Let's get more analysis now.  We can speak to Dr. Shashi Therur,  Indian Congress leader and chairperson  of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for External Affairs.  He joins us from Fiduvanan Thapuram.  Thank you very much indeed for joining us, Dr Theruram.  Let me just start by asking you a very simple question.  Are India and Pakistan on the brink of all-out war?  I certainly hope not.  Certainly India has no interest in that whatsoever.  All India wanted to do was to make it very clear  that people from Pakistan can't just come across  the border, kill innocent civilians  who are just enjoying a tourist holiday  and walk back across without having to pay a price for it.  So all India did was react in self-defense  to a terrorist outrage.  And India did so in an extremely careful and calibrated manner  and making sure this truck only known terrorist bases  and headquarters did so only at night  when they were likely to be new civilians  wandering around the streets.  And did so while very carefully avoiding  striking any government or military installations in Pakistan.  Very clearly signaling that this was not the first sound row  in a protracted war, but rather a one-off reprisal  for a terrorist attack.  Sadly, Pakistan chose to overreact.  They were severe artillery barragers  across the line of control, killing 19 Indian civilians  and hospitalizing 59 people with grave injuries.  India only retaliated also in kind with artillery shells.  But then when Pakistan decided to target Indian military  installations by sending drones and missiles across,  they were stopped and intercepted by Indian air defense  and India in retaliation attacked Pakistani air defense.  Now again, it's very, very clear that India  is not escalating.  It is merely reacting.  OK.  If Pakistan chooses to stop its unnecessary provocations,  India will not act.  I'm quite sure about that.  There is no proactive military engagement coming  from the Indian side beyond the attacks in reprisal  to the terrorism, nothing at all.  OK, Dr. Thoreau, you raised lots of points there.  Let me pick up on one of them.  You say India's response has been precise and restrained.  But according to the reports we've seen,  children are amongst the dead in the attacks in Pakistan.  A mosque was destroyed.  I mean, can we really say they've been precise and restrained?  These are extremely well-known terror bases.  The headquarters of the Jashem Muhammad in Bahawalpur  and the headquarters of the Lashkar Etaiba in Muridke.  These are not innocent places.  If they were sadly any civilian staying there,  there were families of terrorist leaders  or those training to be terrorists.  I'm really sorry to say this because we have absolutely  no interest in behaving like terrorists and killing civilians.  There is no question in my mind that India would have been  very happy to merely dismantle the terrorist infrastructure  rather than even take a single human life.  But the fact is that these are places known and listed  not just by Indian authorities,  but by the international intelligence community.  The agencies concerned are prescribed on the sanctions list  of the United Nations sanctions committee.  They are in no way innocent places are schools  or mosques or homes.  These are unfortunately places where terrorists are trained,  financed, equipped, and dispatched  to kill innocent civilians in India.  That's what India was reacting to.  And Dr. Thoreau, the people we speak to in Pakistan  counter your narrative and you're quoted in the newspapers  as saying this is a state, we're talking about Pakistan,  that sponsors terrorism in the most vile manner.  So you're suggesting the Pakistani government  sponsors these organizations.  I don't know what you think the motive would be  for Pakistan to do such a thing.  They're also asking me every time I put this question  to them, what's the evidence? What's the evidence so?  Well, as far as evidence is concerned,  don't forget that Pakistan is a master of denial.  They denied having anything to do with the Mumbai attacks  that killed 170 people on 26th-11th, 2008,  until one of the terrorists was caught alive  and the Pakistanis had to admit that he and everything  he said came from them.  They deny even knowing where Osama bin Laden was  until he was found in a military encampment  not far from a Pakistani army base inside Pakistan.  This is the Pakistani route.  It's constantly show us the evidence.  Well, I mean, the fact is there is enough  circumstantial evidence and there are intelligence  intercepts on the basis of which India is acting.  And India has absolutely no other reason to do this.  Let's understand something very clearly, Tom.  India is a status quo power.  It wants nothing that Pakistan has.  It is focused on growing its economy,  improving its high technology,  providing a future for its young people.  It is entirely happy to be left alone by Pakistan  and it'll leave Pakistan alone.  Pakistan is a revisionist power.  It claims territory in their homes.  It is a bigoted power that wishes to take over parts of India  on the grounds that the people living there  happen to share the same religion as the Pakistanis.  Well, there are 200 million Indian Muslims  who share the same religion as the Pakistanis.  Do they want to take them all over?  It's a preposterous approach that the Pakistanis  have been adopting.  They have been deploying terrorists for 30 years  in pursuit of their desire to quote unquote bleed India  by a thousand cuts and to capture the territory of Kashmir.  They're not going to get it.  They fail for 30 years.  They go to fail for another 30.  Then the sad, sad lesson that they must learn  and have failed to learn is that terrorism  is not the answer.  Killing innocent civilians will invite reprisals  and we're scaling up the reprisals with each outrage.  