India's New Normal: A Conspicuous-Subtle Shift in Pakistan Policy

Recently, addressing the Overseas Pakistanis Convention in Islamabad, the 11th Chief of Army Staff, Gen Syed Asim Munir Ahmad Shah, reignited the divisiveness inherent in the two-nation theory. Such provocative rhetoric from a country's institution highlights the animosity upon which it is constructed. This became the cause of the prolonged 77-year conflict between India and Pakistan.

Illustration by The Geostrata

Our focus is on how India has been addressing unprovoked state-sponsored violence, particularly in the form of terrorist attacks and imposed conflicts. 

INDIA'S POLICY OF RESTRAINT: HISTORICAL REFERENCE 

In 1947, Pakistan launched an invasion of Kashmir. Conscious of military vulnerability, Maharaja Hari Singh sought New Delhi’s support, signing the Instrument of Accession on October 26. Indian troops were swiftly airlifted to Srinagar, reclaiming territory up to what is now Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). Despite military dominance, India chose not to advance further.

This pattern continued in 1965. After Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar failed, India countered with an offensive, even advancing to Lahore. Yet, despite securing key positions, India withdrew following a UN-brokered ceasefire.

In the 1971 war, India took Pakistan’s largest military surrender since World War II, taking 93,000 soldiers as prisoners. However, at the negotiating table, India refrained from leveraging its advantage for territorial gains.

In the 1999 Kargil conflict, India reclaimed lost ground but maintained its policy of restraint, choosing not to cross the Line of Control (LOC) to escalate the situation. Even after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, despite clear evidence of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) involvement, India did not retaliate militarily. This policy of restraint was influenced by Pakistan's nuclear blackmail of India.

WHY DOES OP SINDOOR STAND OUT? 

Retaliatory measures that India has ever adopted against Pakistan, except for a full-scale war, were never like Operation Sindoor. The shift in Pakistan policy began when India chose to retaliate against the Uri Terrorist attack through Surgical Strikes, a special forces operation to conduct a shallow strike along the LOC, between 500 metres and a couple of kilometres in POK.

The Balakot Airstrike was a strong reaction against the Pulwama Terror attack, in which airstrikes were launched at the Jaish-e-Mohammed(JeM) camp in Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPK) of Pakistan. The two retaliatory steps reflected a shift in India’s departure from what has been India’s policy of restraint against Pakistan-sponsored violence. 

Operation Sindoor was launched by the Indian armed forces as a retaliatory kinetic action against the Pahalgam terrorist attack of 22 April, where 26 innocent tourists were killed for their ‘difference of faith’. Why this operation was a strategic move is that it was the first time India attacked the heartland of Pakistan, Punjab. 50% of Pakistan’s population is Punjabis, while 75% of the Pakistani army comes from only 3 districts of Punjab.

The last time the Indian Army had visited Punjab was in 1971, the Battle of Basantar, when the Indian army’s 1st division launched a preemptive strike into Shakargarh, Sialkot district of Punjab, capturing 350 sq miles of territory. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS: DGMO BRIEFING AND PM’s ADDRESS ON MAY 12: THE NEW NORMAL

• India pledges to respond fiercely to any act of terrorism on its soil and to neutralise the roots from where it is operated.

  
  

•  No nuclear blackmail to be tolerated from Pakistan, this directly shows a paradigm shift in its historical policy of Restraint.

  
  

• India states that it will not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of it, again a jolt to Pakistan’s historic strategy of using state-sponsored non-state actors against India.

  
  

• India firmly tells to the foreign powers that its policies will govern by its own terms and that if there will be any talks with Pakistan, it will be on POK: busting a historical narrative of Pakistan, bought by the world, to call Kashmir as an Issue while the reality was that The instrument of accession makes Kashmir, a part of india and that the Pakistan Occupied territory POK is the only issue to be resolved.

  
  

• Pakistan’s another historical strategy of inflicting damage to India through the backdoor and maintaining normal relations through trade, tourism, and the Indus water treaty was also called out, stating that Terror and Trade, Terror and Tourism can not go together, and that water and blood too can not flow together.

REDEFINING NORMS IN REGIONAL SECURITY DYNAMICS

Operation Sindoor marked a decisive shift in India's approach to national security, moving from restraint to proactive engagement. Targeting nine terrorist infrastructure sites across Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, India demonstrated its capability and resolve to counter state-sponsored terrorism effectively.

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BY KARUNESH

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