Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech is likely to be remembered for its footnotes. The strategic portents of the Prime Minister's concluding remarks on Pakistan in which he contrasted how Indians mourned for Pakistan's terror victims while "the other side, which glorifies terrorists', are certain to be debated for months, and perhaps years, to come.

Two elements of the speech are key: the almost toss-away reference to Balochistan, the first ever in an Indian Prime Minister's Independence Day speech, and another to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), and the regions of Gilgit and Baltistan.Prime Minister Modi's language marks a grim cul-de-sac in his thinking, which has traversed the distance from a hawkish polemic before he took office to mawkish Bollywood band-baaja-baraat when he visited Lahore last December.

Read Praveen Swamy's column here.