India, May 13 -- Pakistan's doctrinaire general Syed Asim Munir green-flagged the latest invasion of Kashmir with a reiteration of the defunct but toxic conjecture that Islam was sufficient as the basis of nationalism. The two-nation theory, endorsed by the British to partition India, died at the early age of 24 on December 16, 1971, killed by Bangladeshis who preferred Bengali to Urdu and reframed their Constitution on the more sustainable lines of linguistic identity. Islam has never been theraison d'etreof any other political entity. If Islam was enough, why would there be 22 Arab nations? They have both religion and language in common. Islam is a faith; it cannot be imprisoned in a country. After 1971, Pakistan did not replace its birth theory with a one-nation rationale; instead, it slipped into a non-nation vacuum, struggling to contain fissiparous ethnic divisions under a common flag. For half a century, Pakistan has embraced an ideological ghost in search of life after death. Terrorism, a vicious phantom war, is the inevitable preferred strategy of an unstable national ideology complemented by a permanent ruling establishment that is a volatile combination of the politically corrupt and militarily impotent. General Munir was not the first amnesiac to defy logic and history in search of geography. He will not be the last. Pakistan invented modern terrorism within ten weeks of its Caesarian birth. On October 22, 1947, it sent some 5,000 terrorists, assisted by "soldiers of the Pakistan Army 'on leave'," according to HV Hodson, to seize Kashmir before Eid, due that year on October 26. The terrorists looted, pillaged, and killed; their descendants are still waiting to reach Srinagar. Displaying infinite stupidity, Pakistan believes that the same strategy would have different consequences at different times. This doctrine of repetition, written on carbon paper, has only one sequence: Terrorism, invasion, war, and defeat. The lack of imagination is startling. Genetic insanity means that Pakistan will never be defeated by defeat. Indian Prime Ministers (PMs), driven by more sane objectives, including the continued growth of the economy for the benefit of the people, have become victims of controversy whenever they recognise that military conflict must be contained by defined objectives. New Delhi does not believe in permanent war. Pakistan may exist in a cocoon; India lives within a larger world. Indira Gandhi, hailed by BJP icon Atal Bihari Vajpayee as a manifestation of Goddess Durga after the creation of Bangladesh, was pursued by questions after she announced a unilateral ceasefire on December 16, 1971. Pakistan was crushed; the Indian Army could have advanced into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. She halted the war. Nor did Mrs Gandhi pursue an iron-clad solution to the Kashmir dispute during the Shimla talks in 1972 that enabled Pakistan to take back 93,000 troops who were prisoners of war. PM Narendra Modi agreed to a ceasefire only after sending an unprecedented existentialist signal to Islamabad with an attack on Sargodha, adjacent to its nuclear assets. Indian missiles do not miss. India's military reputation has soared as details dribble out. Pakistan was shaken; America understood. Both have confirmation of India's strike capability and PM Modi's steely will. As he told American Vice President JD Vance, the next time will be worse. America reacts when the threshold rises. In 1999, Bill Clinton ordered Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif to retreat from Kargil weeks after the terrorist operation. Sharif bowed before Clinton; his brother Shehbaz has submitted before Donald Trump, because while Pakistan may be a client State of China, it is also a servitor State of the US. This is not the only paradox in Pakistan's genes. Pakistan has become an Islamist Don Quixote with a nuclear lance. The subcontinent came close to a nuclear showdown in 2001-2002 after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. PM Vajpayee and defence minister George Fernandes developed a Cold Start policy. India will not initiate a nuclear strike; but the response will be devastating, engineering a nuclear cloud that will not recognise boundaries. The only time when India did not respond to Pakistani terrorism was, incredibly, after the barbaric attack on Mumbai in 2008. Astonishingly, Manmohan Singh did absolutely nothing even after palpable evidence of terrorist communication with Pakistani mentors. The political cost was eventually paid by his party, the Congress. PM Modi has established a doctrine: Terrorism is war. Any arm's length alibi will be considered infructuous. In the past week, India has delivered justice; terrorists on the most wanted list for decades have been eliminated. The diplomatic challenge after the ceasefire is to create a Terrorism Protocol that can provide credible evidence that the Pakistan establishment does not have any role in any future terrorist attack. This is easier written than done. The management of horror has been a persistent challenge for almost every Indian prime minister. During the 1980s and 1990s, two decades drenched in blood, Pakistan's dictators and politicians persuaded themselves that their terrorism had triggered the disintegration of India. They did not understand India, a template of the modern nation-State rather than a medieval accident, and still do not. General Munir became Pakistan's army chief on November 20, 2022, three days before he was due to retire. His term ends this November. Till his speech on the two-nation theory, his tenure was noticeable for his silence. It pays to hear the silence. The time for political intervention has come now.His sudden swerve to ideology cannot but have political implications. Is this a prelude to a coup? If he gets an extension, is this a clear and candid signal that he wants the Pakistan Markazi Muslim League, the latest political catspaw of warlord Hafiz Saeed, in office after next year's Pakistan elections, perhaps as a partner in a coalition? It is entirely appropriate that the mentors of communal terrorism have resurrected the Muslim League. The Muslim League created Pakistan not by a mass movement but through mass slaughter, initiated with the great Calcutta killing of August 14, 1946. Pakistan was created by violence; it is being preserved by violence....