He said it was meaningless to ask Pakistan to nail the masterminds and such a move did not make any sense. Shourie wanted the Government to pause the peace process, prepare the country for the next form of attack and stop taking the statements by Pakistan seriously.

Referring to former Pakistan president Zia-ul-Haq’s strategy to bleed India through proxy war, Shourie said, “No war can be won with a strategy of permanent defence. You must make those who control and orchestrate such a war to pay. If you cannot, make them pay individually.”

Rejecting the theory of using minimal force, he said the eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth argument is completely wrong. “For an eye, both eyes! For a tooth, the whole jaw! Unless India has that determination and that clarity, we will continue to bleed like this all the time,” he said.

He said New Delhi will have to get its act together as pinning hopes on the US was not going to help much. “Please stop running to mummy. Please stop putting faith in others to do our work thinking that Condoleezza Rice will come and Obama would issue a statement,” he said.

Shourie said the time to send large armies across the borders has gone and there are no training camps to bomb.

“But Pakistan gives us the clue what we should be doing to make them register a cause, that is, look at the violence in Kashmir in the last year-and-a-half. It has gone down because Pakistan has been preoccupied with its own problems. So, keep it preoccupied with problems in Baluchistan, in Gilgit Baltistan, in PoK,” he said.

... contd.