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News18
7 hours ago
- Politics
- News18
India's Operation Sindoor Triggers China-Pakistan-Bangladesh Alliance
Last Updated: This new axis is a key pillar in China's strategic playbook to isolate and contain India India's Operation Sindoor was no ordinary military action. It was a declaration of India's new doctrine to fight terrorism and its state sponsors, and was announced by no less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. The doctrine involves three salient pillars: First, India will take decisive measures to eliminate the sources of terrorism, holding both the attackers and those who support them accountable. Second, India will not yield to nuclear intimidation or 'blackmail". The doctrine makes it clear that any effort to use nuclear threats as a cover for terrorism will be countered with swift and targeted action. And third, India will hold terrorists and their backers equally responsible. The doctrine clearly states that anyone who shelters, funds, or supports terrorism will face the same repercussions as the attackers themselves. Effectively, India proclaimed before the world that any future terror attack will invite a disproportionate response that will crush Pakistan. Needless to say, this has irked many global powers. China, which has a stated policy of encircling India in order to contain it, has made some interesting manoeuvres since Operation Sindoor. Almost immediately, for example, it had invited the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan to Beijing. More recently, on June 19, China launched its latest trilateral initiative with Pakistan and Bangladesh. The meeting took place in Kunming, the capital of China's southern Yunnan province, and was attended by China's vice foreign minister Sun Weidong, Bangladesh's acting foreign secretary Ruhul Alam Siddique, and Pakistan's additional foreign secretary Imran Ahmed Siddiqui. Pakistan's foreign secretary Amna Baloch took part in the discussions by video link. In its statement following the meeting, China claimed: 'The three sides emphasised that China-Bangladesh-Pakistan cooperation adheres to true multilateralism and open regionalism, not directed at any third party." This was an obvious reference to India, which has more reasons than one to feel that China's latest moves are squarely directed at it following the success of Operation Sindoor. After all, that one military operation redefined India's red lines and altered the security outlook of the subcontinent. Interestingly, China's statement on the meeting lacked critical context. For example, it said that 'Bangladesh and Pakistan are both good neighbours, good friends, and good partners of China, and important partners in high quality belt and road cooperation." The missing context, obviously, is that Bangladesh remained under Pakistani occupation until 1971, before India decided to join Dhaka's war of liberation. Yet, with Muhammad Yunus and an Islamist regime in-charge of Bangladesh now, it would appear that Dhaka is ready to forget all past Pakistani atrocities and get under one 'anti-India" umbrella. Turning India's Neighbourhood into a Battlefield This new trilateral 'mechanism" is not a random diplomatic exercise; it is a calculated move on the geopolitical chessboard. Beijing sees a window of opportunity created by several converging factors. India's newfound muscular posture, epitomised by the doctrine that underpinned Operation Sindoor, has shown that New Delhi will no longer be a passive recipient of state-sponsored terror. This forces China's all-weather ally, Pakistan, to seek a more powerful 'alliance' to shield it from Indian retribution. This new axis is a key pillar in China's strategic playbook to isolate and contain India. Pakistan has long been its proxy, a tool to bog India down in the Indian subcontinent. Bringing Bangladesh into this fold, however, is the more significant and alarming development. It represents a major diplomatic coup, turning a nation born with India's help into a partner of its principal adversaries. It is no secret that Dhaka's ties with New Delhi are at a historic low. China is exploiting the rift, promising economic largesse through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in exchange for strategic alignment. The Kunming mechanism aims to institutionalise this alignment, creating a formal bloc that can coordinate economic, diplomatic, and potentially military policies against Indian interests. This new trilateral is less about diplomacy and more about the physical encirclement of India. