VERMILLION LINES: OPERATION SINDOOR AND THE DELUSION OF DETERRENCE
Sushant Singh
SOMETIME ON 7 MAY, Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, India’s director general of military operations, called his Pakistani counterpart, Major General Kashif Abdullah. At 1.05 am, India had launched Operation Sindoor—airstrikes targeting what the Narendra Modi government described as “terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed.”
Ghai called Abdullah “to communicate our compulsions to strike at the heart of terror … but the request was turned down with an intimation that a severe response was inevitable and in the offing.” Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Pakistan’s director general of inter-services public relations, confirmed that the two DGMOs had spoken. “We clearly told them that we would only talk once we had responded,” he said in a BBC interview.
In his first public statement about the operation, on 15 May, the minister of external affairs, S Jaishankar, boasted about this conversation. “Even at the start of the operation, we had sent a message to Pakistan saying we are striking at terrorist infrastructure and not the military, and the military has an option to stand out and not interfere,” he said during a media interaction. “They chose not to take that good advice.” Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition, was quick to pounce. “Informing Pakistan at the start of our attack was a crime,” he posted on social media, asking who had authorised the call and how many aircraft India had lost as a result. Jaishankar’s ministry dismissed Rahul’s post as an “utter misrepresentation of facts,” clarifying that “at the start” did not mean “before the commencement.” It did not, however, clarify when the call took place. On 26 May, Jaishankar reportedly told a parliamentary committee that the call was made half an hour after the operation concluded, and after the government had notified the media.
Whenever it took place, the exchange between Ghai and Abdullah, tense and unresolved, would soon be recognised as the first step up an escalation ladder that, a US diplomat told me, brought the world “closer to a nuclear exchange than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.” Few people realise, they said, that, after three days of drone, artillery and missile strikes, the two countries were just three rungs short of the brink when the United States mediated a ceasefire. “We stopped the nuclear conflict,” the US president, Donald Trump, said on 12 May. “It could have been a bad nuclear war. Millions of people could have been killed, so I’m very proud of that.” Despite the pause, India and Pakistan, locked into their own narratives, remain ready to push forward militarily, seemingly unconcerned that the whole of South Asia could end up in the shadow of mushroom clouds.
The strikes were the first salvo in a tale of escalation without resolution, with each side claiming restraint and victory, even as the human, material and strategic costs are still being counted. India and Pakistan avoided a full-scale war, but the confrontation laid bare the tenuousness of nuclear deterrence. Mechanisms meant to contain escalation faltered under pressure. Diplomatic ties swiftly unravelled—envoys were expelled, borders sealed, treaties suspended. A parallel war unfolded online, where disinformation proliferated across both social media and mainstream outlets, deepening public mistrust and inflaming nationalist sentiment.
The brief military confrontation did not end with a decisive military or diplomatic victory for either side. It underscored the dangers of escalation without clear political objectives. India’s retaliatory strikes following the Pahalgam attack were tactically precise but strategically ambiguous. These targets failed to inflict meaningful damage on Pakistan’s military calculus—camps can easily be rebuilt elsewhere, and the slain militants remain faceless and nameless. By using advanced air power against such targets, India exposed its military capabilities without achieving real deterrence. New Delhi failed to translate its military gains into diplomatic leverage, instead suffering a setback in foreign relations. Under domestic political compulsions and Pakistan’s provocations, the Modi government appeared to climb the escalation ladder without a clear plan for what came next. Its messaging was reactive and lacked a coherent endgame. The use of force became an end in itself.
By striking in close proximity to a nuclear storage site and causing significant damage to Pakistan’s air defences, India tested the premise that two nuclear powers can safely engage in limited conventional warfare. “We have laid clear red lines,” General Anil Chauhan, the chief of defence staff, said during an interview with Bloomberg, in Singapore on 31 May. “We were able to do precision strikes on heavily air-defended airfields of Pakistan, deep three hundred kilometres inside, with the precision of a metre.” This forces a reckoning. If the infrastructure of Pakistan’s nuclear command proves vulnerable to precision strikes, how credible would that make its first-use doctrine?
India appears to now believe that it can wage high-intensity conventional warfare below Pakistan’s presumed nuclear threshold. In the interview, Chauhan refused to comment on Trump’s comments about the threat of nuclear war, but called it unlikely. “I personally feel that there is a lot of space between conduct of conventional operations and the nuclear threshold,” he said. The escalation ladder, he argued, contained “more sub-ladders which can be exploited for settling out our issues.” While channels of communication remained open this time, these are dangerous assumptions that could precipitate future miscalculations.
India appears to now believe that it can wage high-intensity conventional warfare below Pakistan’s presumed nuclear threshold, a dangerous assumption that could precipitate future miscalculations.
