When the ministry of external affairs minister S Jaishankar speaks from a stand with complete conviction, there's a certain kind of silence.When minister of external affairs S Jaishankar speaks from a stand, and does it with conviction, there is a certain kind of silence. A Pakistani reporter, who wasn't invited to the format of the briefing, raised a question regarding the end of India's "sponsorship of terror.

Jaishankar wielded no hesitation. A terrorist country was asking me that question, come on, he said, and moved on. India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Harish Parvathaneni, spoke the final words that were required the journalist had heard them loud and clear.

The exchange was held during a press conference highlighting the safety and security of shipping and seafarers, organized by CII in collaboration with Liberia's foreign minister, Sara Beysolow Nyanti, and there was no Q&A session. It's important, because it reveals the essence of the interruption: this was not about seeking clarity as a journalist would, but it was about a headline as a theatre. The trend was no different either.

The journalist had asked Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif a similarly forthright question when he arrived at the UN building a day earlier, asking when Islamabad would end its harboring of terror groups. This particular round got its ju-ju from what it had to offer back home, but the tit for tat framing was a part of each UN season now.

Retired Captain Anil Gaur, a defence expert quoted by ANI, voiced what a large part of the strategic community of India has been making loud statements for the last few years. Gaur's argument is based on one simple and salient observation: On the floor of the United Nations, Islamabad's own prime minister, in effect, has acknowledged that it must take measures to curb Pakistan-based militants or else face a blowback that would extend beyond its borders.

If that is the case, what is the standing of a Pakistani journalist to demand accountability from foreign minister of India on the same topic? He went further even, asking more than 10 years ago what kind of people show up at the funerals and prayer ceremonies of militants killed in cross-border strikes. Gaur's point was that these weren't just "fence-sitters" but by several independent sources over the years serving officers and political people, which belies the claim that the Pakistan State apparatus is not connected with the people it celebrates every few years.

He was equally tart that Jaishankar's response was not over the top but well over due, asserting that “a state that has been repeatedly recommended by various international organizations to investigate links to terror financing has lost the moral high ground of doing so.”

Gaur's framing is more difficult to dismiss as rhetoric when it's set in context. Jaishankar's UNGA speech this year was no exception where he did not refer to Pakistan by name but conveyed the message unambiguously that the other country was the source of global terror and the epicentre of "global terrorism", while also noting that the U.N.'s terror lists contain "numerous" nationals of that one country.

He quoted the Pahalgam attack as the latest case of so called cross border barbarism and recalled Operation Sindoor, which the Indian military launched in May, as an example of a state exercising its right to defend its citizens instead of waiting endlessly for a multilateral consensus. The outrageous rejection of a speech which did not mention Islamabad was read out in New Delhi as being little short of a confession, because only the guilty object at length to an accusation which has gone unsaid.

Behind all this diplomatic wrangling lies, too, a price tag that is seldom mentioned, and the central issue. For the past twenty years Pakistan has been banging on the IMF's doors and the Financial Action Task Force has been pressing it for poor implementation of measures against money laundering and terror financing.

The IMF board approved a new $1.32 billion loan in May this year under the Extended Fund Facility and Resilience and Sustainability Facility, bringing total financing under the current programme to nearly $4.8 billion but only to be coupled with commitments for macroeconomic reform and stability. Each of those bailouts has come with IMF officials clearly telling the countries that they risk scaring away the very capital they are looking to bail out.

In other words, the nation pressing India on rights and accountability is one that is still able to make use of the globe's belief that they are not secretly funding the networks they claim to be “helping” or protecting.

None of this negates the importance of a free press that is not afraid of probing the horns of power, even power of its own. But it is important what the format is and when it is. A briefing which was clearly described as a 'Q&A' is not the place for adversarial theatre and a government whose own head of state has essentially confessed the issue on record is not the one to demand the country that has been consuming the fallout of the issue for years.