of intercepts. Every morning, I riffled through it to see what could possibly happen in our area and I could tell you where the terrorists are going to strike on what day, at what time. Today none of that is possible because technology has changed. All communications are spoofed. WhatsApp you can’t break. So, communication today, signal intelligence is almost zero. Pahalgam, no one had any idea of anything like this happening.”
Now, this cannot be an excuse, General, especially as the Indian intelligence knew that sophisticated communication would certainly be used by Pak-sponsored terror actors against India. It is being lamented in certain Indian circles, as Hasnain was doing, that the communication that the terror actor is using to target innocent civilians have not been technologically countered? How can that be? Everyone uses WhatsApp! It’s alright if my communication with a friend in New Delhi by WhatsApp is not being monitored (one isn’t quite sure though!), but if Pakistani sponsored terrorists are communicating about an impending attack on WhatsApp, then I am 120 % certain that the Indian intelligence could/should have broken it. They certainly have the means to do so. In the sad episode of Baisaran they were not “following the chatter” between Muridke and the Lashkar-e-Toiba silhouette group The Resistance Front because they were sleeping! The attempt at lament about advancement in technology and not being able to keep up with it such growth and consequently permitting innocent people to die cannot be a defence of crass intelligence failure!
It has, of late, become almost a ritual that India is always playing black in the universe of discourse of terror response as in chess. I am of the considered opinion that Baisaran happened because Indian intelligence agencies knew (as they were forced to play black) that they had to wait for a massacre to happen before a “limited war” or a response is waged. This is unacceptable. I cannot imagine why the political leadership or the National Security Adviser are condoning or shielding the shirkers.
Furthermore, it is a blot on the intelligence agencies that they have not been able to apprehend even one of the Baisaran perpetrators. Aditya Kaul, during the course of the ICWA seminar said, that there currently are at least 80-150 terror actors at large inside Jammu &Kashmir. I cannot imagine how many there are inside India including Assam.
I have written a few pieces of late on the Indian intelligence failure in the aftermath of Baisaran. There was also veiled mention in my articles that heads should roll. A few people in officialdom called me immediately after one such article which was published and said that the Indian people never talk about the successes of the Indian intelligence or the numerous Pahalgams that were averted. They only talk about a lone failure.
I responded by simply saying, “We brush our teeth every day. Indeed, some of us do so with the most medicated and aromatic of toothpastes. But no one comments when having brushed our teeth and readied ourselves, we go out to work alongside others. But the day we forget to brush our teeth everyone around us avoids us as if a scourge had descended .No one notices the freshness of our teeth when we brush every day. But the day we forget to brush our teeth; a country goes to war.
Hasnain also sought to characterise Op Sindoor as “dissuasion” strategy as opposed to deterrence. Aditya Kaul, on the other hand, said that Op Sindoor has only “emboldened” the Pakistan army. Kaul is correct. If our objective was to dissuade it has not been achieved. Hasnain referred to Asim Munir being a Hafiz (someone who can recite the Qur’an by heart!). I have been to Pakistan as a State Guest in 1988 when I was still a student in St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.
I was witness to certain aspects of Pakistani officialdom. But despite the fact that I am still a student I have some layman understanding about Islamist terror and related aspects. Therefore, I am quite certain that for the India haters Islam is just a tool of politics. The Pakistan army and the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan are using radical Islam against India. There is no real radicalisation of the Pakistan army, perhaps only professional ire against the Indian armed forces and the people the latter are protecting. Therefore, it really doesn’t matter whether Munir can recite the Qur’an by heart.
But lest I am mistaken, I must make it crystal clear that even as people like Asim Munir are pied pipers who use Islam as a device, he and others (including leaders of present-day Bangladesh) have been able to mesmerise almost an entire Quam onto a path of radicalisation and hatred of non-believers. It is the population that has been radicalised by the Salafi strain of Islam that has to be battled.
It is fortunate that there are some among many who have understood this important distinction in Assam and are taking an important leadership stand in the state to counter the menace of Islamist radicalisation.
But I think Pakistan and its terror proxies are already planning their next move. It can be assured that this time around the timing, place and magnitude would be very different from what happened in Baisaran. India should be prepared. Indeed, it must stop playing black and decisively engage the aggressor by making the first move.
Jaideep Saikia is India’s foremost strategist and bestselling author.