In a prior essay for Bloomberg, the journalist Daniel Ten Kate called India and Pakistan a “case study” of the Stability–Instability Paradox, the theory, developed at the height of the Cold War, that mutually assured destruction, while reducing the likelihood of two nuclear powers going to war, increases the chances of them engaging in peripheral and proxy conflicts. He noted that the Kargil War, waged a year after both nations tested nuclear warheads, remained confined to the areas where the Pakistani military had encroached. Modi’s “new normal,” he added, “is testing the limits of the Stability–Instability Paradox. Modi is essentially calling Pakistan’s bluff, betting that it won’t actually use atomic weapons. That in turn will incentivize Pakistan to show that its nuclear threats are serious.”
Operation Sindoor, a kinetic action to communicate that India would no longer tolerate Pakistani support for terrorism without imposing costs, was meant to be a demonstration of Modi’s resolve and the military’s technological prowess. Modi said that it had dispensed “a new form of justice.” While achieving a modicum of tactical success, the operation and its aftermath complicated India’s strategic environment by altering escalation dynamics, testing alliance structures and creating new challenges in warfare. It exposes the dangerous gap between Modi’s bombastic rhetoric and India’s strategic limitations, between talk of imminent victory and the actual state of military modernisation, between the projection of power and its responsible exercise. The strategic damage to India’s security, diplomacy and democratic institutions will reverberate for years to come.
ACCORDING TO THE official media briefing, the precision strikes had nine targets, selected from a shortlist of 21. Five of the sites were in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (Bhimber, Gulpur, Kotli and two targets in Muzaffarabad), while four others were beyond the international border, in the province of Punjab (Bahawalpur, Muridke, Sarjal and Sialkot). In most cases, the targets were within thirty kilometres of Indian territory. Military officials told The Hindu that seven of the nine targets were assigned to the Indian Army, which used artillery and loitering munitions—drones with attached warheads. The Rafale, Mirage-2000, Su-30 MKI and MiG-29 jets that joined the operation stayed within Indian airspace, in order to avoid an incident like the capture of an Indian Air Force pilot during the Balakot strikes of 2019.
The Pakistan Air Force claimed that its jets engaged the Indian aircraft for over an hour. These were not the dogfights of old. The two air forces engaged from beyond visual range. The IAF jets were guided by the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, accessed through Vayulink, a platform it had developed, in 2023, to provide pilots encrypted data on nearby aircraft over a secure channel. However, over the past few years, the PAF had used military exercises with China to refine its ability to jam, spoof and intercept Indian communications. Pakistan claimed that India’s command loops were severed by a cyber attack disabling the IAF’s radar. Stripped of situational awareness, the Indian jets, operating at times as independent silos, would have become isolated targets for a unified combat network that instantaneously synthesised inputs from a mesh of fighter jets and drones, ground- and air-based control systems, and Chinese radars. Officials in the Indian military told me that all the IAF’s losses had been caused by Pakistani air defences.
Both sides declared victory that night. Independent analysts concluded that, if it was a boxing match, Pakistan led on points. India claimed that the strikes had killed over a hundred militants, but Pakistan was quick to assert that the casualties were mostly civilians, including women and children, and to condemn the operation as naked aggression. The Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, claimed that the PAF had destroyed five Indian jets—including three Rafales, whose purchase Modi had touted as a gamechanger, lamenting his inability to use them in 2019 due to delays in procurement. The IAF did not issue its own version of the figure, merely accepting that “losses are part of combat” and noting that all its pilots were accounted for.
While achieving a modicum of tactical success, Operation Sindoor and its aftermath complicated India’s strategic environment by altering escalation dynamics, testing alliance structures and creating new challenges in warfare.
A Washington Post investigation verified visual evidence of debris from a Rafale jet in Akalia Kalan, in Punjab’s Bathinda district, and a Mirage-2000 in Wuyan, a border village in Kashmir. Four unnamed officials in the Jammu and Kashmir government told Reuters that three fighter jets had crashed in the union territory on 7 May, while US and French officials acknowledged the loss of at least one Indian aircraft. The Chinese outlet Phoenix TV sent queries about potential Rafale losses to the French defence ministry. The ministry’s spokesperson did not issue a denial, merely stating that the specifics remained shrouded in mystery and noting that, if the reports were true, they would constitute the first ever Rafale losses in twenty years of combat. During a podcast interview, published on 30 May, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy said that five Indian aircraft were lost during the operation.
In his Bloomberg interview, the following day, Chauhan confirmed that the IAF had suffered losses, though he denied Pakistan’s assertions about six jets. “Numbers are not important,” he said, arguing that the point was to understand why the aircraft crashed. “The good part is that we are able to understand the tactical mistake which we made, remedy it, rectify it and then implement it again after two days, and flew all our jets again, targeting at long range.”
While operational secrecy is sometimes necessary, especially to protect ongoing missions or sensitive tactics, the default in a democracy should be transparency, particularly once the facts become widely known through independent or foreign reporting. By publicly acknowledging military losses after the operations have ended, the Indian government would not only preserve its credibility but also strengthen its strategic narrative, uphold accountability, maintain public trust and ensure that the nation learns and adapts from adversity. This approach would not just be a matter of principle—it is a pragmatic necessity in the age of information warfare and democratic governance.
