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(from left) TS Tirumurti, Former Permanent Representative of India to the UN, New York; MK Narayanan, Former National Security Adviser, India, with N Ravi, Director, Kasturi & Sons, at The Hindu Huddle 2025, in Bengaluru on May 9
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MURALI KUMAR K
India missed an opportunity to “split Western Pakistan” both after the 1965 and 1971 wars, said former National Security Advisor MK Narayanan, making the case that it is now difficult for India to defeat terrorism without “eliminating” the terrorist State. Speaking at The Hindu Huddle’s opening session on Friday, Narayanan, who was known as a ‘hardliner’ on Pakistan in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government as NSA (2005-2010), said that intelligence officials should have better prepared for the current conflict that began with the Pahalgam terror attack of April 22, after Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir’s speech the week before.
In his speech to Pakistani lawmakers, General Munir had played up religious differences as irreconcilable and propounded the “two-nation” theory.
At the session entitled ‘Balancing National Security with Political Expediency’, moderated by N Ravi, Director, Kasturi & Sons, Narayanan and former Indian Envoy to the United Nations TS Tirumurti also criticised the international community for its response to the Pahalgam attack, where most countries called on India to “de-escalate” despite Indians being the victim of the terror attack in which 26 men were gunned down by terrorists belonging to the The Resistance Front (TRF).
“Both in 1965 and 1971 we made one serious mistake. We did not split Pakistan and divide it into a split Western Pakistan and split it into a set of principalities, which is what Pakistan is today,” Narayanan said, referring to insurgencies in the Balochistan and Khyber Pakthunkhwa provinces in Pakistan. He said that after the 1971 war, and creation of Bangladesh from what was East Pakistan, India thought Pakistan would have “learned a lesson”.
He said another mistake was not to take “pre-emptive action” using special forces after General Munir’s speech of April 16, adding that after the Mumbai 26/11 attack, he had himself taken responsibility for the intelligence failure.
‘Munir’s war speech’
At the beginning of the session, The Hindu’s Opinion Editor and Curator of The Hindu Huddle Conclave Narayan Lakshman asked the audience to stand for a moment to recognise the “courage and sacrifices of the armed forces” and express their gratitude to them.
“We need to be careful, because you have now a leader of the Pakistan army, who is a firm believer, in the clash of civilizations,” Narayanan warned, saying that General Munir’s words were the kind of “war speech that I never thought that in the 21st century we would to listen from a leader, a person in uniform”.
At a briefing on May 8, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri had said that the “communal rhetoric” by General Munir was possibly linked to the Pahalgam attack, where the victims were religiously identified before being killed, with the motive of setting off riots across India.
‘India on its own’
Speaking about the post-Pahalgam airstrikes on Pakistan led by the Indian Air Force on April 7, Tirumurti said that “Operation Sindoor” had “reset the rules of engagement with Pakistan on cross-border terrorism”. He said India no longer needed to prove in each and every case that the terrorists had come from Pakistani soil, or whether they had been sponsored by Pakistan, unlike the case in previous attacks.
Criticising the international reaction to India’s actions, Tirumurti said that as envoy to the UN, he had seen up close how countries would skirt around the issue of “zero tolerance” for cross-border terrorism. “While they all condemned the terror attack, at the same time, all of them called out for restraint and de-escalation for regional stability etc….” Tirumurti said, asking why the US, UK, Gulf countries and others did not even call on Pakistan to take steps to investigate the attack’s linkages. “They were requesting India, which is the victim, not to go after the perpetrators, which is Pakistan.”
Narayanan said it was clear from his experience that “the rest of the world will not fight our war”. He said that India had hoped the US would come to its aid during previous wars with China and Pakistan including in 1962, and 1965 and 1971.
“They came with a lot of advice, told us how we should alter our security arrangements within the country, but they produced nothing,” he said, praising Russian President Vladimir Putin for being “more favourable to India”. However, he added that India would need to “fight on its own”, not with the support of other countries.
Published on May 9, 2025
This article first appeared on The Hindu Business Line
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