Above the fold: Top stories of the day
1. There will be no early adjournment of the monsoon session of Parliament, the government has confirmed, even if Opposition parties continue to boycott the House.
2. Meanwhile, in the Lok Sabha, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj defended her decision to help former IPL chief Lalit Modi's wife, who was suffering from cancer. "What would Sonia have done?" she asked the House.
3. Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh chief ministers still claim to be in the dark about the Naga peace accord, which will presumably affect their states.
The Big Story: The old terror script
As the gunfire in Udhampur dies down, a familiar pattern emerges. Mohammad Naved, the terrorist caught after the attack, is from Faisalabad in Pakistan. He is believed to have been trained in the same Lashkar-e-Toiba camp that produced Ajmal Kasab, the face of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The Jammu and Kashmir police have said preliminary investigations reveal that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence backed the attack. As with Mumbai 26/11, Pakistan's fingerprints seem to be all over the recent spate of terror.
As analysts have said, the answer to the question "why now" seems evident. It follows close on the heels of a very visible detente between the two prime ministers at Ufa. In spite of ceasefire violations at the border, the two countries have managed to keep up the appearance of diplomatic engagement, with Pakistan releasing 163 Indian fishermen this week in a gesture of goodwill. Historically, a push towards peace has tended to be followed by violence that pulled the other way. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's bus ride to Wagah in 1999 was followed by Kargil. In 2007, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's announcement that he was going to India to resume peace talks and reduce nuclear risks was followed by the Samjhauta Express blasts, in which Hindutva terror groups have been implicated. In 2011, after India and Pakistan agreed to talk peace for the first time since 26/11, bomb blasts ripped through crowded localities in Mumbai, killing 26 people. Members of the so-called Indian Mujahideen were held responsible.
Elements invested in stalling the peace process exist in both countries. In Pakistan's case, the evidence has linked terror to state actors. But Pakistan's establishment is fragmented, with the civilian government often undermined by the army and the ISI working to its own mysterious design. India will have to be adroit in its engagement. As Srinath Raghavan points out, India has political, military as well as intelligence tools at its disposal. It will have to use these judiciously. But halting the political dialogue with Pakistan at this point will only mean alienating it further.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest story
How a suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist was caught alive at Udhampur.
Politicking and Policying
1. The Supreme Court has reportedly asked for a new law to regulate social media, to tackle malicious and defematory content.
2. In the continuing saga of Delhi government versus lieutenant governor, another twist. The Centre has given the LG powers to acquire land in the capital.
3. The BJP is worried about Shatrughan Sinha's recent bout of socialising. After meeting Nitish Kumar, the party's chief rival in Bihar, the actor-turned-member of Parliament called on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, another bug bear of the BJP.
Punditry
1. Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express holds Prime Minister Narendra Modi guilty of spreading a culture of silence and distrust, at odds with the politics of aspiration.
2. Madhav Chandravarkar in the Hindu argues that the blocking of 857 websites said to contain pornographic content goes against the spirit of the Supreme Court's ruling on Section 66A in the Shreya Singha case.
3. In the Telegraph, Krishnan Srinivasan outlines how India is being pushed to the margins of the peace process in Iran and Afghanistan.
Don't miss...
Akshay Manwani on how trains have run through all the key moments in Bollywood:
"Much of how trains are used in Hindi cinema today comes from their depiction in two distinct periods from Hindi cinema’s past. For most of the 1950s and ’60s, the train serves as a place of romance and has a jolly, romantic vibe to it best showcased in songs like ‘Hai apna dil toh awara’ (Solva Saal, 1958), ‘Jiya ho’ (Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai, 1961) and ‘Main chali main chali’ (Professor, 1962). As late as 1969, Aradhana has ‘Mere sapnon ki rani’ play out the romance between its protagonists, indicating the train’s importance as a space away from home where courtship can happen. At the same time, the train embellishes a certain sense of dynamism and vitality into these romantic song sequences and is an easy tool to showcase Hindi cinema’s tryst with the countryside with the advent of the ’60s...
With the coming of the ’70s, however, the train acquires a much more sinister motive. In a sense, this is a return of a certain tradition that has previously shown Fearless Nadia fighting off goons on the top of a train (Miss Frontier Mail), but in the ’70s the dramatic element around a train becomes much bigger. It is difficult to say how or why this change in its representation begins from here, but films like The Train (1970), Shor (1972) and Do Anjaane (1976), actually depict the train as an ominous presence capable of generating mystery, crime, anxiety and causing upheaval in human life."
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