Kashmir tension: How will Indian voters respond to Pakistan airstrikes ahead of elections?

Analysts say airstrikes clearly motivated by ‘intolerable’ bombing in Kashmir earlier this month – but rising anti-Pakistan sentiment can only help Modi’s BJP at the polls

India and Pakistan stood at an unusual crossroads on Tuesday night: either Delhi had ordered an effective “surgical strike” taking out hundreds of jihadis in training and completely destroying a terrorist base across the border – or India’s fighter jets had been confronted, dumped their payloads in a forest and fled, with no harm done.

Amid the war of words, both countries are agreed on some things. They agree a sortie of multiple Indian aircraft crossed the “line of control” into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, although not by much, and fired towards a town called Balakot.

They agree the operation was conducted in a matter of moments – an incursion of just one-and-a-half minutes in total, according to Indian defence sources – and that Pakistan’s air force scrambled its own jets in response.

And that’s about it. For while India’s foreign secretary issued a statement describing the Tuesday morning air raid as a successful mission to avert an imminent terror attack, Pakistan’s armed forces insisted it did nothing more than scuff up some dirt and knock over a few trees. No infrastructure damaged, and no loss of life.

Neither side is yet to prove their point. India may yet, as it did during a similar incident in 2016, produce satellite images which it claims show the destruction. One government minister said the operation had “completely destroyed” the largest training camp belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the militant group behind Kashmir’s deadliest car bombing earlier this month. It’s the sort of damage that before-and-after imagery should easily pick up.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said its side of the border was open for domestic and international journalists alike to themselves check for any signs of damage. Indeed, the ministry said it was taking independent military observers to inspect the scene.

But where to look? In the confusion after the event, the two sides could not even agree on which Balakot had been targeted – one in Pakistan-administered Kashmir or, and which would be a more serious incursion, one in Pakistan proper. Specifically, in the region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – prime minister Imran Khan’s home province.

Here in India, the government has been preparing both practically and rhetorically for an operation like Tuesday morning’s. Since the 14 February Pulwama bombing, the government has collected statements of solidarity and support for action in the face of terror from more than 48 other countries. And in the last few days, security forces in India’s Jammu and Kashmir have pre-emptively rounded up more than 300 suspected separatist agitators.

Narendra Modi had promised a “jaw-breaking” response to that car bombing in Pulwama, carried out by a young local man but prepared by JeM, which killed 40 paramilitary police officers, and in this context made a substantial retaliatory attack seem inevitable – even justified.

In his statement, foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale said the sortie only hit terrorist assets and thus was not an act of aggression against either the Pakistani military or civilians. He creatively described it as “non-military pre-emptive action”.

Pakistan does not view it that way, though. It has not only denied any state involvement in Pulwama, but demanded India provide evidence for the claim that JeM prepared the attack from Pakistani soil.

The country’s own foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said the airstrikes were a “grave aggression”, and prime minister Imran Khan vowed that “Pakistan shall respond at the time and place of its choosing”.

At the same time it played down the impact of the airstrikes. Mr Khan said that “once again the Indian government has resorted to a self-serving, reckless and fictitious claim”, suggesting the Indian account was “for domestic consumption” in the runup to imminent elections.

He is not the only one pointing out that an escalating conflict with Pakistan plays well for Mr Modi and his nationalist BJP in the polls.

A Reuters survey showed a marked uptick in support for Mr Modi in the immediate aftermath of the 14 February attack. He was, after all, swept to power in 2014 at least partly thanks to the image he portrayed of himself as a strong leader.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long after news of the airstrikes broke on Tuesday that videos started doing the rounds on social media of jingoistic displays of Indian flag-waving, anti-Pakistan chants and the burning of Pakistan flags. One analyst who did not wish to be named told me he did not believe a surgical strike had been necessary and that it had been “orchestrated for the election”.

Another defence expert, Dr Gopalan Balachandran, said the airstrikes were “clearly motivated by the JeM attack in Kashmir”. He said the death toll in Pulwama had been “intolerable” to most Indians, and that Mr Modi “needed to show that he was doing something about it”.

“This attack was in response to that, not in response to the forthcoming polls – but that is not to say that it isn’t going to help them [the BJP]. It will. They didn’t do it because they wanted to affect the polls, but the fallout is that they are going to gain in the election.”

Since 14 February, a number of opposition parties have broached the topic of the BJP making political hay out of the Pulwama attack. West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee went as far as accusing the Modi administration of wanting to instil “war hysteria”, leading the BJP’s state president to accuse her of making “baseless allegations to score political brownie points” herself.

It would be too soon for anyone to do the same on Tuesday night. Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj emerged from a cross-party security briefing to state that “all parties in one voice praised the security forces and supported the government’s anti-terror operations”.

So what next for Pakistan? Mr Khan has called for both houses of the country’s parliament to sit on Wednesday to discuss the situation, and he has also summoned an emergency meeting of the National Command Authority – the body that oversees Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Amid the high-stakes sabre-rattling, Mr Khan has little option but to offer a military retaliation, analysts say.

In ordinary circumstances it would need to be “proportionate” – but does that mean destroying a base of 300 Indian paramilitary officers, or a copse of trees? Before the country can decide on a response to today’s events, Pakistan will need to settle on – and convince others – of its version of exactly what occurred.