By Jaideep Saikia
The year was 1956. Lal Bahadur Shastri was then the Minister of Railways in the Jawaharlal Nehru cabinet. Two back-to-back train accidents took place that year taking the life of several people. Shastri, owing moral responsibility, offered to resign on both occasions. Whereas Nehru did not accept Shastri’s resignation after the Mahbubnagar trail accident, he did so after the Ariyalur train accident in (Tamil Nadu) which happened just three months later after the one that took place in present day Telangana.
Accidents happen on roads, trains and air. Stray cows, errant flight of birds leading to hits on aircrafts, heavy downpour and even drunken driving have resulted in disasters. Both the Mahbubnagar and Ariyalur train accidents were not premeditated. Nor were they guided by a forbidding foreign hand.
But Lal Bahadur Shastri owned moral responsibility and resigned from his position as the Minister for Railways. It took far more than mere conscience to do so. Above all, in both the above-mentioned train accidents there were no hints of Pakistani or anti-India perpetrators having a hand in them. Clearly there was no intelligence failure. Both the train accidents happened as a result of torrential rains. Acts of God.
But Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. Nearly 70 years later, twenty-six innocent civilians died in Kashmir’s Baisaran meadows. They were innocent tourists, some of whom were reportedly on their honeymoon. Kashmir was on the upswing and there was a tourism boom. Elections to Jammu & Kashmir were peaceful and the world felt that the Union Territory status had finally put fear and terror behind. But destiny and envious eyes had ordained otherwise. Terror struck just six months after the new government of Omar Abdullah took over the reins of office.
In 1956, tragedy had visited two places in India because nature fated it. But on 22 April 2025 the innocent people did not meet their end because of torrential rains. Their deaths were ordained in Pakistan months ago by a group of anti-India terror actors. The meadows of Baisaran had been identified, reconnaissance made, and clinically mapped for the 22/4 attack by the two Asims of Pakistan (Pakistan army chief, Asim Munir and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence chief, Asim Malik). Indeed, it was Asim Munir who had orchestrated the attack on a CRPF convoy when 40 personnel of the para-military force were killed on February14, 2019 in Pulwama.
The objective this time around had other motivations including distracting attention from Pakistan’s failed state status, a possible coup d’état against Munir and a deep conspiracy that had China and Pakistan in dual concert. But it was also propelled by a savage glee to instil both insecurity among 150 crore patriotic Indians as well as to drive a wedge between well-meaning religious communities that are co-existing in peace in India.
But Pakistan succeeded in neither of its objectives. Kashmir or Kaziranga (or the elegant climes of Cherrapunji or the backwaters of Kerala) will continue to attract the rest of India. Nor can the motivation to divide Indian brethren ever win.
However, it is also true that India of 2025 (immediately after the Baisaran carnage) sought revenge against Pakistan. Indeed, the Indian armed forces (the only organisation in the country with both a sense of duty and a conscience) carried out successful surgical strikes against terrorist camps billeted inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and inside Pakistan.
The government of India made the correct moves, economically and militarily. It was also done with patience and precision. It did not act in haste, but in a calibrated manner after weighing all the pros and cons. The air-strikes of 7 May 2025 had to be undertaken. After all, the country had experienced great distress as a result of Pakistan’s barbaric act. The families of the victims wanted concrete visible action even if it meant India waging war against Pakistan. The operational response should ideally have been to systematically track down the terrorists which according to the author are still hiding in Kashmir or perhaps Ladakh, even as they are trying to reach Nepal.
Pahalgam is quite far from the Line of Control. It was impossible that they could have gone back to Pak-occupied Kashmir (PoK) so quickly. The National Intelligence Agency has identified one Sheikh Sajjad Gul as the mastermind of the Baisaran attack. According to another report, one Asif Sheikh of Tral near Pulwama and another Adil Thokar of Bijbehara of Anantnag district were part of the five-member death squad.
But the Indian intelligence has not been able to track down any of the five even (at the time of writing on 16 May 2025) after 25 days. Instead, a limited war was launched against Pakistan which by a convincing yardstick was fair. The terror sponsoring Pakistan had to be taught a lesson. Indeed, India achieved its objective when it destroyed nine terror camps in PoK.
However, it is unfortunate that innocent civilians were killed in Poonch and thereabouts as a result of relentless Pakistani artillery shelling and drone strikes, and there continues to be speculation about losses incurred by the Indian Air Force and the army. Indeed, some among many were of the opinion that war was not the answer to a terror attack. Instead, New Delhi should have taken a page out of Israel’s book and replicated the manner in which it tracked down the perpetrators of the Munich massacre of 1972.
Pakistan, despite the losses it has suffered, will continue to support terrorism against India. They did so in Assam (recall the ISI operatives which the Assam Police had arrested in 1999-2000!); they have done so when the Indian parliament was sought to be stormed, they did so in Mumbai on 26/11 and in Pulwama. Twenty-five days ago, they perpetrated the terror in Pahalgam. In fact, the atmospherics in the Indian subcontinent has become more conducive for anti-India action. The manner in which a rogue Bangladesh is mouthing effrontery about the North East seems to be indicative of a sinister agenda. China has showcased itself primarily as an observer in the drama that is being played out. But the fact that it carefully watched the “effectiveness” of its armaments in combat reveals that it played an important role behind the curtains.
The long and short of the article’s essence is that a complete rehaul of India’s top intelligence apparatus has to be undertaken. The old school failed to comprehend the larger picture by which India is being compromised time and again. The present crop of intelligence czars just does not have the ability to think “out-of-the-box”. The days of traditional intelligence engineering are over. Today, a country that has been repeatedly afflicted by terror must know the imperatives of the three ocular sights. These, apart from the technologies and gambits (as in a game of chess!), are a “satellite point of view”, a “room’s point of view” and an “ant’s point of view”. It is only a sophisticated combination of the three aforesaid views that would bring forth the clairvoyance and the sophistication that India needs to attain and achieve at this time in its history. There is a clear need to “ring out the old and ring in the new”. The country needs a set of fresh attire in its wardrobe of intelligence.
Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned because of torrential rains.
Must not people today in the helm of India’s national security and intelligence ponder as to what they must do because they failed to read the signs of the Rawalpindi murderers?
The least they can do for God and Country is to apologise and, in the noble legacy of Lal Bahadur Shastri, graciously step down.
(Jaideep Saikia is India’s foremost strategist and bestselling author)