India's next victory should be in its battle for narrative dominance

Mint

20-05-2025

India's answer to the Pahalgam massacre came not as a mere retaliatory sortie, but as Operation Sindoor—a meticulously orchestrated act of calibrated coercion. It was military precision in the service of political messaging. Not since Balakot had India demonstrated such willingness to redraw the rules of engagement.
In doing so, it shattered two myths: that strategic restraint remained India's default posture and that Pakistan's threshold for escalation was immutable.
For decades, India absorbed Pakistan-sponsored terrorism with caution, hemmed in by the spectre of nuclear escalation. That has now been replaced by a posture of escalation dominance. Operation Sindoor marks a basic shift in India's doctrine: from restraint to reciprocal risk, from deterrence-by-denial to deterrence-by-punishment. India now treats major terror attacks as acts of war, responding across air, land and sea while keeping escalation in control and providing off-ramps to avoid full-scale war.
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Rawalpindi replied in a predictable cadence of reciprocal strikes. Yet, the choreography felt rehearsed, its symbolism worn. The global response, urging 'maximum restraint,' was almost ceremonial in its fatigue. Washington, quick to claim credit for brokering a ceasefire, seemed less concerned with Pakistan's recurrent use of Islamist terror (shielded by the implicit threat of its nuclear deterrent) and more desperate not to be eclipsed by Beijing's quiet encroachment of the region's diplomatic space.
What this sequence unmasked was not simply the resumption of a conflict, but the emergence of a strategic pivot. Historically, Pakistan manipulated the threat of nuclear escalation to draw international intervention and avoid consequences for its sponsorship of terrorism. But India has flipped that playbook by leveraging calibrated strategic risk to pressure the international community to contain Pakistan's reckless behaviour.
India's new doctrine has popular backing, with domestic expectations and bipartisan support having entrenched a consensus that terror will be met with force, but New Delhi's calculus extends well beyond the battlefield.
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Recognizing that perception governs legitimacy, it has launched an ambitious diplomatic counteroffensive: seven high-level delegations are being despatched to other countries. Their mission is precise: to thwart Pakistan's attempt to internationalize Kashmir. They will not argue on a premise of grievance, but of law, sovereignty and the global imperative to treat terrorism as indivisible.
These delegations are not just emissaries of the state; they are narrative architects and strategic communicators. Tasked with restoring clarity and countering Pakistan's narrative rooted in the communalism of the 'two-nation theory,' they serve a dual purpose. First, to reframe the Kashmir issue as a constitutional and internal matter rather than a bilateral dispute. Second, to emphasize that Pakistan's use of terror as statecraft is not a bilateral problem, but a global challenge to the integrity of international counterterrorism norms.
They will articulate that India no longer accepts terror exceptionalism, that Pakistan cannot perpetually shield its proxies behind a veil of nuclear blackmail, and present a doctrine of clarity: India will defend itself unilaterally, proportionally and within the bounds of international law.
Moreover, they will leverage India's democratic legitimacy and civilizational identity to project the country as a responsible global power. They will position India as a bulwark against radicalism, an upholder of pluralism and a force for stability. India's actions, they will assert, are not escalatory by choice, but corrective by necessity. And Operation Sindoor is not an aberration, but the new normal.
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Under the pressure of Indian strikes, Pakistan sought US mediation—a move that revealed its strategic vulnerability and India's operational superiority. Islamabad's reliance on international intervention as a safety valve has been exposed as outdated, given how India has demonstrated both escalation control and narrative discipline.
Yet, therein lies the deeper risk for India—not that Pakistan may succeed, but that the world may listen. The recent face-off has become a pretext for a creeping re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan in global discourse, threatening to resurrect the dynamic that Indian diplomacy has laboured to bury since Nehru's United Nations gambit.
This peril is underscored by US President Donald Trump's assertion of having brokered the ceasefire. In a world tempted by transactional diplomacy, India faces the challenge of navigating a global environment where principles are often subordinated to deals. For a West wary of China's growing influence, Kashmir may become a theatre of symbolic contestation rather than legal and political clarity.
Further complications arise from the intractability of global crises, be it Russia's war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas conflict or nuclear tensions with Iran. These ongoing flashpoints dilute diplomatic bandwidth and allow malign actors like Pakistan to exploit moments of global distraction to resurface their narratives.
Thus emerges a dual mandate for India. First, to maintain its strategic initiative without risking adventurism. Second, more critically, to preserve its narrative dominance on Kashmir. India's campaign has two fronts: deterrence and discourse. Its actions must be demonstrative but deliberate; its diplomacy, assertive yet unsentimental.
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India must seize not only the high ground, but the defining voice. It must portray Operation Sindoor as an overdue recognition that past limited responses in 2016 and 2019 failed to alter Pakistan's terror calculus. It must articulate that the essence of deterrence lies not only in firepower, but in clarity of intent. And it must reject the premise that Kashmir is open to third-party adjudication.
This is not, at its core, a contest over boundaries. It is a struggle over narrative dominance and temporal trajectory. Pakistan clings to grievance as both a shield and weapon, and its backward gaze affirms its inability to pivot forward, even as India charts its future with the balance of force and foresight. New Delhi's assertion of its sovereign prerogative and refusal to outsource its security calculus is a mark of strategic maturity. The global order respects clarity more than compromise, particularly when the stakes are cloaked in moral ambivalence and strategic ambiguity.
In the coming days, the contest will unfold in minds, not maps. And narrative clarity will determine not only who commands the present, but who inherits the future. India's challenge is not just to win battles, but to own the story. In geopolitics, as in battle strategy, the side that frames the question often controls the answer.
The authors are, respectively, professor of international relations, King's College London, and assistant professor, international affairs and security studies, Sardar Patel University of Police, Security & Criminal Justice.