Modi’s speech takes us back to India’s most dangerous decade

It is hard politics, and the prime minister is within his rights to employ arguments and slices of history that he thinks make his case best. Even those that make him sound more like the liberals that his party doesn't particularly admire, especially on national security issues. The first, in March 1966, was the use of IAF aircraft to strafe Aizawl — then a district headquarters and now capital of Mizoram — to drive out insurgents. And the second, Operation Blue Star, which resulted in the destruction of the Akal Takht, the seat of Sikh spiritual and temporal power located…