By Manoj Kumar Mishra
The operation's aftermath demonstrated India's strength to not submit to Pakistan's provocation for a direct war and a military misadventure.
Prof George Tanham, a specialist on South Asian security affairs working for RAND Corporation, concluded from his studies that India lacked formal and systematic strategic planning and therefore, a strategic culture, although it has been able to develop elements of defense strategy. Tanham’s conceptualization of strategic culture predominantly represents a western perspective on security, which is defined more in terms of proactive military engagements and strategic gains sought to be achieved through systematic long-term military planning and formulation of grand strategies to make long-term strategic gains apart from securing the frontiers and territorial integrity. While India clearly lacks a strategic culture so far as the western conceptualization of the term is concerned, it simultaneously unravels the hollowness and incompleteness of the western perspectives, which do not incorporate the values of strategic restraint, keeping the countries professing it as part of their military strategies outside of its ambit.
India's response to Pahalgam massacre
India, responding to the massacre of 26 tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir, the responsibility of which was claimed by ‘The Resistance Front’ (TRF) - a group allied with Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, undertook a spate of coercive diplomatic measures, which were retaliated by Pakistan in a tit-for-tat fashion. Diplomatic offensives included the expulsion of each country's nationals from the other, closing down the entry points at the border, including airspace, cancellation of bilateral agreements such as the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) and the Shimla Agreement, and dwarfing the staff size of embassies, among others.
The Indian government justified its actions based on the fact that the government had declared TRF a “terrorist organization”, evincing its recruitment of rebels and smuggling of weapons from Pakistan into Kashmir in January 2023. Military preparations and tensions continued to spike along the Line of Control. India's official position has been that instability, sabotage, and destruction of development infrastructure in Kashmir are part of Pakistan's state-sponsored terrorism. In this case, the flourishing tourism sector in Kashmir, which became a lifeline for many locals, was targeted by Pakistan to further chaos and restiveness among locals. While the sector of tourism thrived on a narrative of normalcy that the Indian government promoted, the dastardly acts of killing tourists was designed to bust this narrative.
The Pahalgam massacre turned Kashmir again into a global hotspot, raising the spectre of nuclear warfare as a possibility between the two nuclear powers. Pakistan violated the ceasefire agreement with India and continued firing across the border to provoke and force India to enter into a military misadventure, which could have dented India's diplomatic capital at the international arena. India kept its air, army and naval forces on high alert and nimbly responded to the Pakistani attacks.
While India tried to avoid a direct war with Pakistan, within a fortnight of the massacre, it demonstrated its resolve to take determined actions against terrorism by carrying out "Operation Sindoor" - precision attacks on terrorist camps inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir taking maximum care not to do damage to any Pakistani military facilities, civilian infrastructure and civilian lives.
India's operation had to be a cautious move to avoid civilian casualties to earn international legitimacy for its actions, while inflicting optimal damage to terrorist infrastructure and to be able to send a message to Pakistan that any terrorist attacks on Indian soil would be retaliated with a bigger blow. India's actions fell squarely with the values of military restraint that it has been cultivating and reaping the dividends since its independence, with a very few exceptions.
Values of military restraint
Due to the practice of military restraint on many occasions, India could be one of the leaders of the non-alignment movement for long, and which was also a major source of India’s soft power. India was able to receive development aid and military support for its defence even if it categorically expressed its unwillingness to join any of the Cold War military alliances sponsored by either of the superpowers. India also had to face harsh criticisms whenever it was perceived as being involved in power politics. Therefore, it had to move cautiously, specifically in the neighborhood where it perceived most of the security threats come from.
Following the liberation of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from West Pakistan (now Pakistan) with the Indian military intervention, Indian forces did not move further in the western direction to assert dominance over the areas belonging to Pakistan. India did not even use the 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war, captured in liberated Bangladesh, to control the bilateral relationship and coerce Pakistan into abandoning its claim over Kashmir. This restrained action from India has made a subtle and gradual addition to its soft power resources.
While India tested its first nuclear device in 1974, it called it a peaceful nuclear explosion in order to avert fuss and chaos in the neighbourhood. Despite rising security concerns expressed through nuclear power, China’s increasing footprint in India’s neighborhood, and continuous supply of arms, ammunition, and nuclear material and technology to Pakistan, it was after 24 years that India conducted another test, making its military purpose clear in 1998.
Following closely on the heels of India’s test, Pakistan conducted its test later in the same year. It reflects Chinese nuclear assistance to Pakistan over a period of time, making it well-equipped with the necessary nuclear technology and material. Although its nuclear test invited criticisms from many major actors of international politics and American sanctions, India undertook efforts to mitigate unusual responses from the neighborhood and pacify the members of the international community.
India developed a ‘nuclear doctrine’ combining the principles of ‘no first use’ and ‘credible minimum deterrence.’ It seems that it is India’s belief and practice of military restraint in many instances that were instrumental in pushing the US to clinch the civil nuclear deal, even though India is not a signatory to the NPT. American leaders have not hesitated to praise Indian restraint vis-à-vis Pakistan on many occasions following allegedly Pakistani-sponsored terrorist attacks on Indian soil.
The Clinton Administration prevailed upon Pakistan during the Kargil War in 1999 and asked it to withdraw its forces sent across the Line of Control. Changing gesture of the US towards India, India’s diplomatic efforts to normalize relations with China in the 1990s, and the visit of India’s then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to China amid the Kargil War led China to maintain neutrality during the war. Although Indians usually expressed their anger immediately after major terrorist attacks on the Indian mainland and supported coercive measures against Pakistan, simmering sentiments gradually cooled down and fell in line with India’s traditional craving for soft power. People of India have rarely been swayed by militaristic impulses in the long term. It has been observed that when the UPA government came back to power for the second term in 2009, even though India observed military restraint following the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008.
Similarly, polls conducted to rate PM Narendra Modi’s popularity after India maintained restraint after the Pathankot and Uri attacks indicated marginal changes. Modi chose to invigorate the campaign against terror at international platforms and became successful in dissuading other South Asian countries from joining the SAARC Summit hosted by Islamabad. Similarly, two US Congress legislators made a move to introduce a bill designating Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism and showed signs of promising a strategic partnership between India and the US following the terrorist attack on the Uri military camp during the concluding phase of the Obama Administration.
'Operation Sindoor' was not only a proportionate response that was strategically engineered to give a massive blow to the militants engaged in cross-border terrorism and their infrastructure, its aftermath demonstrated India's strength to not submit to Pakistan's provocation for a direct war and a military misadventure risking India's diplomatic capital and soft power underlying its standing as a peace-loving country. India can ill-afford to adopt a western model based on western conceptualization of strategic culture.
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(The writer is a senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science, SVM Autonomous College, in Odisha, India.)
The views expressed are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times
