Gone are the days of a united fight against, and ‘zero tolerance’ to terror; a different yardstick applies when it comes to India, which is a victim of state-sponsored terror
The Pahalgam terror attack of April 22 has exposed, yet again, the fragmentation in the global fight against terror and Pakistan’s resort to terrorism when it fears normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir. While a number of countries have condemned the Pahalgam attack, they have, at the same time, called upon India and Pakistan to exercise restraint. The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, went to the extent of calling on both parties to “work towards … a responsible resolution that maintains long term peace and regional stability in South Asia”. U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance “hoped” that India’s response would not lead to a wider regional conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that “settling disagreements” between New Delhi and Islamabad on a bilateral basis should be by political and diplomatic means. The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas could not even get around to calling it a “terror attack”.
The end of a collective fight
Gone are the days of “zero tolerance” to terror. Gone are the days when the perpetrators of terror were called out and accountability demanded. Some have even asked India for “proof” of Pakistan’s complicity, conveniently forgetting inter alia the Pulwama (2019) and 26/11 Mumbai (2008) terror attacks. In effect, they are calling on India, the victim, to be restrained and to not go after Pakistan, the perpetrator and backer.
India should not be surprised. To begin with, the appetite for a flare-up in Asia is low after the raging wars in Ukraine, Gaza and West Asia. Moreover, successful elections in Jammu and Kashmir and tourists flocking to Kashmir are red flags for Pakistan. To top it all, the global fight against terror is no longer a collective fight. It is now left for each state to fend for itself. The consensus reached after the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S. in 2001, to fight terror comprehensively, seems to have run its course. The world has gone back to the era of “my terrorist” and “your terrorist.”
Europe is focused on “its” terrorists — right-wing extremism and terror. The U.S., under former President Joe Biden, focused on REMVE, or racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is keen only to use Islamophobia as an excuse to condone terror. Canada has told India that “your” terrorists are not “my” terrorists and that any terrorist threat against India from its soil is covered under its freedom of expression — in effect asking India to wait till a terror act is committed before approaching them. China has blocked proposals submitted by India in 2022 to “black-list”, under the UN Security Council 1267 sanctions regime, terrorists operating against India from Pakistani soil. Now that Pakistan is in the UN Security Council (UNSC) for 2025-26 (as a non-permanent member), these will remain blocked for at least two more years.
The world is blindsided by the spread of terror in Asia and Africa. Terrorism in Africa has spread exponentially, from the Sahel to Mozambique. The Global Terrorism Index 2025 points out that the Sahel is now the epicenter of terrorism, accounting for over half of all terrorism deaths in the world. But the international community says they are “your” terrorists not “my” terrorists and is short-changing Africa.
A different yardstick for India
However, a different yardstick applies when it comes to India, which is the biggest victim of state-sponsored terror from Pakistan. First, it is about “regional stability” and not about fighting terror as Pakistan has successfully sold the “nuclear war” bogey to the world. Even as they egg Ukraine on in its war with “nuclear” Russia, the thought of two developing countries using nuclear arms scares the West enough to call on India to stop fighting cross-border terror. It is quickly forgotten that it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who called on Russian President Vladimir Putin not to use nuclear arms in the Ukraine war for which he was thanked by the U.S. among other countries.
Further, it is now common knowledge that in Pahalgam, the terrorists singled out the tourists based on religion and shot them. A Muslim pony ride operator was shot while trying to save the tourists. The terror attack, which The Resistance Front (a proxy of the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba) claimed that it had carried out — it retracted this statement later — was clearly done to raise tensions and create a communal divide in India.
While the whole world cries hoarse in condemning Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and Christianophobia, why does it become silent when calling out the recent attack for what it is, i.e., Hinduphobia? When even protests in American university campuses are being dubbed anti-Semitic or Islamophobic and portrayed in religious terms, rather than contextualizing them in terms of the 52,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza or Israeli hostages still with Hamas, to maintain radio silence on Hinduphobic attacks is glaring, if not unexpected. Even U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, was confronted with accusations of belonging to a “pagan, wicked” faith while on the campaign trail.
But there has been a refreshing departure — the statement by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who characterized the Pahalgam attack in religious terms, as a “horrific Islamist terrorist attack” and recognized that the targets were Hindus. A silver lining is the extradition of Tahawwur Rana from the U.S. to India for the Mumbai attacks, even if big fish, David Headley, is still in the U.S.
Further, predictably, Pakistan used its presence in the UNSC to move for an emergency closed session on a “deteriorating regional environment and rising tension” posing “a serious risk of escalation”. In 2019, a similar closed meeting took place, at China’s behest, just after Article 370 was abrogated, but fizzled out. The meeting now was no different and no document was issued. It underlined once again that the P-5 (the five permanent UNSC member states), with the exception of China, is in no mood to play the “Kashmir” game, which it considers to be a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan (even if parts of it have been ceded by Pakistan to China).
India’s move to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance has also been targeted by Pakistan at the UNSC. India will no doubt keep the pressure on the UNSC to stop any outcome document, unlike how a similar issue was dealt with in 2021 between Ethiopia and Egypt on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Any one country in the UNSC can stop a statement.
The path ahead
Consequently, if the world is so concerned about India not using kinetic options to fight terror from where it originates, should not India’s “strategic” partners demand accountability from Pakistan rather than substituting harsh words for real action or calling on “both sides” to “defuse” tensions? To deter Pakistan, India’s close Gulf partners, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are themselves undertaking internal socio-religious reforms, need to step up. The international community must act to deter and sanction Pakistan, and not merely react episodically. If it refuses to act, India will act alone. Apart from the current slew of options, India will also have to think ahead
Having built a strong international framework to combat terror, including terror financing and misuse of emerging technology, the international community cannot step back on combating terror, especially state-sponsored terrorism. Three years after raising it for the first time in the UN General Assembly in 2022, India has yet another opportunity to take the lead in combating religiophobia against non-Abrahamic religions. This time its campaign should go beyond the UN, where select Indian Missions should take up the issue bilaterally with their host countries.
All this points to one thing. India should not only create geopolitical space for itself through its strategic autonomy and multi-alignment policy, but must also be prepared to use it when it matters. There is no doubt that such parleys are on.
(T.S. Tirumurti was Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, New York from 2020 to 2022)
