Opinion | A Year After Pahalgam, India Contends With Desperate Enemies, Distracted Friends |
Apr 21, 2026 14:40 pm IST
A Year After Pahalgam, India Contends With Desperate Enemies, Distracted Friends
The most challenging question on this anniversary is what might happen if another Pahalgam-scale attack were to occur today. New Delhi finds itself in a strategic pincer.
Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist
Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist
The sun over the Lidder Valley no longer feels like the warm embrace of a Himalayan spring. One year ago today, on April 22, 2025, the crisp mountain air of Pahalgam was shattered by staccato bursts of gunfire and the horrified screams of those who had come seeking peace and a pleasant escape from the world below, only to be met by bigotry and blood.
Today, the valley is quiet, but it is a silence heavy with the ghosts of twenty-six innocent souls, mostly tourists and pilgrims, whose lives were extinguished in the deadliest terror strike the region has seen in decades. Reflecting on the anniversary of the Pahalgam attack requires us to mourn the heart-rending tragedy. But it also requires more than just mourning; it demands an incisive look at how that single afternoon fundamentally rewired the geopolitics of South Asia, leading us into an era of Operation Sindoor, shifting alliances, and a strategic environment that feels more like a powder keg than ever.
Cynical In The Extreme
The attack was brutal in its simplicity. Five armed militants, later identified as part of The Resistance Front, an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba, targeted a cluster of tourist vehicles near the town centre. They asked people for their religion and killed the non-Muslims in cold blood, sparing one Hindu professor who could recite the Kalima. The intention was cynical in the extreme: to send a chilling political message, to provoke a Hindu backlash in the rest of India, and to devastate the prospects of Kashmir's revival on the resurgence of tourism. The toll was devastating, claiming the lives of 25 Indian nationals and one Nepalese citizen.
Unlike previous........