That the militants involved in the butchery of Indian tourists in Pahalgam have been eliminated — the Union home minister informed Parliament about this development — is welcome news. But this piece of news got almost drowned, ironically by the deliberations on Operation Sindoor — India’s military strike on Pakistan after Pahalgam — in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The Opposition’s strategy was clear. It sought clarifications, in a bid to corner the prime minister, over Donald Trump’s repeated claims of having played a role in the truce with Pakistan. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition, also raised a significant point: the Narendra Modi government’s decision to brand every terror strike as an act of war, Mr Gandhi argued, raised the unnerving prospect of India turning its time-tested templates of deterrence upside down. The government’s unwillingness to shoulder the blame for the obvious failure in intelligence that could have prohibited the gory killings in Pahalgam did not go unmentioned either. The Opposition was also of the view that the international response to India’s outreach on Pahalgam and its subsequent developments had not been satisfactory. The government’s response was predictable, even hackneyed. Mr Modi denied the involvement of the proverbial foreign hand but, interestingly, did not directly rebut Mr Trump’s assertions of having brokered the peace. Both Mr Modi and the Union home minister, Amit Shah, concentrated fire on the Congress by alleging that the party is sympathetic to Pakistan and its agents of mischief. This has been a tried and tested method in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political arsenal.

What these exchanges — the Rajya Sabha witnessed a discussion on the same subject yesterday — reveal is a subterranean but relevant issue. It pits national security and its imperatives, such as the government maintaining silence on what it deems to be a delicate matter, against the people’s right to know. The Opposition’s searching questions directed at the government and the ruling regime’s rebuttals — evasions? — point at the fault line that separates national security and transparency. Another point must be made. The Opposition had stood united with Mr Modi’s government during the crisis with Pakistan. Now, it is seeking to question the powers that be. There is no hypocrisy in this; it embodies the rhythm of democracy. The government’s willingness to hold deliberations on Operation Sindoor — it is usually loath to discuss matters even in Parliament — is a positive sign.