INDIA has been striving to establish a ‘new normal’ in its relations with Pakistan.
This ‘new normal’ involves responding to terror attacks in India, including those in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), with kinetic actions in mainland Pakistan.
To bring this concept to life, Indian strategic thinkers have developed a doctrine, the Indian media has vigorously promoted it and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has cleverly used it in election campaigns.
During a national address on May 12, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced ‘Operation Sindoor’ as a significant step in the fight against terror.
He stated, “Operation Sindoor has redefined the fight against terror…setting a new benchmark and a new normal in counter-terrorism measures.
” This operation, in essence, presumes that any terror attack in India is sponsored by the Pakistani Establishment, specifically the Pakistani Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Modi emphasized, “India will not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism.”
Premier Modi’s new normal, or Modi Doctrine, is a warning to the Indian people that India is now in a permanent warlike situation.
His Defence Minister announced that Operation Sindoor is not over yet.
Realistically, the new normal is not to secure India’s national interest but to satisfy Modi’s nationalist and Hindutva support base, which was bewildered and disappointed with the announcement of the ceasefire by US President Donald Trump after devastating Pakistani armed forces retaliation.
Modi’s new normal seems wishful thinking.
In simple words, he is masking his intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ inability to counter the freedom movement in the IIOJK.
Instead of identifying the causes of terrorism and resolving them judiciously, the Modi Government is simply blaming and threatening Pakistan.
It is ignoring the fact that the burden of proof for terrorism in India, including the Pahalgam attack, rests solely with New Delhi.
Instead of conducting a transparent investigation and sharing the evidence about the Palagham attack, the Prime Minister launched Operation Sindoor.
Pakistan has rejected the new normal.
It insisted that respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity remains the only acceptable standard in inter-state ties.
On May 16, 2025, Foreign Office spokesman Shafqat Ali Khan said, “While India propagates the notion of establishing a ‘new normal’ in bilateral relations, our restrained response has reaffirmed that the only acceptable norm is respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.
” The Modi Government has made strategic mistakes, such as surgical strikes, which have led to befitting and humiliating retaliation.
On May 7 and 10, 2025, Pakistan once again conducted effective counter-strikes, reinforcing the credibility of its deterrence and dispelling any illusions of India’s conventional superiority or its ambitions to impose hegemony in the region.
These mistakes should serve as a cautionary tale for India’s future actions.
While the ‘new normal’ may appeal to ultranationalist and right-wing Hindu nationalist factions, known as ‘Hindutva, ‘ it is viewed unfavourably by many in Indian society.
India’s ‘neighbour-fist policy,’ diplomatically referred to as the ‘neighbour-first policy,’ has already led to India’s isolation in South Asia.
Similarly, the Modi Government’s ‘new normal’ approach has imposed significant political, diplomatic, economic and military costs on India.
Today, the American strategic community might be soul-searching if they were betting on the right horse to stand up against a rising China.
It is because India’s international standing, military ability and capability to be a great power in South Asia were badly exposed.
Moreover, Modi cabinet members’ baseless accussations, Indian diplomatic corps and hawkish media narrative about Pakistan-originated terrorism mantra have no traction in the international community.
Since February 2000, India has been working on its doctrine of limited war under the nuclear threshold.
It became the first nuclear power to attack another nuclear state with missiles and air strikes in February 2019 and May 2025.
Though India claimed to conduct surgical strikes in September 2016, Pakistan refuted the proclamation.
In these military adventurisms, the Indian Air Force paid a high cost.
Realistically, there are limits to military adventurism against a rival having professionally trained and equipped with modern weaponry and battle-hardened defence forces.
Moreover, a compellence strategy is not advisable against nuclear-armed adversaries and refers to a challenger’s nuclear capability as a mere bluff.
Assuming it remains below the nuclear threshold, the limited war launched is a risky gamble.
The probability of the escalation of a limited war to an all-out war entailing the use of nuclear weapons is a distinct possibility between the nuclearized strategic rivals.
Thus, punitive strikes against a nuclear-armed rival could lead to retaliatory nuclear strikes.
Since the Phalagam attack on April 22, 2025, India has used all the instruments of hybrid warfare and gray zone warfare.
It has initiated disinformation, media jingoism, psy-ops, weaponed river water, etc, to malign Pakistan and terrorize Pakistani society.
On May 6-7, 2025, it launched Operation Sindoor with high-tech air, ballistic and cruise missile and drone strikes.
It also used the BrahMos, a supersonic cruise missile, to evade air defence systems to decimate targets deep inside Pakistan.
Pakistan propelled Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos involving air strikes, long-range missiles, drones and cyber warfare against Indian 26 key military installations in IIOJK and mainland India, including air force bases, logistics hubs, command centres and missile storage facilities in the wee hours of May 10, 2025.
It successfully neutralized India’s air defence grid, Rafales and S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile defence system, exhibiting critical flaws in India’s air defence and defying the myth of Indian aerial invincibility.
Consequently, IAF appears weak, in disarray and less professional.
To conclude, the Pulwama and post-Pahalgam military standoff and the befitting response of the Pakistan armed forces to India’s aggression entailing a third-party engineered cease-fire necessitates that the Modi government must revisit its ‘new normal’ and chalk out a rational policy grounded on confidence-building measures, sustainable dialogue process, addressing the root causes of militancy and above all respecting the sovereignty of the neighbouring states.
This rational policy should give hope for improved relations between India and Pakistan in the future.
—The writer is Prof at the School of Politics and IR, Quaid-i-Azam University. ([email protected])
