How India created a maxim of self-restraint that Pakistan never valued – Firstpost

The only ‘bad thing’ about Operation Sindoor is that it had to happen – that our Pakistani neighbour would not shut up unless spoken to in the only language they understand. India’s calculated yet calibrated response to the Pahalgam terror attack that took 26 innocent lives hides more than it says and says more than it hides.

The long and short of it is that for one more time India has demonstrated to the world, starting with an adversarial Pakistan, that its response would be calculated yet calibrated and non-escalatory in nature. Yes, there are already those in the country, especially from the strategic community, who feel that India should escalate opportunities to go in for an all-out war when Pakistan created them through Zia’s zero-sum terror attacks that have not died down long after his exit. But that is a different story altogether.

In the comity of nations, thus, India has proved that it is more responsible in protecting its self-interest, not only when compared to Pakistan now or China in the aftermath of the Galwan episode. The truth is India has proved to be more responsible than those that preach responsibility to us – particularly our Western friends.

Recall how the US converted the post-9/11 security opportunity into one for war and targeted both Afghanistan, where Osama was hiding, and Iraq, whose dictatorial ruler, Saddam Hussein, was not a threat to America. Or how Western Europe, which made Ukraine’s war with Russia their own war, are still paying for it in every which way. When the chips are down and the India-Pakistan situation escalates into a full-fledged war, they would preach to us from their pulpits that are built in the air.

Delayed response

In every which way, it was a delayed response. First, India gave the world two full weeks to hold Pakistan accountable. From the UN Security Council, Pakistan did not get a favourable statement from the 15-member body, but no one wanted to put out another, criticising Pakistan for the ghastly massacre at Pahalgam.

It is anybody’s guess what kind of evidence would satisfy the West in this case when the US in particular was only happy to back Israel when Tel Aviv claimed that distant Iran was behind all those Hamas and Hezbollah attacks against the country.

Truth be told, whenever India says that it was the victim of Pakistan-based terrorism, encouraged by the ISI and thus the Pakistani state, the West had hemmed and hawed and had always demanded solid evidence, whatever they meant. But when it came to 9/11, most of the early strike-backs were presumptive and presumptuous. That Osama and Al-Qaeda fell in place was a separate factor.

For those who care to recall, even at the time, India offered landing facilities when first approached by the US for its fighters to refuel and prepare for a strike at Osama’s base and Taliban-controlled territories in Afghanistan. Remember, India too was the victim of the Taliban-induced ‘Kathmandu hijack’ episode, and New Delhi under the very same Vajpayee government was only too happy to accommodate, as different from obliging.

Yet, the US preferred Pakistan, not because of logistic reasons but because they had come to consider each other as ‘natural allies’. Even today, many in Lutyens’ Delhi consider the US India’s best friend; Washington is at best circumspect in the matter of making their long-time ward behave.

Best decision

It may be in the Indian psyche, but ‘self-restraint’ has been a national creed in this country of ours. That has extended to our strategic thinking, too, it can be now said. It began with the Bangladesh War (1971) and extended to the Kargil War (1999) and all the way up to the three ‘surgical strikes’ of 2016, 2019 and now 2025. More importantly, it has also taken over the nation’s policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons.

In 1971, the then-Army chief, Gen Sam Manekshaw, later recalled how, as early as March that year, the Cabinet discussed the matter and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi briefed him on how war with Pakistan was becoming inevitable and had also decided on military objectives and goals. The civilian government’s diktat for the armed forces was to ‘liberate’ Bangladesh and sustain a holding operation viz West Pakistan, with a clear aim to withdraw when a cease-fire came into force – all of it, if and only if the Islamabad-Pindi combo forced a war on us.

The government gave the armed forces six months’ time to prepare for a war, as sought, that too for a war which Indira Gandhi was clear could not be extended beyond three weeks. Pakistan fired the first shot on the night of December 1, and Bangladesh was formally liberated on December 16, with Lt Gen A A K Niazi, commanding the West Pakistan forces in Bangladesh, signing the Instrument of Surrender at the Dhaka stadium.

There are those who now keep taunting Indira Gandhi’s memory by saying that her leadership had failed to let the armed forces capture the whole of West Pakistan or at least retain whatever territory that they had already captured. By hindsight, it should be conceded that it was the best decision that New Delhi could have taken, then and now.

Even when slicing Bangladesh out of Pakistan was on India’s card, New Delhi projected a ‘self-restraint’ strategy and readily agreed to pull out from West Pakistan territories that our armed forces had captured. Critics need to understand that winning is one thing, holding is another. They need to remember the way the mighty US forces got caught in Afghanistan for 20 long years, only to end up with a pyrrhic victory.

No first use

The Indian self-restraint has stood it in good stead since then. Despite their tendency to besmirch India wherever and whenever possible, the West especially conceded India’s trait of a commitment to peace, flowing from the Gandhian national creed. So when the Vajpayee government declared India’s ‘no-first-use’ of nuclear weapons policy after the Pokhran-II nuclear weapons test in 1998, the world did not insist on verification mechanisms.

This was not the case with Pakistan, though both nations came under the America-led Western sanctions regime of denial. When it happened, it was the West which unilaterally withdrew the sanctions against India. Pakistan then got it free – and it keeps showing its ugly head against India, every now and again.

Since 1998, every time there has been tension along the India-Pakistan border, self-styled strategist analysts from the West would tell their governments and also the world at large how a nuclear war was imminent. They never say such things when their governments and armed forces are involved. Or, even their ‘friendly allies’ (including Pakistan) are involved.

India has remained their political target, yet, a year after Pokhran-II, Indian armed forces showed how they could get back territory from an overambitious Pakistan without any talk of using nuclear weapons or even crossing the international border. That was the war in which Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf declared that he would consider ordering the use of ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ if the Indian armed forces crossed the international border.

India won the Kargil War without crossing the international border. India did not think of ‘escalating’ the war by crossing the international border, if only to teach Pakistan a befitting lesson for all time to come.

Even today, in the heart of their hearts, the international community are wary of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal or a part thereof falling into the hands of ‘rogue elements’, both within their armed forces and outside (meaning multiple terror groups). No one is even dreaming of India doing it, now or ever. That is the kind of credibility India has built over the years, starting with the Bangladesh War, then Pokhran I & II, and down to the post-Pahalgam targeted attacks well into Pakistan but without in any way escalating it into a full-fledged war.

The ball is still in Pakistan’s court — to either mend its ways and repent, or repeat the past with greater vigour and be answered in the only language its leadership seems to understand — a lesson that they seek periodically and which India has been forced to give them, but in measured doses!

The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.