Congress veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar courted controversy after saying that India should engage in dialogue with Pakistan and not flex its military muscles as it may irk Islamabad into deploying nuclear weapons against New Delhi.
"They have atom bombs. We have them too, but if a ‘madman’ decides to drop a bomb on Lahore, it won’t take 8 seconds for the radiation to reach Amritsar," he warned.
"If we respect them, they will remain peaceful. But if we snub them, what happens if a ‘madman’ comes up and decides to launch bombs [at India]?" Aiyar asked.
In the wake of the Prime Minister's remark, other senior BJP leaders have also dialled up the anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh asserted that Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK) "was, is, and will remain ours", but India won't have to capture it with force because its people, on their own, would want to be part of India.
