Shishupala to Vishkanya: Changing Nature of India's Coercive Doctrine with Pakistan

After nearly eight decades of enduring the strategy of 'a thousand cuts', India must respond with its own strategy of poisoning the sources of power of the Pakistani Army.

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

Ever since the Pakistan Army sent its soldiers disguised as "tribesmen" to attack India in Jammu and Kashmir soon after the creation of Pakistan in 1947, the question of establishing deterrence against an ideological enemy has worried India.

This question has been further muddied by subsequent wars which led to Pakistani defeats, in 1965, 1971, and in Kargil, and yet it is impossible to deny that the Pakistani military state has sought to effectively alter the narrative and project a victory.

The only place the Pakistani establishment could not do this was the actual breaking up of Pakistan after the Bangladesh independence war in 1971. Even in 2019, when India defied hitherto established red lines of crossing into Pakistani territory to hit terror camps after the attack in Pulwama in Kashmir by the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed headquartered in Pakistan, the Pakistani air retaliation, which also involved the capture (and subsequent return) of an Indian pilot, gave Pakistan a face saver.

For many in India, the fact that India had crossed what had been considered a "red line"—going inside Pakistani territory to attack—would signal to Pakistan about its determination to fight terrorism at all costs. And this would convince Pakistan to move away from its strategy of harboring and using Islamist terrorist groups and using them to further the proxy war against India.

The abrogation of Article 370 and the complete constitutional integration of Jammu and Kashmir with the Indian state gave an irreversible sense of closure to many in India.

In the years that followed, a semblance of normalcy dawned on the Jammu and Kashmir region with tourist arrivals of up to 1.6 million in summer 2024. In areas of downtown Srinagar where dusk meant eerie emptiness, and the Indian flag could never be seen, countless tourists and coffee shops opened under the sway of giant Indian Tricolours.