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) already gives Beijing access to the Arabian Sea through Gwadar. By deeply integrating Bangladesh into its sphere of influence, China gains greater access to the Bay of Bengal, effectively tightening its 'string of pearls' around India. This trilateral axis, therefore, must be seen for what it is: a concerted effort to challenge India's regional primacy, dilute its influence in its own backyard, and create a counterweight to India's growing global stature and its partnerships like the Quad. The implications of this trilateral go far beyond economic and diplomatic cooperation. The logical and most dangerous end-game of this 'mechanism" is its transformation into a full-fledged security alliance aimed squarely at India. China already supplies most of Pakistan's advanced weaponry, effectively arming it to the teeth. The troubling question for New Delhi is: what if Beijing begins doing the same with Bangladesh? A China-funded and equipped Bangladeshi military, hostile to India, would transform the long-dreaded two-front threat into a nightmarish three-front strategic encirclement. This strategy of surrounding a rival with hostile proxies is a carbon copy of another playbook—Iran's attempt to build an 'axis of resistance" to choke Israel. The world is now seeing how that policy has ended up putting West Asia on fire. Pushed to the brink, Israel has systematically obliterated Iran's axis of resistance and dealt a crippling blow to Tehran's nuclear programme itself. Does China truly wish for a similar fate in the subcontinent? Does it want to see its own strategic investments and regional ambitions go up in flames along with those of Pakistan and Bangladesh? Because Beijing must be under no illusion. After Operation Sindoor, India has made its red lines clear. There are no lengths to which India will not go if its core interests and very existence are threatened by an axis of totalitarian countries like China, Pakistan and an increasingly radicalised Bangladesh. By attempting to turn India's neighbourhood into a battlefield, China is not just playing with fire; it is risking a conflagration that could consume the entire region—with consequences that even Beijing cannot control. About the Author Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra is a producer and video journalist at Network18. He is enthusiastic about and writes on both national affairs as well as geopolitics. tags : bangladesh China Operation Sindoor pakistan Straight Talk view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: June 24, 2025, 15:26 IST News opinion Straight Talk | India's Operation Sindoor Triggers China-Pakistan-Bangladesh Alliance Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Hyper nationalism prevents our foreign policy from asking tough questions
Indian foreign policy is in a deep morass that is often difficult to see. Our hyper-nationalism prevents us asking tough questions. The daily news cycle is caught in tactical matters or image management for the government. Behind our failures lies a refusal of true realism, or a genuine confrontation with our predicament. This refusal of realism is manifest in our diplomacy. The former foreign secretary, Jagat Mehta, often used to say at the Centre for Policy Research that the first exercise in approaching the world in any given situation should be to abstract out proper names, including that of your country, so that you are more ruthlessly objective about your task. Try and imagine how you appear to your toughest adversaries on the outside. India is rightly concerned, and is somewhat shocked, that it lost the diplomatic high ground after Operation Sindoor. We got boilerplate costless condemnations of terrorism, but also felt that no one stands with us. It was fascinating to contrast the breathless self-proclaimed triumphs of the parliamentary delegations and our government with what other countries from the Global North and South were actually saying, behind our backs, as it were. We can blame other countries' self-interest and their anti-India disposition for the failure to politically capitalise on Operation Sindoor. But we were so besotted with our sense of our case that we did not honestly confront how the case might appear to others. The rest of the world may be mistaken. These days, no country has much of a moral leg to stand on. But it is worth asking why the moral distinction between India and Pakistan was diplomatically much harder to convey than we thought. There are four reasons. I have no idea what we might actually be doing in Balochistan. But there is little doubt that our security establishment brags, sotto voce, about using the Balochistan crisis against Pakistan. In doing so, we ourselves muddy the waters about the use of proxies, and targeting on the basis of religion. The violence in Balochistan and Kashmir, for the rest of the world, gets connected, in a chain of associations. In the backdrop of the fact that we have a government that does not exactly have a stellar reputation on moral condemnation of targeting people on account of their religion, it makes it easy for the world to say that these horrendous killings are, as one diplomat once put it, 'one of those periodic South Asian things'. This is condescending, but we invited it. Second, we are missing the point on anxieties on the nuclear front. Both sides may be right in thinking that, in principle, they can control an escalatory ladder. But focus on rational control of escalatory ladders does not address genuine worries about accidents. In the minds of India and Pakistan, this may be a controlled operation. But any confrontation between nuclear powers is risky. When Donald Trump brags about preventing nuclear war, listen to the underlying concern, not the surface drama or his put-down of Narendra Modi. He is in effect saying that even the smallest step to war makes India and Pakistan a problem for the rest of the world. Pakistan has no diplomatic high ground to lose. But war will always make India lose its moral high ground. War makes India