One day after militants killed 26 people in a tourist group in Kashmir, the Indian government on Wednesday pointed a finger at its archnemesis, Pakistan, announcing a series of punitive actions against its neighbor and hinting at further retaliation.
India has not officially blamed any group for the massacre, in which all but one of the dead were Indian citizens. But it described the aggressive moves outlined on Wednesday as a response to Pakistan’s support of terrorist attacks on Indian soil.
The Indian government suspended its participation in an important water treaty that since the 1960s has governed the flow of rivers that Pakistan’s irrigation system depends on. India also declared a key land border between the two nations shut. And it announced that it was downgrading diplomatic ties, expelling Pakistan’s military advisers from the country’s New Delhi mission, and further restricting already-limited visas for Pakistani citizens.
The decision came at a cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as coffins of the civilians slaughtered in the picturesque Kashmir Valley began arriving to emotional scenes around the country. The prime minister was briefed on “the cross-border linkages of the terrorist attack,” said India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, without offering details.
Hours earlier, in the Indian government’s first public reaction, the defense minister, Rajnath Singh, said the country had “a zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism” and hinted at the possibility of military strikes.
“We will not only go after the perpetrators of this act,” he said, “but also the actors sitting behind the scenes drawing such conspiracies to be carried out on India’s soil.”
The attack in Indian-administered Kashmir hit India’s government in a particularly sensitive spot.
After bringing the troubled region more firmly under its control in recent years, the government justified its heavy-handed approach with one consistent message: The deadly militancy that had rocked the Himalayan territory for decades was finally in check.
That illusion was shattered on Tuesday, as militants emerged from a densely forested area to slaughter tourists who were enjoying a picnic spot in a particularly picturesque valley near the town of Pahalgam.
As officials rush to make sense of the major security lapse in what is one of the world’s most militarized zones, there is growing concern in New Delhi that the pressure on Mr. Modi to respond decisively could once again raise the specter of cross-border conflict between two nuclear-armed neighbors.
India and Pakistan have each laid claim to Kashmir since the end of British colonial rule partitioned India into two, carving out Pakistan as an independent nation. Kashmir, where Muslims are a majority, has found itself split between the two, with each country administering a part of it while laying claim to its whole.
India squarely blames Pakistan for harboring and supporting militants behind attacks like the one on Tuesday. In 2019, a militant attack that killed dozens of Indian security personnel resulted in an air battle between the two nuclear-armed nations that stopped just short of all-out war.
“The whole idea, I think, behind this attack was to sort of puncture that narrative that, you know, everything is fine,” said D.S. Hooda, a retired Indian army general who led Indian’s northern command based in Kashmir. “The government will be under tremendous pressure to react.”
General Hooda said the fact that the victims were civilians, and that witness accounts in Indian media suggested Hindus had been singled out by the militants, had only added to the pressure. A list of the victims circulating online, which was verified by local officials in Kashmir, showed that 25 of the 26 killed were Hindus.
The targeting of Hindus by militants in the 1990s forced an exodus of the minority community from Kashmir. In the apparently targeted killings on Tuesday, many saw reminders that region still remains unsafe, particularly for the Hindu minority, despite the government’s claim of a return to normalcy.
In the immediate aftermath of the carnage, Pakistani officials tried to distance themselves from it. Pakistan’s foreign ministry, in a statement, extended condolences “to the near ones of the deceased.”
Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, speaking to a local news channel, said his country did not “support any form of terrorism” and blamed the assault on “homegrown” elements.
Some news reports said that the Resistance Front, a little known and relatively new outfit in Kashmir, had claimed responsibility for the assault. An Indian security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said that security agencies’ assessment was that the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the attack, and that the Resistance Front was a proxy for that group.
Videos and images of the carnage flooded Indian media after the attack, showing tourists who were taking in the vast beauty at one moment and lying in pools of blood the next. One viral image showed a young woman in a tan jacket visibly distraught, kneeling down next to the lifeless body of a man.
Among the victims was Kaustubh Gunbote, 60, an avid traveler who ran a shop selling snacks in the western Indian city of Pune. He was traveling in a group of five that included his wife and friends.
The men in the group were singled out, said his son Kunal Gunbote, who flew to Srinagar, the regional capital, on Wednesday morning to identify his father’s body.
“He was shot in front of my mother. They were all made to lie down,” Mr. Gunbote said. “I feel frustrated and angry. The government says that this place is secure, but there was no security for miles around. My mother said that the terrorists came at leisure — strolling around and asking people their names.”
The attack took place as Vice President JD Vance and his family were in India on a four-day visit. In a condolence message on social media, Mr. Vance described the assault as a “devastating terrorist attack.”
Mr. Modi, who was on a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia, cut his trip short and returned home.
Much of Kashmir observed a shutdown on Wednesday in protest over the killings, with schools and businesses remaining closed. Security was tightened, with military helicopters surveilling the valley where the terror was unleashed. Tourists were also rushing to leave the region, as airlines added additional flights.
“It’s heartbreaking to see the exodus of our guests from the valley after yesterday’s tragic terror attack in Pahalgam,” Omar Abdullah, Kashmir’s top elected official, said. “But at the same time, we totally understand why people would want to leave.”
In recent years, Mr. Modi had taken a two-pronged approach to managing Kashmir: ignore and isolate a Pakistan that was already teetering because of its own domestic problems, and tighten security at home.
In 2019, Mr. Modi stripped Kashmir of the semi-autonomy it had enjoyed, and dissolved its local democracy to bring it under direct rule from New Delhi. While small-scale attacks against civilians continued, Mr. Modi’s officials were increasingly projecting that their strategy was working. Kashmir had turned a page, they said, and it could focus on development. The main indicator of progress was the rising number of tourists pouring into the beautiful valley from different parts of the country.
The mass-casualty attack on Tuesday has exposed the limits of that strategy.
In recent years, India has been preoccupied with a bigger threat on its northern border, as a more hawkish China in 2020 clashed with Indian forces in the Himalayan region of Ladakh and encroached on Indian territory.
As the Indian and Chinese militaries remained on a war footing for over four years until disengaging more recently, India tried to avoid the prospect of a two-front conflict by agreeing to a cease-fire along its boundary with Pakistan.
While diplomatic contact between India and Pakistan has remained minimal and infiltration of militants has continued into India, the cease-fire has largely held.
A speech last week by Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, caused a stir in India, where many saw it as a provocation. General Munir, addressing a gathering of overseas Pakistanis, spoke of Kashmir as “our jugular vein” and said “we will not leave our Kashmiri brethren in their heroic struggle that they are waging against Indian occupation.”
The comments have resurfaced on Indian television channels and social media since Tuesday’s attack.
Zia ur-Rehman, Showkat Nanda and Pragati K.B. contributed reporting.
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Suhasini Raj is a reporter based in New Delhi who has covered India for The Times since 2014.
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