THIS is apropos news item “FO rubbishes Modi’s fresh claims on 2016 ‘surgical strikes’” (April 20). In his pugnacious speech in the UK, India’s prime minister, inter alia, said: “Pakistan has no power to fight a war, so [she] attempts to attack behind the back.”

His remarks reflect his ‘fight or flight’ animal reflex. A lesson of history is that outcome of a war is seldom as pre-conceived.

Modi needs to read theories of conflict management or resolution (Thomas and Killman, Khun and Poole, Kozan, de Church and Marks (meta-taxonomy), and Rahim (meta model). There are five styles of management — compromising, collaboration, avoiding and accommodating, besides competition.

Modi believes in the ‘classical’ solution that conflict is spread by a few black sheep. By eliminating the bête moirés, conflict stands eliminated. Even Nehru and VB Patel thought like Modi. Nehru’s rancour against Pakistan reaches its crescendo in his remarks: “I would not have that carbuncle on India’s back”, and when the Quaid-i-Azam left India for Pakistan, VB Patel said: “poison has left India.”

The first postulate of modern view is that ‘conflict cannot be eliminated’. And ‘the minimal of conflict is its optimal’. Many Indian states are a smouldering cauldron of resentment against Indian Union.

M. Asad

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2018