Missiles and mandates: Will Indian democracy fuel nuclear war?

AllAfrica

24-07-2025

In the spring of 2025, just months before India's Lok Sabha elections, a thundering announcement gripped Indian television screens: the Indian Air Force had carried out a precision airstrike on 'terror infrastructure' in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Dubbed Operation Sindoor, the strike echoed the 2019 Balakot operation—another militarized maneuver that boosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's approval ratings and helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ride a nationalist wave to electoral victory. It worked again.
But while India celebrated and media studios erupted in triumphalism, the region edged perilously closer to catastrophe. Pakistan scrambled jets in response, mobilized forces along the Line of Control (LoC), and warned of 'unpredictable retaliation.'
For days, the region held its breath. Though a full-scale war with nuclear weapons was avoided, Operation Sindoor marked a dangerous precedent: that military action could be weaponized as electoral strategy—and that nuclear-armed states are willing to play chicken with apocalypse.
That precedent looms larger than ever as India enters a new general election season. Faced with mounting economic distress, rising unemployment, deepening social polarization and signs of voter fatigue with the BJP, Modi's political calculus appears worryingly familiar. He has shown time and again a readiness to manufacture external confrontation to consolidate domestic support.
The question is not whether Modi can launch another strike like Sindoor. It is whether, amid a vastly more complex and dangerous strategic landscape, South Asia can survive the next one.
Since 2019, both India and Pakistan have accelerated their missile development programs. India now fields an array of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, from the short-range Prithvi to the long-range Agni-V, capable of striking targets over 5,000 kilometers away.
The development of Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) allows a single Indian missile to carry multiple nuclear warheads aimed at different targets—an escalation that dramatically shortens response time for adversaries.
Pakistan, for its part, has pursued a different but equally lethal doctrine: tactical nuclear weapons. Its Nasr missile, a short-range battlefield nuke, is designed to counter Indian conventional superiority and deter incursions like Operation Sindoor.
In military terms, this is known as 'full-spectrum deterrence.' In political terms, it's a neon warning sign: the next skirmish may not stay conventional. Complicating matters further is the modernization of delivery systems.
Both countries now possess sea-based nuclear platforms—submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles—adding a second-strike capability that further erodes once-clear nuclear thresholds. Satellites, drones and advanced radar systems mean that even small troop movements can be misinterpreted as preparation for preemptive attack.
In such a hyper-militarized environment, any attempt to recreate a Sindoor-style 'surgical strike' risks triggering a catastrophic miscalculation.
Modi's electoral strategy hinges on majoritarian nationalism. The demonization of Muslims, the tightening grip on Kashmir and the portrayal of Pakistan as a perennial enemy are not accidental—they are deliberate tactics to energize the BJP's core Hindu nationalist base. But in the nuclear age, such electoral theater is not just dangerous—it's delusional.
During Operation Sindoor, senior BJP leaders made casual references to India's nuclear 'capability.' Modi himself, in a speech, mocked the idea of 'keeping our nukes for Diwali.'
The line drew applause, but it also revealed a chilling truth: nuclear posturing has been domesticated into populist rhetoric. What should be tools of ultimate deterrence have been reduced to applause lines at campaign rallies.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's military, though reeling from internal political crises, has made clear that another Indian strike—even if limited—will be met with a 'massive and disproportionate' response. Unlike in 2019 or 2025, Pakistan's red lines are fuzzier, its patience thinner and its doctrine more aggressive.
The likelihood that the next misadventure could spiral into full-blown nuclear war is no longer hypothetical.
The international community's response to Modi's militarism has been muted at best, complicit at worst. The United States, Europe and even Japan have eagerly courted India as a bulwark against China, often overlooking its democratic backsliding, suppression of dissent and increasingly reckless foreign policy. The result is strategic myopia.
The stakes will grow higher as India enters a new election season. To be sure, a conflict in South Asia would not be limited to the subcontinent. The Arabian Sea—critical for global oil trade—would be immediately affected.
China, which has strategic investments in Pakistan through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multi-billion-dollar initiative under the Belt and Road scheme, would be compelled to respond.
Obviously, an even limited nuclear exchange would have devastating global consequences. Extreme scenario estimates suggest that a regional nuclear war involving 100 warheads—less than half the combined arsenal of India and Pakistan—could cause over 20 million immediate deaths and a nuclear winter that disrupts global agriculture for a decade.
This is not a call to absolve Pakistan of its transgressions. It, too, has played dangerous games in the region and must be held accountable for harboring militant networks. But in this moment, it is India's democracy—its voters, its media, its civil society—that bears the heavier burden.
The world must demand more from the world's largest democracy. Indian voters must question why their sons and daughters are being sent to war to win elections. Indian journalists must challenge the state's jingoism rather than amplify it. And Indian institutions—however beleaguered—must resist being turned into instruments of war propaganda.
Modi may once again find war tempting in the runup to crucial elections. But whether South Asia walks into the fire—or finally learns to resist its own worst instincts—depends not on missiles or military might, but on the courage to choose peace over populism. Because in a nuclear South Asia, there is no longer such thing as a 'limited' misadventure.
Advocate Mazhar Siddique Khan is a Lahore-based High Court lawyer. He can be contacted at [e-mail] .