Pathankot Attack: What India-Pakistan peace process are we trying to salvage?

There are two things you can be sure will be among reactions to any Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attack on Indian soil.

The first is louder, more strident: easy calls for war, “enough is enough” and how the time has come for Pakistan to be taught a lesson, silenced in front of the world for daring to spill Indian blood with such impunity.

The second is softer, permitting itself an air of reason, wisdom, maturity rather than easy thumping belligerence. These are the exclamations of worry over whether the said terror attack will “derail” an effort towards peace, such as it is, between India and Pakistan. Whether the Indian government has the tenacity to absorb an attack of this kind, and insulate it from the vulnerable hike towards meaningful dialogue. Will we play into the hands of terrorists, you'll hear people ask, brows furrowed with earnest worry.

It is this second certainty that I'd like to say a few things about.

For one, concerns that terror attacks will somehow impact hard-fought efforts toward peace have the advantage of sounding wise, since they don't openly espouse violence, vindictiveness and a delinquent knee-jerk understanding of the fraught relationship the two countries share.

Two, it has the advantage of a well-defined, if lofty, ideal - peace. Belligerence is an impulse that suffers the consequence of never quite finishing its own story: “So, we'll attack Pakistan. And then?”

Three, in an atmosphere where most people are only a few steps away from calling for blood, there is eminent apparent sense in calling for measured, resoluteness to protect the peace effort at all costs.

The problem is, as you no doubt already know, the peace effort with Pakistan isn't really a peace effort at all. Attempting to protect the bonhomie of the Modi-Nawaz Lahore handshake or the Sushma-Sartaj Islamabad lunch is to imbue both meetings with the power to truly change relations. Power neither of those meetings really has.

Roll these questions around if you will:

What peace process are we really protecting here, if those we're speaking to have no material power?

What “mooh tod jawab” are we expecting to give Pakistan if we're happy to stay engaged with them, no matter how tenuous that engagement in the framework of Pakistan's real power centres?

Do those who hope that the peace effort account for the enormous cost in blood, security and infrastructure that continues to be spent in this endlessly meandering travail towards that very peace?

Do those who would guard the peace process at all costs the strategic cost of India's diffidence in extracting a real cost from Pakistan for terror that is entirely within the control of its statutory instruments?

Do those who wish for the peace process to be untouchable really think India's sense of measure is seen as magnanimity? Or would they allow for the possibility that it is interpreted simply as diffidence? Continuing terror attacks suggest the latter.

So what peace process or effort towards dialogue are we really protecting here? Is there anything substantial to protect? If we're not talking to the people who actually control the peace button as it were, why are we even wasting diplomatic energy. I'm pretty sure India has nothing to prove to the world anymore when it comes to Pakistan. It certainly doesn't need to try to be seen as the better side.

Or has the time come to isolate Pakistan completely. To be steadfast down a path to demonstrate that India will not be toyed with. For there to be a cost -- economic, political, diplomatic, covert or other -- that will be so focused and unrelenting as to leave Pakistan with more than a few thoughts about finally doing something to rein terror in.

Or has the time come to couple the handshake and hug with unshakeably resolute punishment when they step out of line, no matter how warm the hug? Meet and greet regularly, sure. Smile for the cameras. But off camera, on the frontline, deliver silent quietly shattering retribution for even the smallest provocation. What will that punishment be and how will it be administered? A question worth exploring very seriously.

The problem, you see, is the Indo-Pak spectrum. At one end, it's the blood for blood impulse. At the other end, it's the Lahore-style backslapping, manufactured warmth cheerfully churned into a froth by foreign affairs analysts and journalists who believe being invested in a peace ideal justifies everything that may come before it (with no promise that it'll come at all), and a twisted comfort with serial carnage if it's only taking us a step closer to elusive peace.

To shield the so-called effort towards peace is to deny that there are things India can do with Pakistan that don't involve war, but certainly don't involve a prostitution of spirit.

Blood for blood jingoism is unsustainable and dangerous. It cannot be a response anyone should support or nurse.

But clinging to just photo-op hugs as being anything more than the diplomatic equivalent of a fling, is infinitely worse.