Let the Guns Rest

India's relationships with most of its neighbours are far from warm and friendly today

- Harish Khare IS A DELHI-BASED SENIOR JOURNALIST AND PUBLIC COMMENTATOR

WHILE the jury of military experts is still to deliver its verdict on how decisive a victory India scripted for itself in Operation Sindoor, there is near unanimity among foreign policy experts that Indian diplomacy—from the time of the Pahalgam massacre on April 22, 2025, to the announcement of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan by US President Donald Trump—was sluggish and strangely stolid during these critical days.

After Pahalgam, we beat the war drums very, very loudly; and, in that din, forgot to notice that Pakistan had managed to secure its International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan; and, it is not known whether India made any serious diplomatic efforts to stall this loan. Indian diplomacy proved quite ineffective, because the movers and shakers at the IMF needed to be told about and convinced of the Pakistan state’s complicity in the massacre at Pahalgam, a more than sufficient ground to withhold the loan.

It has been noted by foreign policy experts that during this crisis, none of India’s BRICS partners (Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa), spoke up in support of us. Worse, suddenly it appears that as far as the US is concerned, there is an—ugly and unacceptable—equivalence between India and Pakistan. The perpetrator and the victim of terror are being dished out the same platitudes and the same incentives. In the exotic language spoken by the ‘strategic community’, India and Pakistan have been hyphenated again—an insult to our national self-esteem as well as a roll-back of the Indian foreign policy gains made in the last two decades.

To this decisive diplomatic setback can be added the far from warm and friendly relationship between New Delhi and most of the capitals in our neighbourhood. Except for Bhutan, none of our neighbours are inclined to show us the kind of deference and respect we think is owed to us; rather, there is sullenness and joylessness in dealing with New Delhi.