It seems like we’ve all been shouting about retaliation, airstrikes, and “teaching lessons,” but no one’s asking whether our Constitution even permits war:

https://theleaflet.in/governance-and-policy/this-constitution-does-not-permit-war

The article says even defensive action requires Parliamentary procedure under Article 352.
Is it possible that we’re cheering for something that’s legally impermissible?
Can the Executive just decide to go to war and we clap along?

The article in question is an example of an ostrich hiding its head in the sand. Employing an exceedingly pedantic obsession with how “war” is referred to in the Constitution, it manages to reach the absurd conclusion (with a straight face, no less): that India has “fought” wars without “declaring” them. Who will remind the author that historically, almost every society has fought wars by framing them (sincerely or otherwise) as acts of self-preservation? Would the author also pretend that just because the Constitution does not authorise partisanship that the state and its officers are incapable of being so?

The author, like all too many jurists, confuses the map (constitution as representation of) for territory (politics as discourse). The very assumption on which he proceeds is fallacious in that it claims that the constitution is the beginning and the conclusion of all discourse, that what is absent in the constitution is impossible in the discourse. This is law’s conceit and is patently false. A society/state can, has, and will do what it collectively considers its prerogative regardless of the Constitution thinks otherwise, whether it be a riot or a war. For the Constitution is only a text that is valid as long as its representation of reality is acceptable to those living in it.