The Modi government’s refusal to come clean became a story in itself, eroding the credibility of India’s official narrative. For a government that had staked its credibility on the technological superiority of its military, the loss of its most advanced fighter jets would be a blow that cannot be easily disguised. If the army had indeed been responsible for seven of the nine targets, the loss of up to five aircraft in order to hit just two targets would have definitely been outside what a US military official I spoke to called the IAF’s “tolerance of losses.”
The confrontation demonstrated India’s prowess in precision strikes and air defences but revealed gaps such as a dependence on legacy systems and the limited progress towards cyberwarfare and drone defence. The use of AI-enabled surveillance, electronic warfare and drones marked a shift towards network-centric warfare, but India has a long way to go. While its systems performed adequately, they are archaic by global standards. Ukraine produces 10 million drones a year, while the Indian military is barely able to manage a few hundred, limiting the impact of strikes to cause psychological damage. Even suspected sightings of Pakistani drones and the sound of air defence guns were enough to panic large swathes of the population in many Indian cities. The situation would be no different in Pakistan if a swarm of Indian drones were to hit Lahore or Rawalpindi.
The IAF’s challenges underscore the urgency of accelerating indigenous development and integration of advanced electronic warfare, artificial intelligence and real-time data-sharing capabilities—a huge challenge for a military that relies on different vendor countries, as opposed to Pakistan, China’s biggest defence importer. The reported loss of advanced aircraft must prompt a re-examination of platform survivability, tactics and the need for better countermeasures against long-range missiles and integrated air defences. Unless this experience drives upgrades in electronic weapons suites, pilot training and unmanned systems, the IAF will struggle in future confrontations with the Chinese-backed PAF. Operation Sindoor risks emboldening, rather than deterring, Pakistan, which now more clearly understands the operational boundaries of Indian air power. India also lacks hypersonic weapons and modern stealth aircraft, while Modi’s 2019 creation of unified theatre commands has still not been fully implemented. Moreover, the lack of choices in retaliatory options, which are now confined to airstrikes and standoff weapons, raises questions about India’s ability to sustain a prolonged or two-front conflict.
THE AIRSTRIKES FOLLOWED the killing by militants of 26 civilians, mostly tourists, in Pahalgam, a town in the Kashmir Valley where the Amarnath Yatra, an annual Hindu pilgrimage, begins every summer. The 22 April attack exposed deep fissures in India’s security apparatus. Despite the gravity of the incident, there has been a conspicuous absence of transparency, accountability and concrete action. Over a month later, the attackers remain at large, no credible evidence has been made public, and not a single official has been held responsible for the security lapses.
The execution of the Pahalgam attack raises troubling questions for Amit Shah’s union home ministry, which is directly responsible for security and intelligence in the territory. How did armed militants operate for around twenty minutes in a supposedly secure tourist hub, firing dozens of rounds unchallenged? Why did the nearest response team take over an hour to arrive at the scene? Survivor accounts suggest that the militants were organised, that some of them were locals while others spoke Pashto, and that they did not show any fear of interruption. The failure to prevent such attacks points to persistent gaps in intelligence fusion. India’s intelligence agencies still struggle with real-time threat detection and inter-agency coordination. India’s predictive threat modelling remains underdeveloped, and the government must invest more in counterterrorism intelligence, community engagement and inclusive politics.
Instead of acknowledging these shortcomings, the BJP and much of the media reverted to a familiar script: amplifying anti-Pakistan rhetoric, invoking national unity and calling for vengeance. This sort of emotional escalation—reminiscent of the aftermath of the Pulwama suicide bombing of 2019, to which Balakot was a response—serves a dual function. Domestically, it rallies public opinion and stifles critical inquiry. Internationally, it seeks to frame India as a victim of cross-border terrorism. Foreign governments have noticed, however, that India has not provided substantial proof of the Pahalgam attack being orchestrated from across the border. A diplomat from a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council told me that it is very difficult to make a cogent case at home without some official evidence. After Pulwama, the Modi government had provided a dossier before its retaliatory airstrikes, a basic obligation it ignored this time.
Punitive strikes and diplomatic escalation might satisfy short-term demands for retribution but do not compensate for failures in intelligence, coordination and governance. Instead, they risk playing into the hands of militant groups.
Irrespective of the evidence, such rhetoric risks repeating a cycle of reactionary militarism that neither deters future attacks nor addresses the systemic weaknesses in India’s security architecture. Unless this pattern is broken, these wounds from a thousand cuts will continue to fester, unhealed and unacknowledged.
The “Balakot trap” is particularly salient for Modi. The 2019 airstrikes were projected as a decisive show of strength, boosting political capital but failing to yield improvements in national security. Pahalgam exposes the limitations of this approach: punitive strikes and diplomatic escalation might satisfy short-term demands for retribution but do not compensate for failures in intelligence, coordination and governance. Instead, they risk playing into the hands of militant groups, who hope to provoke overreactions that deepen religious polarisation in India and alienate local populations in Jammu and Kashmir.
