Not too long back, Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi had asked the Congress-led government to stop writing “love letters” to Pakistan seeking its cooperation in terror probes. Mr Modi had sneered at the dissonance in the Congress-led government over tackling terrorism and counselled it to stop complaining to US President Barack Obama about Pakistan’s perfidy in promoting terrorism in India. Not to be left behind, senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, now the External Affairs Minister, ridiculed the Congress-led government for its pusillanimity. Had her side been in power, Swaraj suggested, the government would have avenged every Indian death from Pakistani machinations with at least 10 on the other side of the border.The vocabulary used at that time to weaken the then government’s attempt to persuade Pakistan to abandon terror as an instrument of foreign policy is coming back to haunt the BJP-led government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now banking on a Pakistani “love letter” in permitting its probe team access to the Pathankot air base. The Ministry of External Affairs is low key on the episode. The usually forthcoming Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, having smelt the unease among Army officers, has kept his counsel. Is it any wonder that the political forces at the receiving end of the BJP’s taunts and ridicule for the past decade are paying it back in the same currency?As it was with the Congress and other secular parties, there is a major political risk in permitting the Pakistani team to conduct its investigations without any signs of reciprocity. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, playing the lone hand for the government, might have missed out in failing to insist on an Indian team’s visit to Hafiz Saeed’s lair, the source of two mobile signals when the attack was carried out last January. Thus there is no fall back if the Pakistani team, on its return, reports that the access provided by India was insufficient for it to reach any conclusion. The Opposition will then give no leeway to a government that prides itself for giving a pass to consensus-driven politics.