Re: Raja rental off to Ajmer....all's well at home
expecting some sort of display of the mutilated bodies and photographic evidence is just insane. surprised to see you think this would be even a remote possibility. even if it was, pakistan denies the killings entirely...so to whom is the evidence to be presented and for what? such a display didn't happen during kargil with capt. saurabh kalia which was an indisputable case and far more gruesome. again i don't understand how this is difficult to believe...it's not the case of one "narrative" vs. another. it's a binary proposition: head or no head.
whether it was blown out of proportion is a different matter. it's also easy for you to say it was but the context in india is post-26/11 without retaliation. your reading of this is an election year issue is just wrong - elections were mostly finished very early in 2012 and there is nothing special about the handful of 2013 state assembly elections. more importantly it was not utilized in any meaningful way by politicians. you are speculating about what might theoretically make sense - the problem is that it's just not what happened. in reality it was politically damaging to the ruling administration's peace-at-all-costs approach to pakistan and was very embarrassing for manmohan singh. in fact, they had every incentive to lie and say there was no beheading...not to lie and say there was.
Well, at the end of the day, you cannot expect justice if you dont present evidence. The Pakistani side denies it. In fact, the suggestion was made to appoint a neutral third party to ascertain the actual facts on the ground. Now im fairly certain a neutral third party would be able to decipher between a body with and one without a head, so you wouldnt need to advertize it to the world. But we are made to believe that the Indian narrative is accurate, your premise is based on the Indian narrative being the true, yet India seems to have refused a third party investigation. Even if nothing comes of it, at the very least, Indian position is vindicated. If they are now trying to hide the truth of the matter, well that makes no sense either, as they have already made the accusations.
Perhaps your right about India post 26/11. But hyper aggressive nationalism isnt a recent development post 26/11, its simply that now it has a voice in your many cable networks. Where before this sort of goading of the public was limited now its perfused.
So, post 26/11. I dont think it justifies anything, hurt feelings arent a rare commodity in Indo-Pak relations. if you can point to such and such as rational, we can quote numerous examples of our own. For some reason, we don't seem to share in the acrimony that the Indians as a nation display toward us. For all the faults faults of the Pakistanis, you do not get this level of vitriol towards Indians, Zahid Hameed, a clown by most standards notwithstanding.
I doubt this could have ever helped the ruling govt, as it happened under there watch but then there is the opposition. And peace at all cost would have meant far more then a few platitudes. So if this is what you call "peace at all costs" I would hate to see what your real hawks are like. I should think the motives of the govt arent always clear. Perhaps they felt demonizing the Pakistanis would take attention of other issues, such as the economy? Election time or not, its not unheard of for a govt to try to divert attention from news that isnt all that palatable. i don't know, but until there is an actual investigation, its hearsay.
At the end of the day, both sides lost men. If Indians are upset, then so are we, but we understand it with in the context of the conflict. Such is the state of affairs. and thats why the Indian reaction is over the top. It does not acknowledge its own role in what happened and adopts victim status for itself.