Perhaps the most profound consequence of the Pahalgam attack is the shattering of the narrative of “normalcy” in Kashmir. Since 2019, the Modi government has insisted that revoking Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and imposing direct rule would bring peace, integration and economic revival, symbolised by record tourist numbers and high-profile infrastructure projects. The massacre, however, has burst this bubble of optimism, revealing that deep-rooted grievances, security vulnerabilities and political alienation persist.
The fallout has been immediate and severe. Tourism, the economic lifeblood of the region, has collapsed, threatening thousands of jobs and undermining years of painstaking recovery. The much-anticipated inauguration of the first ever train service to Kashmir, a symbolic milestone for the Modi government, was quietly shelved.
The Pahalgam attack is not an isolated failure but the second major security debacle, after Manipur, in the last few years, puncturing the Modi government’s claims of effective governance and national integration. The crackdown that followed, including detentions, demolitions and collective punishment, as reported in this issue by Jatinder Kaur Tur, has only deepened the mistrust among Kashmiris and fuelled communal tensions across India. The government’s reluctance to accept responsibility or initiate meaningful reform risks perpetuating a cycle of tragedy, outrage and impunity. Instead of introspecting and addressing the root causes of insecurity and unrest, its response was characterised by denial, deflection and the repetition of failed strategies.
ONE SUCH FAILED STRATEGY was to somehow presume that, when faced with the perils of escalation, Pakistan’s response to a perceived violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity would be either tepid or non-existent. In the early hours of 8 May, the IAF launched an aerial campaign, deploying advanced drones such as the Harpy and Harop loitering munitions, purchased from Israel Aerospace Industries, to suppress air defences. It destroyed several semi-mobile units, including one in Lahore. At the media briefing following the attack, military spokespersons alleged that, the previous night, Pakistan had “attempted to engage a number of military targets in northern and western India using drones and missiles,” which had been neutralised by the Russian-made S-400 air defence system. Pakistan denied having launched any such attack, but the Indian spokespersons said that the military was recovering debris that would prove they took place.
On 19 May, the army’s 15 Infantry Division held a briefing, at its headquarters in Amritsar, to show journalists some of the debris from the fighting. In an interview with the news agency ANI, the division’s commander, Major General Kartik C Seshadri, said that, during the alleged Pakistani strikes on the intervening night of 7 and 8 May, the Golden Temple “saw a surfeit of drone and missile attacks, which were thwarted bravely by our army air defence gunners.” In an ANI podcast published later that day, Lieutenant General Sumer Ivan D’Cunha, the army’s director general for air defence, thanked the hierarchy at the Golden Temple for allowing the army to deploy guns to secure the monument. The head granthi—custodian of the Guru Granth Sahib—at the gurdwara, Raghbir Singh, described the statement as propaganda. “I was not contacted by any army officer,” he said. “There was no communication on any gun deployment, nor did any such incident occur at Sri Darbar Sahib.” The following day, the army clarified that it had not deployed inside the premises, contradicting its own generals.
At the 8 May briefing, the Indian foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, had responded to Pakistani allegations of Operation Sindoor destroying mosques by accusing Pakistan of “misusing religious sites as a cover to, in fact, radicalise, direct, and indoctrinate and train terrorists. In fact, contrary to what Pakistan is claiming, yesterday Pakistan launched a targeted attack on the Sikh community, hitting a gurdwara in Poonch and the homes of Sikh community members, which came under attack.” Embellishing an account invoking the holiest shrine in Sikhism appears to have been in service of this narrative, which did not gain much traction.
Both sides accused each other of targeting civilians, with Pakistan sharing images of destroyed homes in Muzaffarabad and Sialkot, and alleging the Indian use of clustered munitions. Sixteen civilians died in Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistani shelling, while Pakistan reported women and children among the casualties in Punjab. Independent verification remains elusive, with the New York Times noting discrepancies in casualty figures and target lists.
By striking deep into Pakistani territory, New Delhi may have eroded its own red lines. Islamabad, though bloodied, is unlikely to forget. The next provocation—real or perceived—could trigger a faster, fiercer response.
On 8 May, the US vice-president, JD Vance, stated in public that the United States would remain neutral, indicating a hands off approach. However, this stance shifted within a day. After receiving alarming intelligence reports suggesting the potential for rapid escalation, Vance and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, became deeply engaged in crisis diplomacy. As Jaishankar confirmed to the Dutch public broadcaster NOS, Vance called Modi, urging direct communication with Pakistan and proposing pathways for de-escalation. Rubio began an intensive outreach to Indian and Pakistani officials. This rapid pivot underscored Washington’s concern over the conflict’s nuclear overtones and desire to prevent a broader regional crisis. It is still not clear what led to the change in the Trump administration’s response, but the US diplomat told me that, by 9 May, Washington had observed “a change of posture” by Pakistan. The diplomat refused to expand on what this meant and why it caused panic in Washington, but it is largely understood that Pakistan had undertaken some activities related to atomic weapons, since Shehbaz Sharif would not summon the country’s nuclear command until the following day.
