From surgical strike to scrapping Article 370: Modi govt's paradigm shift on Indo-Pak ties

India’s policy towards Pakistan has seen a drastic shift from what it was even a decade ago. The Modi government has taken a tough stand against Islamabad, especially on state-sponsored terrorism.

For a long time, India’s response to a terror attack by Pakistan-backed outfits was to take a diplomatically offensive stance, which included suspension of dialogue. It was rare for India to go the extremities of issuing an armed threat to Pakistan, or use its military might, as it did in the aftermath of the 2001 Parliament Attack.

Even then, the military stand-off between the two neighbours, which lasted a few months, concluded in a ceasefire agreement and a joint statement, in which Pakistan swore not to allow its territory to be used as a launch pad for terrorism against India.

The stand-off had resulted in large mobilisation of armed forces in Kashmir – a cumbersome and expensive process that cannot be repeated frequently. Pakistan waited for the storm to blow over and resumed attacks on India, breaching its pledge.

India’s reluctance to flex muscles after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008, reinforced the belief among Pakistani elite circles that New Delhi was bowing down to international pressure for the nuclear-armed nations to confine to dialogue.

In order to find a strategic solution, India was often left oscillating between an ineffective suspension of a stuttering dialogue and a threat of war. It couldn’t find an effective middle ground on the continuum of strategy.

The situation saw a breakthrough when the Modi government launched a surgical strike against Pakistan in 2016. This was in the aftermath of the Uri Attack in which heavily armed terrorists attacked an Indian army base in September 2016.

The attack sent the military brass in Rawalpindi a strong message that infiltrating terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir will cost them. Even though Pakistan denied the surgical strike, local reports pointed out that jihadis in several launch pads had been killed.

Similarly, the Balakot air strike in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack in February this year agonised Pakistan. Even though Islamabad has consistently denied the Jaish-e-Mohammed camp being hit, the prolonged closure of its air space was an indication that the possibility of the IAF striking targets deep inside of Pakistan had induced a worrying sense of uncertainty.

According to a report by The Times of India, the Modi government’s policy seems to have taken a leaf from the “compellence doctrine” articulated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling, which suggests that actions proactively change status quo instead of passive deterrence.

Most recently, the decision to turn Article 370 of the Indian Constitution into a dead letter is the Modi government’s boldest and most significant move – one that Pakistan cannot ignore. The move has put Islamabad in a quandary, where it is struggling to react – a significant shift from the past when it used to brazen it out.

Besides, India’s innovative foreign policy in the Middle East has left Pakistani leaders lamenting over the indifference of Muslim nations over the developments in J&K.

Even though Pakistan has said it will bring the issue of “human rights violations in J&K” up at all international fora, and has even tried to do at the Speaker’s Summit in the Maldives, it hasn’t been able to find an audience.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh asserted that there is no change in the nuclear no-first-use posturing, making India a responsible nation. Although, his statement came with the caveat that NFU is not cast in stone, giving Pakistan’s military more to chew on.