India vows to punish Pakistan after the latest terrorist attack

“IT’S TIME to repay Pakistan in its own coin,” snarls India’s rumpled but brilliant national-security adviser, plotting vengeance for a terrorist attack. Soon after, in this season’s runaway hit film, “Uri: The Surgical Strike”, muscled Indian commandos resoundingly smite the enemy. As in Bollywood, so, perhaps, in real life. After a Pakistan-based jihadist group claimed responsibility for a suicide-bombing on February 14th that killed some 40 Indian paramilitary police, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, promised a “jaw-breaking” response. Suspense is mounting as to how and when, rather than if, India plans to punish Pakistan.

Some repayment has already been inflicted. India has suspended Pakistan’s favoured trading status, slapping a 200% duty on its products. This will not hurt much. India imports less than $500m of Pakistani goods a year. Security forces in Kashmir did also swiftly find and kill three men they said planned the bombing. But public anger remains at fever pitch and, perhaps more important, a general election looms in April. Mr Modi came to office promising to get tough with Pakistan, but has lately sagged in the polls. In the felicitously timed “Uri”, a lurid recreation of an actual Indian retaliatory raid in 2016 that is believed to have left some three dozen Pakistan-based guerrillas dead, he is portrayed as a wise, stern commander-in-chief. Now, despite the risk of escalation between the nuclear-armed states, the temptation is for him to burnish his image by giving Pakistan another bloody nose.