That night, the conflict’s tempo escalated. In response to “relentless attacks” by Pakistani drones, as the director general of air operations put it in a subsequent briefing, the IAF launched “a swift, coordinated, calibrated attack” on 11 sites, including airbases, command centres and air defence systems, using drones and BrahMos missiles. The Modi government claimed that nearly a fifth of the entire PAF infrastructure had been destroyed, a boast unlikely to pass muster in any objective analysis. The Washington Post reported that only six airfields were hit, while the New York Times described the damage as “far more contained than claimed.” Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of geopolitics at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, concluded that the Pakistani bases “suffered some damage, but not of the sort that would disable them.”
India’s missile attack on Rawalpindi, specifically targeting the Nur Khan airbase and the nearby headquarters of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division—the nerve centre overseeing the country’s nuclear arsenal—marked a dramatic escalation. The missiles stopped short of directly hitting nuclear storage sites in the Kirana Hills, but the proximity sent a message to Islamabad that was perhaps unintentional. Indian officials denied being aware of the airbase’s nuclear connection, but even an inadvertent strike on the facility may have fundamentally altered the calculus of nuclear deterrence. Meanwhile, a Modi government press release heralded a historic milestone: for the first time ever, a country had successfully attacked the airbases of a nuclear power.
Pakistan’s retaliatory Operation Bunyan al-Marsoos targeted around two dozen Indian military facilities. Indian officials denied Pakistani claims of having destroyed a BrahMos dump and an S-400 radar but admitted to missile strikes on IAF bases, acknowledging, without providing further details, “limited damage” to bases in Udhampur, Pathankot, Adampur and Bhuj. India was widely seen as having won this round, without landing a knockout punch.
A de-escalation began to feel imminent by the afternoon of 10 May. At 3.35 pm, Kashif Abdullah called Rajiv Ghai to propose a ceasefire. India accepted the proposal, which came into effect at 5 pm. Within hours, however, there were explosions in Jammu and Srinagar. Both countries accused each other of violations, but the DGMOs reaffirmed the armistice on their scheduled hotline call on 12 May, agreeing to “refrain from aggressive actions” and to reduce troop alerts. India has refused to use the terms “ceasefire” and “agreement,” referring to the cessation of hostilities as an “understanding.”
Satellite imagery analysed by the New York Times and the Washington Post confirms significant damage to Pakistani military infrastructure—at least six airfields were hit, with three hangars, two runways and multiple buildings heavily damaged. Some strikes were recorded over a hundred kilometres into Pakistani territory. There was little equivalent satellite imagery from India. An investigative journalist from a global news platform told me that accessing satellite imagery of Indian sites was proving “extremely difficult,” with private satellite companies being “super cautious.” They said that this was the first time they had faced such difficulty. “I’ve been working with them since Russia/Ukraine, Sudan, Israel/Gaza. With Gaza, they at least let us know privately Israel stopped them from sharing military positions. Now they’re just saying they don’t have it.”
Commercial flights resumed by 12 May, and the DGMOs agreed to gradually reduce alertness, but the ceasefire’s fragility was evident. India maintained its suspension of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, while the Pakistani military vowed a “retributive response” to further breaches. Moreover, the threshold for military engagement has shifted. By striking deep into Pakistani territory, New Delhi may have eroded its own red lines. Islamabad, though bloodied, is unlikely to forget. India believes it had Pakistan on the mat. Pakistan portrays the conflict as a military victory that avenged its defeat in the 1971 war. This rhetoric is deadly. The next provocation—real or perceived—could trigger a faster, fiercer response.
AFTER THE CEASEFIRE, Modi made two speeches, first to the nation and then to the military, in which he framed Operation Sindoor as not just military action but as a “new normal,” a doctrinal shift that redefines India’s approach to national security and to its relationship with Pakistan. The symbolism of sindoor—the vermillion worn by some married Hindu women—was invoked as a metaphor for national honour and sacred duty. Weaponising cultural imagery to manufacture consent for military adventurism and to delegitimise dissent as unpatriotic has been a common tactic of Hindu majoritarianism. There was not a word in Modi’s speeches about the suffering of Kashmiris.
Operation Sindoor had given Modi the chance to star in his patriotic version of heroic fantasies. Now, hurting from the loss of political credibility after having been seen as succumbing to US pressure for a ceasefire, he tried to repair his image by articulating a new, uncompromising national doctrine on terrorism, marking a decisive shift in India’s security posture against Pakistan. This doctrine is less a strategic innovation than a carefully orchestrated spectacle of muscular nationalism, cloaked in the language of civilisational pride. Its three pillars—proactive retaliation, rejection of nuclear blackmail and the erasure of a distinction between the perpetrators and sponsors of terrorism—project an image of strength but, in reality, serve as a smokescreen for a deeper, more pernicious agenda.
Modi’s doctrine promises justice but delivers only the illusion of control. In its pursuit of unity through force, it risks tearing apart the very fabric of the country it claims to defend.
