Hot Freeze

But when the hour for such a strike seemed to have come in the popular eye, in the aftermath of the strike on Parliament, cold pragmatism has prevailed. Luckily, some would say. For, as military strategists have pointed out, India and Pakistan are locked in a deadly parity, much unlike the asymmetry that defines Israel-Palestine or America-Afghanistan. The difficulty of eliciting a sympathetic stance from the world—as also of evolving a consensus at home—too had to be factored in. As the ‘war’ hots up on the diplomatic stage, with India recalling its envoy from Islamabad, we examine the possible scenarios.