The former American ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, made the speculations public in February when he said that the next time India faces a 26/11-type terrorist attack, the country might consider going to war with Narendra Modi as prime minister. Blackwill, a Harvard academic who has researched the Asian alliances of the United States of America, was not kite-flying in solitude. During Barack Obama's recent India visit and beneath all the visible Obama-Modi bonhomie, the US security and intelligence officials accompanying the president, or in some way connected with his visit, were all involved in a detailed side exercise to assess what India might do if attacked by terrorists the next time on with Modi in the top job. Blackwill said what many in the US security-intelligence establishment seemed to strongly believe that though previous Indian prime ministers from Indira Gandhi to Manmohan Singh had considered the war option from time to time when hit by bloody terror attacks from Pakistan, it is Modi who could actually exercise the war option.
A popular - and populist - prime minister, who loves playing to the gallery and projecting himself as a modern day 'iron man' like Sardar Patel, and one whose political grooming as a fierce Hindu nationalist makes it incumbent on him to hit out strongly at Pakistan at the first opportunity, may not act with the kind of restraint that Atal Bihari Vajpayee displayed after the terrorist attack on Parliament when he mobilized the entire Indian army (Operation Parakram) but did not finally go to war.
