Operation Sindoor: Modi’s paradigm shift in India’s national security strategy

On April 22, the tourist city of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir witnessed one of the most horrific genocides, with the brutal murder of 26 Hindu men. Reportedly, four terrorists of The Resistance Force (TRF), a Pakistan-sponsored terrorist group, forced tourists to demonstrate their religious identity by reciting Qalima at gunpoint and selectively killed Hindus. The brutality shook the entire world.

On the night of May 7, India launched Operation Sindoor in retaliation, bombing nine sites holding ‘terrorist infrastructure’, five in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and four in the Pakistan mainland, including Jaish-e-Mohammad’s Bahawalpur complex and Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Muridke headquarters. India smashed the terror camps, training centres, and launch pads of Pakistan’s three key proxy terror outfits, ie, Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Muhammad, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Following India’s attack, Pakistan launched a full-fledged attack on India, targeting multiple cities, military installations, and airbases across the entire Western border with drones.

On the Line of Control (LoC), the Pakistani army began firing and heavy shelling with the artillery guns, killing 15 civilians in the Rajouri border region. In the counterattack, India attacked Pakistan’s strategically sensitive six air bases and dropped bombs in mainland cities like Lahore and Rawalpindi. Pakistan’s nuclear-capable Fatah missile launched at Delhi was intercepted by India’s Akash at Sirsa near Delhi. The war was gaining momentum; however, it halted with a sudden and unexpected ceasefire apparently achieved with US facilitation.

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Setting a New Normal

With Operation Sindoor, India has set a ‘new normal’ against terror, explicitly signalling the three-point doctrinal shift – zero tolerance and direct retaliation for terror attacks, no differentiation between the terrorists and their sponsors, and refusal to succumb to Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail. In his speech on May 12, PM Narendra Modi categorically reiterated India’s position that terror and talks cannot go together. Further, he also emphasised that ‘terror’ and ‘trade’ cannot go together, and ‘blood’ and ‘water’ cannot flow together.

The PM’s speech signifies a resolute, determined, and tough stance against terror. PM Modi’s speech gives a clear message that India will decisively hit terror targets in direct retaliation if Pakistan continues to support terror groups in Kashmir and the Indian hinterland. Also, it is worth mentioning that hitting deep inside the Pakistani territory at Bahawalpur and Muridke has completely altered the dynamics, showcasing India’s unrestrained approach while retaliating. Pakistan will have to pay unbearable costs for terror attacks.

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Contrary to the dominant analytical discourse around Operation Sindoor, it is worth mentioning that India had already set a new normal when it conducted the Uri surgical strike in 2016. Following that, once again, Indian jets bombed Jaish training centres in Balakot in 2019 after JeM killed 42 Indian soldiers in the Pulwama fidayeen attack. Continuing its war against terror, India abrogated Article 370 of its constitution that conferred special status to J&K. With its massive crackdown on the terror ecosystem inside its borders and tough stance against foreign terror sponsors, it was expected that Delhi would retaliate with tremendous firepower if Islamabad ever conducted a terror attack of the scale of Pulwama.

India has decisively and demonstrably called out Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. In his May 12 speech, PM Modi said, “India will strike precisely and decisively at the terrorist hideouts developing under the cover of nuclear blackmail.” Pakistan, emboldened with its nuclear shield, intensified terror activities in Kashmir after 1998. This nuclear blackmail continued unabated for 18 years until 2016, when it was first punctured by the Uri surgical strikes.

With the Balakot strikes, the message was clear to Pakistan that India will not be cowed down by its nuclear threats; however, General Headquarters (GHQ) Rawalpindi refused to smell the coffee. Finally, India’s aggressive retaliatory posture seen in Operation Sindoor, killing more than 80 terrorists, has made Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal a dysfunctional and ineffective tool to continue shielding its terrorist activities in India.

The Operation Sindoor comes in succession to a series of the Modi government’s tough national security measures. In the domestic domain, the Modi government took bold actions against the terror ecosystem, the Waqf board, foreign NGOs, and illegal immigrants. In the external domain, New Delhi took decisive cross-border military actions against Pakistan, maintained a firm stand against China after the Galwan clash, and reportedly, Indian intelligence agencies neutralised many Khalistani and Jihadi terrorists in foreign territory.

Over the last ten years, India has signalled a robust and decisive diplomatic signature in its dealings with the West and the Arab world after the abrogation of Article 370, hosting global events like the G20, guarding its strategic autonomy in the Russia-Ukraine war, playing hardball with the Maldives after its China switch, and emerging as a leader in the battle against extremism and terrorism.

With Operation Sindoor, India’s global image of a soft state has finally shattered, and a new, assertive India acting without qualms, scepticism, and hesitations in using force against its adversaries has solidified.

The author is a Cornell University graduate in public affairs, bachelors from St Stephen’s College, Delhi and has done his PhD on Jaish-e-Mohammad. He is a policy analyst specialising in counterterrorism, Indian foreign policy and Afghanistan-Pakistan geopolitics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.