Pahalgam Attack: Why is the Indian Media Not Asking Hard Questions?

[Riaz Haq]

A recent terrorist attack on April 22 in Kashmir has killed 26 Indian tourists. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu Nationalist government took no time to blame Pakistan for the attack and vowed to "punish" the neighbor for it. Indian media, also derisively known as "Godi media", immediately went into overdrive to demand action against Pakistan. New Delhi followed up with suspending the Indus Basin Water treaty from the 1960s which guarantees 80% of the water from the three western rivers (Chenab, Jhelum and Indus rivers) to Pakistan, while India gets the exclusive use of the water from three eastern rivers (Beas, Ravi and Sutlej rivers). India also ordered Pakistani visitors to leave the country and reduced Pakistani diplomatic staff posted in India. Pakistan responded by suspending Simla Agreement and banning overflights of Indian civilian and military aircraft through its airspace. Pakistan warned India that any attempt to block its share of water from the three western rivers will be an "act of war", adding that it was prepared to respond, “with full force across the complete spectrum of national power”. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country, as is India. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine calls for the use of nuclear weapons if its national existence is threatened by any country. 

Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati

The Indian mainstream media has amplified the Modi government's propaganda and abandoned its role of asking the hard questions to get at the truth. Among the few who have raised serious doubts about Delhi's  narrative is a Hindu religious leader named Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati. In a viral video, the holy man has asked the following questions:

1. Shouldn't our "chowkidar"  (Modi has called himself  chowkidar in the past) be held accountable for any attacks on our home? 

2. How did the attackers manage to come in, carry out the attack without any resistance and safely escape?

3. How did you so quickly determine that the attackers came from Pakistan? And if you are so good at reaching this conclusion so quickly, why were you unable to stop the attack in the first place. 

4. Can India really cut off water flow instantly to Pakistan to "punish" it? Experts say it will take at least 20 years if India allocated unlimited funds to make it happen as fast as possible. It will require building dams, water reservoirs and canals to divert the water from Pakistan. 

Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi sees the hand of "Indian deep state" at work in Pahalgam, carried out while the US Vice President JD Vance in India. Sethi recalls what former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote in her memoirs titled "Mighty Almighty" about the killing of 35 Sikh villagers in Kashmir that India blamed on Pakistan during US President Bill Clinton's India visit in March, 2000. She said Clinton suspected the hand of Hindu extremists in the Chittisinghpura incident. She quoted him saying that if he hadn’t made the trip, the victims would have still been alive. 

Among the Indian journalists, only Bharat Bhushan has raised some questions about his country's government narrative. He thinks India violated the back-channel agreement between Modi's NSA Ajit Doval and Pakistan's then NSA Moeed Yusuf reached after 2019 to spare the civilians on both sides in any proxy attacks. Bhushan points out a warning from Lt General Ahmad Sharif that “the (Jaafar Express) train attack (in Balochistan) has changed the rule of the game”. 

Bhushan's op ed mentions Modi's muscular policy toward people he sees as "terrorists".  Canada, Pakistan and the United States have all accused the Indian government of a campaign of international assassinations. He writes: "Another development has been the targeted killings of terrorists and militants — both Kashmir and Sikhs, that Pakistan alleges have been initiated by Indian intelligence agencies after the Pulwama terrorist strike in 2019 when 40 paramilitary personnel were killed. India was allegedly inspired to undertake extra-judicial killings on foreign soil, from the example of Russia’s KGB, Israel’s Mossad, and the assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia". 

Bhushan concludes his Op Ed in Deccan Herald as follows: "How will India react now to what it believes to be Pakistan-sponsored terrorism? The bravado about punishing every terrorist act with greater-than-expected force is not going to be easy to put in action. Geopolitical circumstances have changed since 2019.  Public sentiment cannot be the sole basis of military strikes. Thankfully, no crucial election is in the offing where assuaging public emotions becomes an issue. India will also have to provide proof to the world that Pakistan was indeed involved. This would require the arrest and questioning of the terrorists involved. That may take time. Only the tacit approval of the US can ensure that a strike against Pakistan does not spin out of control". 

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[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan has offered to participate in an independent international investigation of the attack.

India should agree to it if it has nothing to hide.

[Riaz Haq]

Excerpts of NY Times story on Pahalgam:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/world/asia/india-pakistan-kashmi...

In the briefings to diplomats at the foreign ministry, Indian officials have described Pakistan’s past patterns of support for terrorist groups targeting India, diplomatic officials said. The Indian officials have said their investigation is continuing, and made brief references to technical intelligence tying the perpetrators of last week’s attack to Pakistan, including facial recognition data.

The lack of strong evidence offered so far, analysts and diplomats said, pointed to one of two possibilities: that India needs more time to gather information about the terrorist attack before striking Pakistan, or that — in a time of particular chaos on the world stage — it feels little need to justify to anyone the actions it plans to take.

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The lack of clarity may help explain why India has pointed largely to Pakistan’s past support of terrorism in Kashmir to make its case for a military reprisal now. But that approach, before India has laid out its evidence even in private diplomatic discussions, has raised some eyebrows considering the gravity of the escalation. One diplomat privately wondered: Do you want to go to war with a nuclear-armed neighbor based just on past patterns?

[Riaz Haq]

Fidato
@tequieremos
Barkha I’ll tell you with an example why the world doesn’t take India’s allegations seriously:

After the Samjhauta Express bombing in 2007 which killed 68 people, India immediately blamed ISI without an evidence. However, at the first Indo-Pak meeting of the Joint Terror…

https://x.com/tequieremos/status/1916063639834137023

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barkha dutt
@BDUTT
Am truly shocked by the marginal, virtually non coverage of the Pahalgam Terror attack in the American media , ignorance, insularity and self obsession-hence even tougher to take huffy puffy op-eds on India seriously. They just don’t get us.

https://x.com/BDUTT/status/1915554121752735803