India Draws the Red Line: Zero Tolerance for Terror and Its Enablers

What has become crystal clear to India is that the United States, regardless of who occupies the White House, remains fundamentally unreliable when it comes to India's core interests.

- SEMU BHATT

In his address to the nation on 12 May 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated a decisive shift in India's approach to national security. This shift has been building since the surgical strikes in 2016 but was unmistakably demonstrated through Operation Sindoor—targeted military action against nine terror sites in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, and the action that followed.

This operation was India's calibrated response to the horrific Islamist terror attack in Pahalgam, where 26 people were killed after religious profiling. PM Narendra Modi has made it crystal clear: any terror attack on Indian soil will be met with a befitting retaliation, carried out on India's own terms by striking at the very roots of terrorism wherever they may be. He rejected nuclear blackmail as a shield for terror infrastructure. Most importantly, he asserted that no distinction will be made between state sponsors of terrorism and terrorist masterminds—thereby, hyphenating Pakistan with its terror proxies, and indicating that India will no longer play the dossier game.

Citing the presence of senior Pakistani military officers at the funerals of terrorists, he emphasized what India and the world already knows—Pakistan uses terrorism as a tool of statecraft. He reiterated his government's stance that talks with Pakistan will only be on terrorism and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

He concluded with an unambiguous message that terror and talks, terror and trade, and blood and water cannot go together. This signaled to the world, particularly the United States, that India's zero-tolerance policy demands global accountability and a reevaluation of indulgence towards Pakistan.

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