Operation Sindoor represents India’s biggest, forceful and most ambitious response yet to a terrorist attack on Indian soil. For the third time in nine years, a military response to a terror attack has shifted both the paradigm and perception of how an Indian government deals with terrorism.
Each time, India has opted for overt military retaliation against Pakistan, escalating the tactical intensity with every incident. Yet on each occasion, India has also made it a point to stress that the objective was not full-scale military aggression, but the destruction of terrorist targets alone.
“We do not have plans for continuation of further operations,” the country was told after the September 27, 2016, strike across the Line of Control – dubbed a “surgical strike” on militant camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir – following an attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed on the Uri brigade headquarters earlier that month.
In 2019, after a missile strike in Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province – retaliation for the suicide bombing of a CRPF convoy in Pulwama – India declared that “this non-military preemptive action was specifically targeted at the JeM camp. The selection of the target was also conditioned by our desire to avoid civilian casualties. The facility is located in thick forest on a hilltop, far away from any civilian presence.”
While some reports later claimed that the missiles likely did not hit their intended target, India’s response was hailed as a “paradigm shift,” demonstrating that it would not be deterred by Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons – a move widely seen as calling Pakistan’s nuclear bluff.
Following its May 7 retribution for the Pahalgam terror attack – targeting nine locations in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan’s Punjab province – the Indian government said its actions were “measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible... focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and disabling terrorists likely to be sent across to India.”
At the government’s official briefing on the strikes, Wing Commander Vyomika Singh and Colonel Sofiya Qureshi – one speaking in English, the other in Hindi – emphasised: “No military establishments were targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in its response.”
The threat of Pakistani retaliation
However, such signalling is only effective if the other side takes it seriously and responds accordingly.
Pakistan did not retaliate overtly in 2016. In 2019, it responded by bombing a few locations along the LoC, avoiding civilian casualties. It also engaged Indian Air Force jets, downing one and capturing the pilot – who was eventually released following tough negotiations and intervention by then-US President Donald Trump. While India escalated the conflict, Pakistan’s capture of the pilot shifted the optics.
This time, speaking in the National Assembly after India’s latest strikes, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif claimed the Pakistan Air Force shot down five Indian planes without crossing into Indian airspace, after jamming their communications. He praised the PAF for making the country “proud”. Pakistan also lit up the entire length of the Line of Control, bombarding it from Tangdhar to Akhnoor. Thirteen people on the Indian side have been killed so far in the shelling, and a gurdwara has been hit. Thousands living along the LoC have fled to safer ground.
The Pakistan National Security Council’s declaration that the Indian strikes were “acts of war” appears to foreshadow further retaliation. Pakistan also accused India of deliberately targeting civilian establishments and mosques. A media team was taken to Muridke to show that the bombs had struck a mosque and government offices – perhaps laying the groundwork for counterattacks.
In an address to the nation, Sharif vowed to avenge India’s missile strikes. Yet his statement in the assembly that Pakistan had given a “tit-for-tat response” by downing Indian planes suggests Islamabad may be claiming to have equalised the exchange – hinting that the worst of this confrontation might be over.
Nevertheless, the threat of retaliation hangs over India. Escalation is easy; controlling its course is not. This episode can only truly end with formal de-escalation by both sides – on their own, or more likely under pressure from a third party, as happened in 2019. That this conflict comes just days before the 26th anniversary of the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan is a sobering reminder of the risks even limited tactical actions carry.
Using the UNSC statement as “context”
India has stated after each strike that the action was taken to protect its citizens and to prevent another “impending” attack – positioning its case under the principle of self-defence. Article 51 of the UN Charter affirms the right to self-defence in the event of an armed attack, but India does not explicitly invoke the article, as terrorism by non-state actors remains a legal grey zone.
In 2016, the surgical strikes were conducted “after very credible and specific information” that terrorist teams had positioned themselves at launchpads along the LoC with plans to infiltrate and carry out strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and other Indian metros.
In 2019, India said it had “credible intelligence” that JeM was preparing another suicide attack, and that fidayeen jihadis were being trained for the purpose. “In the face of imminent danger,” the government said, “a preemptive strike became absolutely necessary”.
This time, the government stated that “intelligence monitoring of Pakistan-based terrorist modules indicated that further attacks against India were impending,” forcing its hand “both to deter and to pre-empt”.
While the use of the word “deter” is a first, India also said for the first time that it exercised its right to “respond” to the Pahalgam strike.
To bolster its position, the government cited a UN Security Council press release dated April 25, which stressed “the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice.” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said, “India’s latest actions should be seen in this context.”
Two questions remain
Prime Minister Modi may have placated domestic opinion by avenging Baisaran on May 7. The 15-day delay had shaken even some of the BJP’s most loyal cheerleaders, while political opponents mocked him for failing to act decisively after all the rhetoric. The government has now silenced those voices.
By naming the operation after sindoor – the vermillion that married women wear – India also sent a pointed message to the terrorists who killed husbands, fathers, and sons in Baisaran, while sparing the women and asking them to deliver a message to “Modi”.
Deploying two women officers to brief the media – one Hindu, one Muslim – was also a not so subtle jab at the communal motivations behind the attack. Most victims at Baisaran were Hindu. Days earlier, Pakistan Army chief General Asim Munir had declared, in a speech to non-resident Pakistanis, that Hindus and Muslims are “two separate peoples” who can never unite. He urged Pakistanis to teach their children the “two-nation theory.”
But if the goal was to inflict – or threaten to inflict – enough pain on Pakistan to force it to abandon terrorism as a strategic tool, two questions will continue to haunt India:
First, do these latest actions – billed as a bigger paradigm shift than 2019 – actually serve as deterrence? Second, assuming this episode is over, what are India’s options if another such attack occurs in Jammu and Kashmir or elsewhere?
There is no sign that the Pakistani military plans to end its patronage of groups like LeT and JeM. Even the US failed to force Pakistan to abandon this strategy. One school of thought argues that unless India targets the Pakistani military directly – something it has avoided scrupulously in all three instances – tactical responses will not produce the deterrent effect India seeks. But that would amount to a war.
A move that satisfies domestic opinion but doesn’t change facts on the ground becomes a commitment trap: with each recurrence, the government feels compelled to escalate further. And that, most dangerously, puts the trigger for India’s responses into the hands of the adversary.
India’s 2016 and 2019 responses did not deter Pakistan, despite triumphant declarations that the war against cross-border terror had been won. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. India can only test the effectiveness of its latest actions by waiting, watching – and never lowering its internal guard, as the tragic security lapses in Pahalgam starkly revealed.
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