In 2008, after Mumbai, India tried diplomacy,  tried gray-listing Pakistan, tried black-listing  the agency's concern to the Sanctions Committee.  Some years later, when there was an attack in Patankot,  the Prime Minister even invited the Pakistani intelligence  to join the investigation of the attack.  They came and they went back to Pakistan  and said, oh, the Indians did it to themselves.  That was the last straw.  The next terrorist attack, India sent a squad across  to attack the very base from which the attack had come.  The next terrorist attack in Palwama, India did an airstrike,  just one.  The next terrorist attack, this time in Belgarman, Kashmir,  India hit nine.  How much longer do the Pakistanis want to play this game?  India is prepared to play it.  But India is much happier to be left alone  and that's what we would urge the Pakistanis to do.  As the conversation goes on, I'd like to talk to you  about diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the situation.  But one thing you've put on Twitch, I just want to ask you about it  because I was curious myself.  You've appraised on the application X,  the codename Operation Sindhur,  which has been launched by India.  You've said it's a brilliant name.  Just tell us why it's significant  and why you think it's such an appropriate name  for this military operation.  Sindhur is the vermillion-reddish mark  that women who are married put right there  in the middle of their foreheads when they part their hair.  And the image that was seared into the nation's consciousness  after the terrorist attack in Belgarman  was of a newly wedded, now newly widowed bride  on her honeymoon, kneeling disconsolently  by the body of her slain husband, weeping.  In other words, a terrorist attack  had wiped the Sindhur off her forehead  because only married women wear it.  It was a very emotive, emotional term  to remind people of what had happened  and why this action was necessary  that innocent civilians, including this young woman,  and by the way, a few other women who were wedded  in the process of the same attack had all experienced.  I might add that at the end of that,  there is also undoubtedly the evocative thought  that the color of the Sindhur is not that different  from the color of blood,  and that was what was spilt by the terrorists in our country.  I thought it was a very, very evocative, emotional,  and powerful choice to name the operation that way.  Okay, so thank you for helping us decipher that.  So it's a very interesting explanation.  And I'd like to ask you now about efforts  to broker some sort of a solution.  Before we start talking about where this might head to,  and look at all the chilling options bearing in mind  that you're both nuclear powers,  let's try to be optimistic for a moment.  In a grave crisis, there is sometimes an opportunity,  an opportunity to iron out some of these nearly 80-year-old issues  that exist between India and Pakistan.  Do you have any optimism that we could perhaps  turn this into an opportunity?  Now, first of all, as far as the present crisis is concerned,  there is no need to call upon India to exercise restraint  because India is already exercising restraint.  It has announced it will not initiate a single military action,  but it will react if there is military action imposed upon it.  So all the international community needs to do  is to get Pakistan to behave,  it's to tell them to stop attacking.  The moment they stop attacking,  the moment they can find any excuse  to claim their honor is satisfied,  that would be the end of that.  India has no desire to prolong this.  As I said, we are first of all a state of small power.  We want nothing from them.  Second, we are focused on our own growth,  and we have no desire to be distracted from them.  We are not interested in going to war.  But in Pakistan, once war, they will get it.  And I think very few people doubt  which of the two countries has greater staying power in a war.  So that's on the present situation.  I think the ball is entirely in Pakistan's court.  They can stop any prospect of increased conflict now.  India has not put a foot on the escalatory ladder.  Pakistan has.  So that's the first and most important thing to understand.  On the larger question, no sir,  we are not going to allow terrorists  to allow Pakistan to get what they want,  which is to internationalize the dispute  and to provoke a negotiation or a mediation  to get them what they want.  What terrorists have failed to achieve,  they are not going to get it as simple as that.  We could have talked to the Pakistanis.  I mean, many, many occasions we've tried to talk to them.  They were the famous back-channel negotiations for four years  between Prime Minister Mourn Singh and General Musharraf.  The truth remains, however, that every time  these processes of talking have been ended  by a Pakistani terrorist attack.  No one in India has any inclination  to talk to the Pakistanis  while they're pointing a gun at our heads.  So who's going to talk and we can see  about what weather and weather  and about what we might talk one day, not now?  Dr. Thoreau, who can talk to the Pakistanis  and talk them down from this situation and help de-escalate?  Who would they listen to?  Because it doesn't sound like there's  a huge amount of appetite in Washington to get  even the slightest bit involved in this conflict.  So it seems, though, Secretary of State Rubio did say  that he was going to speak to both countries,  foreign ministers and national security advisors.  And if he's done so, I'm sure that he,  the only message he would give is we don't want  to see this getting out of hand.  The Chinese issued a very interesting statement, China,  is Pakistan's quote unquote, all-weather friend.  And Pakistan is for some years now  being a de facto client state of China.  