First, the promise of a decisive retaliation is a dangerous embrace of escalation for escalation’s sake. By lowering the bar for military action and making retaliation the default response, Modi risks entangling India in a cycle of violence that is as performative as it is perilous. The doctrine’s strategic ambiguity, of pausing operations rather than concluding them, leaves the subcontinent in a perpetual state of suspended conflict. The threat of war becomes a tool for electoral mobilisation rather than of genuine deterrence. It creates a closed loop of action and reaction—and self-justification. The sole reason for persisting with a strategy that has not succeeded, and cannot succeed, is the suffering of terrorism’s latest victims. Military action must continue in order to validate military action. It is not the war to end all wars but to justify previous ones.
Second, the rhetoric about nuclear blackmail is less about strategic resolve and more about political theatre. Modi’s public dismissal of nuclear threats is designed for domestic consumption, feeding a narrative of Indian invulnerability while ignoring the catastrophic risks of brinksmanship. Treating Pakistan’s nuclear threat casually is a perilous gamble. Even in recent confrontations, where neither side explicitly threatened the use of atomic weapons, the mere presence of the two arsenals—which could be triggered by miscalculation, human error or technological failure—injected a constant undercurrent of grave danger.
Most troubling is the third pillar, the refusal to distinguish between “terrorists and terror sponsors.” This is a convenient erasure of diplomatic nuance, laying the groundwork for perpetual hostility and the abandonment of dialogue. It is a doctrine that thrives on the politics of polarisation, where every act of violence is an opportunity to redraw the nation’s boundaries along communal lines, where the language of security is a proxy for the consolidation of power.
Modi’s doctrine is not a break from the past but its logical culmination: a politics that substitutes the spectacle of strength for the substance of security, that elevates national honour above constitutional values, that seeks, above all, to relieve the citizenry of the burden of thinking. It promises justice but delivers only the illusion of control. In its pursuit of unity through force, it risks tearing apart the very fabric of the country it claims to defend.
THE DIPLOMATIC FALLOUT FOR INDIA has been far more enduring than the conflict itself. Despite its military precision and strategic messaging, New Delhi found itself increasingly isolated on the global stage, with even its closest partners offering only tepid support, raising uncomfortable questions about Modi’s strategic acumen.
India’s foreign policy under Modi reflects the great-power syndrome, a belief that, as a global force, the country must exert full strategic dominance over its neighbourhood, since only Indian primacy can ensure regional stability. New Delhi increasingly acts as a hegemon, rather than as a fellow regional stakeholder, expecting deference from neighbours such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The Modi government’s assertive diplomacy, military posturing and economic leverage signal that India has arrived as a great power and that its neighbours, including Pakistan, must align accordingly—or face retribution.
The most glaring blow to this strategy came from Trump, who brokered the ceasefire by allegedly dangling a trade deal but, in the process, negated India’s core positions. Besides undermining Modi’s political standing, his statement placed India and Pakistan on the same level, hyphenating them. He did not mention the word “terrorism,” instead focussing on Kashmir and offering to facilitate wide-ranging talks at a neutral venue. This effectively sidelined India’s longstanding positions that Kashmir is a bilateral issue and that terrorism must be addressed before any dialogue. He also highlighted the threat of nuclear weapons, which Pakistan regularly uses to garner attention and intervention from the West.
India’s foreign policy is increasingly defined by tactical improvisation rather than strategic foresight. As the novelist Lewis Carroll once wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
Matters were made worse for India by the conspicuous silence—or, even worse, neutrality—of its strategic partners. There were many perfunctory statements against terrorism, but no one explicitly backed the military assault on Pakistan or called out Islamabad’s “nuclear bluff.” The French embassy called “for de-escalation and the protection of civilians,” while Russia’s foreign ministry offered to mediate without endorsing India’s actions. The British government encouraged “all parties to take a measured approach.” Japan and Australia, fellow members of the Quad, issued generic statements urging peace, without naming Pakistan as the aggressor. There were no emergency consultations, joint statements or coordinated responses from the grouping, which had once been touted as the cornerstone of India’s Pacific strategy. Ostensibly meant to contain China, its silence during a major regional crisis was deafening.
Only two entities offered unequivocal support: Israel, which supported “India’s right to self-defence,” and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which condemned the Pahalgam attack and hosted an Indian delegation shortly before the operation. The irony was not lost on anyone. India, a democracy and aspiring global power, found itself aligned with a government charged with genocide and one that it does not itself recognise.
Despite being nationalistic and pro-military, coverage of the Kargil conflict was largely grounded in journalists reporting from the frontlines. During Operation Sindoor, all television networks ran constant studio coverage that relied solely on speculation, unverified sources and dramatic visuals with patriotic music.
China emerged as the undisputed strategic victor. Beijing not only maintained a careful stance during the conflict but also used the distraction to consolidate its position in the Indo-Pacific. Reports suggest that Chinese naval assets expanded their presence in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. More troublingly for New Delhi, Chinese defence technology supplied to Pakistan performed with lethal efficiency. After the 2020 border crisis in eastern Ladakh, India had reoriented its forces from the Pakistani to the Chinese front. This approach has to be reversed now, essentially leaving Beijing unchallenged and reducing New Delhi’s salience to the West as a counter to China. The episode may also bolster China’s strategic posture, having validated Beijing’s emphasis on military modernisation, arms exports and influence-building rather than on direct confrontation.
