The Kargil mess may well lead to the use of Great Power influence in South Asia, something which New Delhi has resisted for decades
For a military engagement which New Delhi is at pains to say is not war, only an "operation", Kargil has been remarkably dirty, tough and bloody. India claims it has killed more than 490 Pakistani soldiers, but it has only taken one prisoner of war. A Indian field commander was quoted as saying his men would rather kill the passionately hated enemy than take prisoners. In any case, it would have been a bother to handle extra logistics at high altitudes.
The two countries' propaganda machines participated wholeheartedly in the Subcontinent's first real television war, pouring venom upon each other: "cowards", "betrayers", "treacherous", "snakes", "rogue state" and the like. If Pakistan's mujaheedin—the actual combatants, rather than the army regulars, according to Islamabad—were prone to emotionally and religiously charged language, India's Hindu-sectarian warmongers were no better. They bayed for the Bomb: yes, use nuclear weapons against Pakistan and give a "final" reply to the "centuries-old" aggression by Islam.
This view was expressed in its full malevolence in Panchajanya, the mouthpiece of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor and organisational gatekeeper of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads India's ruling alliance. This was a diatribe against all Muslims, "barbarians" as they were by their "very habit and nature". This race of "cunning snakes", Panchajanya said, had forgotten that India could have "beheaded" 94,000 Pakistani PoWs in 1971, but instead fed "milk" to these "snakes". They now had to be taught "the final lesson" through nuclear weapons: "why else did we make the Bombs? And why ballistic missiles?"