Operation Sindoor: A doctrinal shift and an inflection point
Summary
An India that’s firmly on the rise has acted responsibly, not let Pakistan re-hyphenate the relationship and signalled its resolve to shift the cost of terrorism to its epicentre—the real message of Operation Sindoor.That Pakistan lives in its own delusionary world was evident once again when its Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hailed the ceasefire understanding with India a “historic victory" in his address to the nation. Describing Pakistan as the victim of an “unjustified war" allegedly waged by India and using the Pahalgam incident as a pretext, he portrayed the ceasefire not as a diplomatic understanding initiated by Islamabad, but as the result of Pakistan’s supposed military prowess.
The reality, of course, is quite different as Pakistan’ s own director general of military operations reached out to India with a request to end hostilities, which resulted in a mutually agreed ceasefire with no concessions from India.
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The steps that India has initiated over the past few days, including the Indus Waters Treaty put in abeyance, ban on imports from Pakistan and the closing of air space for flights from and to Pakistan will continue for the foreseeable future.
More significantly, hours before the ceasefire announcement, New Delhi declared a dramatic shift in its policy towards Pakistan by making it clear that any future act of terrorism targeting India will be treated as an act of war. Operation Sindoor would be repeated, India has warned Pakistan, if its age-old approach of using terrorism as an instrument of state policy doesn’t undergo a fundamental shift. This is the ‘new normal’ that those who are declaring a faux victory in Pakistan should factor into their calculus.
The dastardly terror act in Pahalgam and the Munir doctrine emanating from Rawalpindi in the last few months ensured that New Delhi no longer had the luxury of thinking in a piecemeal fashion about the gathering storm in its neighbourhood.
For the Pakistani military, this was the last roll of dice. Facing a dramatic decline in its credibility internally, a rising India that hardly seemed bothered about Pakistan anymore, a world that was losing interest in its concocted narrative of Pakistani victimhood and the prospect of losing the Kashmir issue forever in light of normalization in the Valley after the abrogation of Article 370, Pakistan army chief Asim Munir sought to resurrect the ‘two-nation theory’ by calling upon his people to tell children stories of Hindu-Muslim difference.
“You have to tell Pakistan’s story to your children, so that they don’t forget that our forefathers thought we were different from Hindus in every possible aspect of life," Munir had suggested. Calling Kashmir Pakistan’s “jugular vein," he revived old army rhetoric of never abandoning “Kashmiris in their heroic struggle against Indian occupation."
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It’s no wonder then that the Pahalgam massacre and escalation thereafter happened so quickly. This dynamic was inherent in a Pakistan trying to view the conflict through the religious prism and an India unwilling to give the Pakistani military a free pass after inciting one of the worst terror attacks in recent memory. India hit back at terror infrastructure with its Operation Sindoor and offered Pakistan an off-ramp by describing its actions as “focused, measured and non-escalatory," emphasizing that it aimed to target terrorist camps linked to groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, not Pakistani military facilities or civilian areas.
As was expected, Pakistan responded by targeting civilians and military facilities in India using drones and missiles. New Delhi was prepared and retaliated with its own military assets, even its air defence systems absorbed most of the attacks inflicted by Pakistan.
Once India’s BrahMos air-launched cruise missiles struck key Pakistan Air Force (PAF) bases at Chaklala near Rawalpindi, Sargodha in Punjab province as well as Jacobabad, Bholari and Skardu, the message to the Pakistani military as well as to the international community was loud and clear: India is willing and able to climb the escalation ladder in a calibrated manner and won’t be shy of taking the battle to the adversary.
If in the past, India’s strategic restraint had changed America’s calculus in South Asia, increasingly it is New Delhi’s will to take strategic risks that is forcing the hand of the international community. An India willing to stand up for its own security interests is also an India that can talk to other powers as an equal.
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In last week’s escalation-counter escalation dynamic, one thing was clear: New Delhi had no intention of getting sucked into the quagmire of an endless war. The strategic objective of Indian foreign and security policy remains one of providing an enabling environment for the Indian growth story to achieve its full potential. Infantile comparisons with Russia and Israel as well as with the 1971 war not only misunderstand the very different contexts of these conflicts, but also underestimate the real driver of India’s moment in global geopolitics today.
So long as India’s economy continues to grow rapidly, it will not only have greater capabilities and attract partnerships with the world’s largest economies, but will also ensure that its de-hyphenation with Pakistan remains a permanent marker—one that Munir-like Islamists are trying so desperately to revoke.
India has done well by not falling into that trap, even as it has signalled its resolve to shift the costs of terrorism to its very epicentre. This is the real message of Operation Sindoor!
The author is professor of international relations, King’s College London, and vice president for studies at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
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