At the heart of India’s diplomatic unravelling lies a deeper issue: strategic incoherence. Modi and Jaishankar have often projected India as a civilisational power with a unique worldview. But, in moments of crisis, that worldview appears adrift. India’s foreign policy is increasingly defined by tactical improvisation rather than strategic foresight. As the novelist Lewis Carroll once wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
An acknowledgement of the diplomatic failure was the decision to send out parliamentary delegations of MPs to foreign capitals to shape the global narrative in India’s favour. Despite the unprecedented scale—seven all-party groups dispatched to over thirty countries to present a united front against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism—the outreach was undermined by a slow and reactive diplomatic approach. India was late to counter international perceptions, allowing others, notably the United States, to define the ceasefire narrative before India could assert its version of events. This delay meant that, by the time the delegations arrived, international opinion had already hardened, and India’s messaging was seen as an afterthought rather than proactive diplomacy. The symbolic unity and strong messaging were not matched by timely, strategic public diplomacy, leading to a scenario where the delegations’ efforts were perceived as too little, too late to influence key global stakeholders or effectively counter disinformation.
THE MODI GOVERNMENT’S DECISION to block critical voices and withhold information about its losses has sparked a debate about transparency and democratic accountability. A video in which Pravin Sawhney, the editor of the magazine Force, questioned both the choice of targets and the official narrative was censored, raising concerns about the state’s willingness to confront uncomfortable truths at a time of crisis. More than eight thousand X profiles were withheld in India at the government’s request, as were reputed Pakistani news outlets such as Dawn. The Wire briefly found its website made unavailable after it recounted what CNN had reported about the loss of Rafale aircraft.
In a democracy, especially one facing complex security challenges, truthful journalism is not anti-national. It is essential. This lack of openness has undermined public trust and made it harder for the government to claim the moral high ground. It may have succeeded in denying the Indian population some inconvenient information but it lost the narrative battle in global capitals, where neither government spokespersons nor the mainstream media—which had largely failed to uphold journalistic integrity, amplifying government narratives without scrutiny—were taken at face value.
The Indian government did not engage much with the international press, presumably because it is not as docile and would ask uncomfortable questions. A foreign correspondent told Scroll that, on 8 May, a government official had tried to feed them stories about India attacking Karachi and taking a Pakistani pilot into custody. Such unofficial, unverified claims did not pass the editorial rigours of the correspondent’s publication, but similar ones were prominently run by Indian media houses, which faced no consequences from the government or regulators for this blatant misreporting.
During the 1999 Kargil War, the Indian media had played a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and international perception. Despite being nationalistic and pro-military, coverage was largely grounded in journalists reporting from the frontlines. It was not perfect, but the media acted as a bridge between the military and the people, offering real-time updates, human-interest stories and a sense of national unity without becoming a government mouthpiece.
The contrast was stark with Operation Sindoor. The major media outlets became an echo chamber for government messaging, with little to no independent verification. Instead of field reporting, all television networks ran constant studio coverage that relied solely on speculation, unverified sources and dramatic visuals with patriotic music. Some outlets even circulated doctored images of destroyed militant camps, later debunked by the international media. There was little to no investigative journalism on the operation’s strategic objectives, international response or impact on civilians. Instead, news channels focussed on emotive aspects, such as the word “sindoor,” or the symbolism of two women speaking for the military.
Modi’s roadshows following the ceasefire come across as a calculated publicity exercise that appropriates cultural and military achievements for personal political gain. By framing military operations as religious crusades, Modi not only marginalises the sacrifices of those who actually carried out these operations but also renders invisible the suffering of others, including Muslim widows of Pakistani shelling.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India, which is controlled by the BJP, decided to militarise the final of the Indian Premier League—after the conflict had temporarily halted the tournament—by dedicating its closing ceremony to Operation Sindoor and inviting the three service chiefs and other military personnel. This reduces a complex national-security event to a spectacle of performative patriotism. By using a high-profile sporting event, involving players from various countries, as a platform for military tributes, the BCCI blurred the line between genuine respect and opportunistic pageantry, exploiting recent tragedies and military actions for public relations. The army was not to be left behind in such antics. For the first time ever, it circulated images from the operations room and identified the soldiers who had designed the logo for Operation Sindoor. To milk military operations for their entertainment or marketing potential belies the grim realities of war.
On 29 May, the chief of army staff, General Upendra Dwivedi, visited the Tulsi Peeth in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh. He was photographed, in full uniform, with the high priest, to whom he promised the annexation of Pakistan-administered Kashmir as a gurudakshina—offering to one’s teacher. Dwivedi’s actions reflect a broader trend, since 2014, of India’s institutions being coopted into Hindu majoritarian projects. The Indian Army’s traditional apolitical stance is compromised when its leadership engages in ceremonies that echo the BJP’s territorial claims with Hindu symbolism. India’s foundational principle is that the armed forces must remain apolitical and neutral, serving the nation as a whole rather than any particular community, religion or political party. By eroding institutional neutrality, Dwivedi risks exacerbating the alienation felt by minority communities under the Modi regime.
