DRAWING THE BATTLE LINES

India did not hesitate to go to war in response to Pakistan-sponsored terror or confront Chinese troops on the icy Himalayan frontier

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ON May 7, 2025, days after a terror attack in Pahalgam killed 26 civilians, India's decade-long recalibration of its security doctrine came into focus.

Operation Sindoor, as the retaliatory air strikes were branded, targeted nine terror hubs across the border. By nightfall, Pakistan had responded with waves of drones and missiles, dragging the two nuclear-armed adversaries to the brink of escalation. Guns fell silent four days later, but new red lines had been drawn.

Since 2015, New Delhi has sought to redraw the rules of deterrence on two fronts at once, against Pakistan to the west and China to the north, while quietly retooling the machinery of defence at home. The arc with Pakistan captures the shift most starkly. When Narendra Modi made a surprise stopover in Lahore in December 2015 to call on then prime minister Nawaz Sharif—months after the Pak premier had attended his swearing-in—it seemd that the deep freeze after the 2008 Mumbai attacks might thaw. Weeks later, the Pathankot airbase attack punctured that optimism. The September 2016 ambush on an Indian Army base at Uri proved the tipping point. India responded not with restraint or ritual condemnation, but with publicly acknowledged 'surgical strikes' on terror launchpads across the Line of Control.