There’s a famous quip from the Spider-Man movie that’s often quoted: “With great power comes great responsibility." I feel this is also why India decided to pull back, instead of going for the complete annihilation of Pakistan this past week.

The massacre of innocent tourists in Pahalgam, killed mainly because they were Hindus, enraged the entire nation. With bated breath, we all awaited the eventual hammer to fall on Pakistan. The question was not “if", but rather “when" and “how much". This fundamental change in our outlook and expectations of a thumping action against terrorism has been enabled by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s previous actions against terrorism.

Between 2008 and 2014, India witnessed multiple acts of terrorism, including the now-infamous 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Prominent being the 2008 Jaipur blasts that killed 64 people and injured 140; the 2008 Ahmedabad blasts where 18 bomb blasts within 70 minutes killed 57 people and injured over 150; the 26/11 Mumbai attacks that resulted in 166 deaths and over 300 injuries; the 2013 Hyderabad twin blasts that killed 17 people and injured over 100.

Despite such major attacks, all that the UPA government did was exchange dossiers. We would send over dossiers to Pakistan, and the latter in turn would send them back — claiming “no concrete proof." Time and again, India’s efforts at bringing terrorists to book were thwarted by Pakistan, and despite having an inclination of........

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