Besides the damage it caused to Indian democracy by hollowing out the information ecosystem, the narrative management of Operation Sindoor also has strategic consequences. Overhyped and inaccurate coverage completely undermined India’s credibility abroad, and, as the hostile reaction to the ceasefire demonstrated, a misinformed public was less prepared for the realities of de-escalation. After Vikram Misri announced the ceasefire, his family became targets for online abuse from supporters of Hindutva. Jaishankar’s silence raised eyebrows—he neither condemned the attacks nor issued a statement supporting Misri, India’s top diplomat and a key face of Operation Sindoor. Other targets for abuse from the Hindu Right were Himanshi Narwal, who lost her husband at Pahalgam but asked for justice rather than collective punishment, and Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, whose role, as a Muslim woman, in representing the army during media briefings about the operation had been lauded for being a symbolic response to Pakistani claims about Hindu majoritarianism.
THE ENTIRE EPISODE LEAVES the Modi government with a series of uncomfortable questions. If the strikes were so precise, why did Pakistan’s claims of civilian casualties gain traction, and why was independent verification so elusive? How does this operation affect India’s aspirations to be a global leader? Has India not risked alienating neutral or sympathetic nations by appearing aggressive?
There are also questions about the wisdom of escalation. By striking deep into Pakistani territory, India has set a precedent that can be invoked in future crises, eroding its own red lines and inviting reciprocal attacks. Could this operation usher in a new normal where both nations feel justified in launching pre-emptive or retaliatory strikes? Does this increase the likelihood of frequent military engagements, even over smaller provocations?
In seeking to demonstrate resolve and technological dominance, India has instead revealed the limits of both. Did Operation Sindoor deter future attacks or did it provoke a cycle of retaliation from Pakistan? Will Pakistan now invest more in asymmetric warfare, cyber capabilities or proxies? Could this lead to a more covert form of conflict that is more difficult to counter?
The political use, or misuse, of the armed forces raises red flags. Was this operation a tool to consolidate domestic political capital? How would the use of conflict for electoral gains damage the professionalism of the military and the integrity of its top leadership? What effect will this have on the delicate balance of civil–military relations that has held since 1947?
For Modi, the trap is now clear. Every demonstration of force that fails to deliver decisive results only strengthens the perception of parity with Pakistan, a country he has long tried to consign to international irrelevance.
Moreover, the Modi government’s framing of Operation Sindoor as justice for all victims of terrorism since 2001 creates troubling precedents. Can historical grievances legitimise contemporary military action? By rejecting all demands for conclusive evidence, India sets a standard that could be exploited by adversaries. The proximity of the “terror camps” to urban centres complicates the distinction between military and civilian targets under international humanitarian law.
The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty might achieve strategic objectives, but there are questions about its humanitarian impact. Long-term water scarcity in Pakistan could radicalise populations against India much faster than extremist groups. It could also result in reciprocal measures from Beijing, since China can leverage its upstream control over the Brahmaputra. By focussing on water, the Modi government has also signalled its loss of faith in multilateral economic sanctions, which have proven insufficient.
The May 2025 conflict was not just a military episode but also a test of India’s global standing. While the missiles might have hit their targets, diplomacy missed its mark. Modi must now reckon with a sobering reality: great powers are not judged by the wars they fight but by the alliances they keep and the narratives they shape. On both counts, he and Jaishankar have failed India.
Pakistan, a country with far fewer resources and a smaller conventional military—its overall defence budget is less than India’s pensions for retired soldiers—has shown that it can give as good as it gets in a short, defensive engagement. Its use of Chinese technology has exposed gaps in India’s military modernisation, and the narrative of victory has slipped from New Delhi’s grasp. India’s calibrated messaging, of swift action without escalation, was effective in the short term. However, Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes, though largely neutralised, showed that deterrence is not possible through military means alone.
For Modi, the trap is now clear. Every demonstration of force that fails to deliver decisive results only strengthens the perception of parity with Pakistan, a country he has long tried to consign to international irrelevance. The question that lingers is whether Modi’s dependence on a military solution has only deepened the very dilemma that India sought to escape. What India needs is not more military adventurism cloaked in nationalist rhetoric but a fundamental reassessment of its security doctrine, diplomatic priorities and civil–military relations.
And then there is the strategic paradox. In seeking to demonstrate resolve, both countries exposed their vulnerabilities. Drones were hacked. Missiles missed. Narratives clashed. The guns have fallen silent for now, but the tale of May 2025 is not one of victory. It is a cautionary tale of how two nuclear powers danced at the edge of catastrophe and of how, once again, the world had to intervene to stop them.
Sushant Singh is the consulting editor at The Caravan.
https://caravanmagazine.in/conflict/operation-sindoor-delusion-deterrence (Please consider contributing to and supporting Caravan).
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