India Is Well Placed For Victory In A Battle For Narrative Dominance

Harsh V. Pant & Vinay Kaura are, respectively, professor of international relations, King's College London, and assistant professor, international affairs and security studies, Sardar Patel University of Police, Security & Criminal Justice.

- Harsh V. Pant & Vinay Kaura

India's answer to the Pahalgam massacre came not as a mere retaliatory sortie, but as Operation Sindoor—a meticulously orchestrated act of calibrated coercion. It was military precision in the service of political messaging. Not since Balakot had India demonstrated such willingness to redraw the rules of engagement. In doing so, it shattered two myths: that strategic restraint remained India's default posture and that Pakistan's threshold for escalation was immutable.

For decades, India absorbed Pakistan-sponsored terrorism with caution, hemmed in by the spectre of nuclear escalation. That has now been replaced by a posture of escalation dominance. Operation Sindoor marks a basic shift in India's doctrine: from restraint to reciprocal risk, from deterrence-by-denial to deterrence-by-punishment. India now treats major terror attacks as acts of war, responding across air, land and sea while keeping escalation in control and providing off-ramps to avoid full-scale war.

Rawalpindi replied in a predictable cadence of reciprocal strikes. Yet, the choreography felt rehearsed, its symbolism worn. The global response, urging 'maximum restraint,' was almost ceremonial in its fatigue. Washington, quick to claim credit for brokering a ceasefire, seemed less concerned with Pakistan's recurrent use of Islamist terror (shielded by the implicit threat of its nuclear deterrent) and more desperate not to be eclipsed by Beijing's quiet encroachment of the region's diplomatic space.

What this sequence unmasked was not simply the resumption of a conflict, but the emergence of a strategic pivot. Historically, Pakistan manipulated the threat of nuclear escalation to draw international intervention and avoid consequences for its sponsorship of terrorism. But India has flipped that playbook by leveraging calibrated strategic risk to pressure the international community to contain Pakistan's reckless behaviour.