China controls 30% of Pakistan's debt  on top of which you have the big China-Pakistan economic  corridor running through the country, which  is of some economic value to China as well.  So one would assume that that is one patron  of Pakistan he would listen to.  China has issued a very interesting statement  saying that both India and Pakistan are their neighbors.  They don't want to see a war in their neighborhood between  neighbors, and they would like there to be peace  and understanding and calm.  Now if China gives that message to Pakistan,  that might be something Islamabad will be well inclined  to heed.  OK.  And in terms of the sentiment towards the United States  in India, I want to ask you about a piece  in the Times of India online edition.  It says quote, the US Vice President, J.D. Vance,  Urges Restraint Sparking Outrage.  That's the headline of an article.  And it suggests that India feels backstabbed by the United States.  And I just wondered whether that was a perception you felt  and whether it's a widely shared feeling.  No, I said I haven't actually seen that article.  So I don't know what the author intended.  But to my mind, we have already announced restraint.  We have made it very clear that our operation was in retaliation  for a terrorist outrage.  And that was it, that it was, in fact,  the word use in the public briefing  was it was non-escalatory in nature,  that India was not intending to escalate further.  So you can counsel restraint all you like.  You're preaching to the converted.  On the other hand, tell the Pakistanis  to exercise restraint, and that will be the end of that.  It's Pakistan that somehow feels an obligation  to somehow react further, having already initiated  this problem with a terror attack.  They want to continue a two-fireback in India.  And as I say, if they do, India will have to give it back to them.  We have our own self-respect.  But as long as Pakistan decides that they're not anxious  to have an all-large war, they will not be one.  If, however, the Pakistani army, which is deeply unpopular  in its own country, has decided that they actually do want to war  in order to shore up their faltering and tottering image  as the savior of the nation, then, of course,  the Pakistani military will get what it wants.  It gets what it wants in Pakistan anyway.  And India is not going to lie back and take it lying down.  Look, I mean, the alternatives to discussion, diplomacy,  mediation are pretty chilling.  I mean, there is scope here for escalation,  the scope here for miscalculation.  Up until this point, has there been any saber rattling,  nuclear saber rattling, I should say, on either side  that you've detected?  Well, it can't be on India side, because India has a declared,  published and long-established policy  of no-first use of nuclear weapons.  So India would never rattled any saber as of a nuclear kind,  because that is the Indian policy.  Pakistan, on the other hand, does not have such a policy  and is implied that it would be willing to use nuclear weapons.  So again, the ball is in Pakistan's court.  You do understand that equivalence between the two countries  on any of these grounds is completely false.  You have a terrorist, providing states,  and you have a terrorist victim state.  You have a state that has refused  to have joined nuclear weapons on their first use.  You have another state that has absolutely refused  to use nuclear weapons first.  So, I mean, there is no equivalence.  There is no comparison.  As far as I'm concerned on these matters,  what really applies right now is the great importance  of persuading Pakistan to dial down its own misbehavior.  Okay, so where do you see this heading to?  What are your predictions, Dr. Thoreau?  Well, I'd like to predict that, at some point,  people and other capitals will tell Pakistan,  you've fired enough shells, you've killed enough Indians.  Your honor is satisfied, lay off.  And if capitals don't say that to Pakistan,  and they don't say it firmly enough,  and I mean particularly Beijing,  then indeed, all bets are off,  and you might well see Pakistan being tempted  to escalate for very short-term military reasons  in their country.  I certainly hope it doesn't come to that,  because in the long term, there's no way  they can gain from such a conflict.  They've already earned the appropriate of the world  as a teleproviding nation, as a host of Osama bin Laden,  as a people who spawned the Taliban,  and having, as Hillary Clinton evocatively said,  having nurtured vipers in their backyard,  they've been beaten by the same vipers,  they've nurtured, and this is a country  that really, really needs all the good word it can get  from the rest of the world.  And for that reason, what Pakistan needs to do right now  is to stop its military provocations,  to not embark on any further misadventures,  and let this thing died out.  India certainly does not want to prolong it.  And just last time, we would you say in India,  there's unanimity on this issue  right across the political spectrum.  Do all Indians sing from the same song sheet here?  I very, very strongly so.  And in fact, India, I mean, I speak for an opposition party  and the opposition party, the Congress party,  was the first to stand up and say,  we stand with the government  and behind our armed forces in this particular moment  of national crisis.  We do have domestic political differences.  Those will be addressed when the crisis is over.  Right now, we are all united,  and I see very, very little dissent.  Of course, there are people who prefer peace to war,  as soon as any sensible human being on the planet.  But when war is thrust upon us,  it would only be a coward who refuses to fight back.  And we will fight back if it's thrust upon us.  All right, well, thank you very much indeed for your time.  A pleasure talking to you, Dr. Shashi Tharoor.  Thank you very much for your time, sir.  Thank you, Tom.