Bhubaneswar: May 8: It was 24th April 2025 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi categorically said in a public meeting held in Bihar, ‘‘ India will identify and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them relentlessly. Terrorism will never break India’s spirit. Terrorism will not go unpunished.’
The message given by the prime minister just 2 days after the deadliest attack on civilians in Pahalgam, Kashmir, was not for the consumption of the people of India alone or Pakistan; it was the message to the entire world that India was preparing a forceful military response.
The message was compelling, and Modi appeared resolute that day due to the prolonged assaults by terrorists over many years. The Pahalgam attack was not an isolated incident; other such assaults have been perpetrated by terrorists nurtured by Pakistan to disrupt India’s peace and prosperity.
In the past few decades, India has suffered several fatalities owing to terrorist activities perpetrated by various groups originating from Pakistan. Certain attacks are indelible owing to their ferocity and inhumanity, such as:
March 21, 2000: Terrorists targeted the minority Sikh community in Chattisinghpora village in Anantnag district, killing 36 people.
August 2000: Thirty-two people, among them 24 pilgrims bound for Amarnath, were killed in a terror attack at the Nunwan base camp.
July 2001: Amarnath yatris targets again, this time at the Sheshnag base camp in Anantnag, killing 13.
On October 1, 2001, a suicide attack occurred at the Jammu and Kashmir State Legislature Complex in Srinagar, resulting in the deaths of 36 people.
2002: At Chandanwari base camp, terror struck, killing 11 Amarnath pilgrims.
November 23, 2002: Nineteen people, including nine security force personnel, three women and two children, lost their lives in an improvised explosive device blast at Lower Munda in South Kashmir on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway.
March 23, 2003: Terrorists massacred at least 24 Kashmiri Pandits, including 11 women and two children, at Nandimarg village in Pulwama district.
June 13, 2005: Thirteen civilians, including two schoolchildren, and three CRPF officers were killed, and over 100 people sustained injuries when an explosives-laden car blew up at a crowded marketplace in Pulwama.
September 18, 2016: Four Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists attacked the Indian Army brigade headquarters in Uri. Nineteen soldiers were killed, and 30 others were injured.
July 10, 2017: Attack on Amarnath Yatra bus in Kulgam, 8 killed.
14 February 2019: A convoy of vehicles carrying security personnel was attacked by a suicide bomber at Lethapora on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in the Pulwama district. Forty soldiers were killed.
Additionally, India will never forget the 2008 Mumbai attacks, also known as the 26/11 assaults, in which 10 members of the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, based in Pakistan, carried out 12 shooting and bombing strikes within four days around Mumbai. Nine of the assailants were among the 175 individuals that killed, while almost 300 others were injured.
In addition, other attacks of this nature have disrupted Indian peace and tranquilly over the past three decades. The most recent Pahalgam incident went beyond all bounds, since the terrorists slaughtered everyone while enquiring about their religion.
To take revenge, the Indian Armed Forces launched ‘OPERATION SINDOOR’, hitting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed.
Altogether, nine (9) sites have been targeted.
India’s actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution.
Before India has also repeatedly asked Pakistan to shut down these groups. But nothing is happening so far, rather it is growing.
After the constitutional changes and reorganisation of the erstwhile State of Jammu-Kashmir, the Union territories of Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh have been fully integrated into the mainstream of the nation. As a result, the people of Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh now have access to all the rights enshrined in the Constitution of India and the benefits of all the Central Laws that other citizens of the country were enjoying.
The change has brought about socio-economic development in both the new UTs, i.e., UT of Jammu-Kashmir and the UT of Ladakh. Empowerment of people, removal of unjust laws, bringing in equity and fairness to those discriminated against for ages who are now getting their due, along with comprehensive development, are a few of the important changes that are ushering both the new Union Territories towards the path of peace and progress.
Further 2024 Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Legislative Assembly elections in India are a landmark event, being the first since the revocation of Article 370 in 2019 and the first assembly polls in a decade.
Gradually, everything was improving, and people of the region were also enjoying the development and looking for a better tomorrow. But the Pahalgam incident, sponsored by our neighbour, disturbed the entire mathematics India was dreaming of, which prompted India to go for the ‘Sindoor Operation’.
India has started war against terrorism, now it is the time, the world must cooperate India to wipe out terrorism for all the time to come.
