Nishank Motwani
India is fundamentally rewriting the rules of engagement with Pakistan. In response to high-casualty terrorist attacks – most recently the 2025 Pahalgam massacre that triggered Operation Sindoor – New Delhi has adopted a doctrine of calibrated military retaliation designed to operate below the nuclear threshold. By asserting that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal no longer provides blanket immunity for cross-border terrorism, India is discarding old constraints and demonstrating it has the political will and military capability to respond to terrorist attacks traced back to the Pakistani state.
This evolution is no longer implied – it has now been formalized. In a landmark speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined India’s updated national security doctrine, emphasizing that future terrorist attacks will be met with swift and forceful retaliation, executed on India’s terms. The policy eliminates the distinction between terrorist actors and the states that provide them safe haven, signaling a shift toward holding state sponsors directly accountable. This affirms what New Delhi has long argued: that Pakistan’s deep state is not merely permissive of proxy groups – it is complicit.
Modi also rejected any strategic utility in Pakistan’s nuclear signaling, making clear that such threats will not deter India from targeting terrorist infrastructure. This codifies India’s willingness to act across the Line of Control and beyond it regardless of nuclear posturing from Islamabad.
This is not recklessness disguised as resolve. It is a deliberate and now officially articulated doctrine to impose costs without triggering full-scale war. India’s limited strikes – air and ground – are designed to signal that acts of terror will have consequences, even if those consequences stop short of a general war. In doing so, India is challenging a long-held assumption in Western policy circles: that any clash between nuclear-armed rivals in South Asia will inevitably spiral into catastrophe.
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