a problem for the world. Third, wasn't it a matter of pride among our diplomats to say to Europe and the rest of the world that Ukraine was their problem? If the gobbling up of a whole sovereign nation is 'their problem', not a matter of principle, guess what? Terrorism is also not 'their' problem. What is their problem is the risk of nuclear accidents. And finally, India's absolute loss of credibility in the Global South. A country that cannot so much as morally squeak on what is now almost universally acknowledged as an ongoing genocide in Gaza, obsessing over terrorism adds narcissism to the charge of moral abdication. Add to this the fact that we botched our credibility as a state on meaningless operations allegedly targeting useless Khalistan activists in Canada and the US. Further add to this the fact that not allowing an open domestic discussion even on the bare facts of the war furthers our credibility crisis. Even our truths become less credible. One ought to feel sorry for the able diplomats of the MEA. Their political and national security masters have made their job more difficult even before they have begun. So, India's moral claims now invite a long 'meh' at worst. And since our foreign policy establishment is easily satiated with the meaningless communique that makes the evening headline, that is at best what we get. The other disposition impeding clear thinking is our approach to realism. The current dispensation's interpretation of realism is not actual realism about the state of the world: It is a simple inversion of some perceived past of Indian foreign policy. This supposed realism, with its fantasies of transcending India's South Asian context, has led to such a spectacular misreading of the neighbourhood that we have lost much of the neighbourhood. This is a realism that thought that the excessive courting of America was a sign of machismo. America is important to India. India's political economy might yet save India from selling the entire store to the US. But one of the deepest ironies in the recent excessive craving for validation from the US is that the pro-America lobby has never had confidence about building India's own strengths. It portrayed domestic defeatism as a form of strength. It is not unwise to try and cut workable deals with the Trump administration. But to think these deals will be our salvation, or that they will miraculously be a catalyst for domestic reform, make us secure against China, enhance our global moral standing, allow us to sort out our problems in the neighbourhood, is sheer fantasy. And it prevents us from seeing what the American project is: A project of global dominance. Resisting it will require a different tool kit. A senior Chinese communist once said that regimes sometimes have to lie to the people, sometimes control information and produce propaganda. But then he added: 'While it might be necessary for leaders to sometimes lie to the people, it is important they do not lie to themselves.' Our lack of realism comes from the fact that our establishment has come to believe the lies it is trying to tell the people. The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express
New Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
One Nation, Two Laws: Digvijaya Singh's social media post kicks up political row
BHOPAL: Rajya Sabha member and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh's Facebook post sparked a political row on Wednesday. Captioned 'Ek Desh Do Kanoon' (One Nation, Two Laws), the post by the septuagenarian politician showed two pictures – one where the Kanwar Yatra is blocking the road and the other where a cop is seen kicking men offering namaz on the road. The post pictorially questioned two sets of actions by authorities on the religious practices of different communities. The post triggered angry reactions from the ruling BJP. Slamming the senior Congress leader over the post, the MP cabinet minister, Vishwas Sarang, termed Singh as 'Maulana Digvijaya Singh.' 'He only opposes Sanatan Dharma. He has not even spared the holy Kanwar Yatra. What else can be expected from a man (Singh) who has glorified anti-India Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, but questioned every operation of the Indian defence forces and never missed any opportunity to defame the Sanatan Dharma and Hindu sadhus. But mocking our festivals and holy Yatras through such social media posts will no longer be tolerated, he (Singh) needs to apologise,' Sarang said.
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Delhi court reserves order on Engineer Rashid's plea to attend Parliament
A Delhi court Tuesday reserved its order on an interim bail plea by Baramulla MP Engineer Rashid for attending the monsoon session of Parliament starting July 21. Rashid, who defeated National Conference leader Omar Abdullah in the Baramulla seat by over two lakh votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, has been lodged in Tihar jail since 2019 in a 2017 terror funding case. Represented by advocates Aditya Wadhwa, Vikhyat Oberoi and Nishita Gupta, Rashid argued in court that he should either be granted interim bail or permission to attend Parliament in custody, without payment of travel costs. The lawyers also argued that Rashid had been granted interim bail in September last year for campaigning for the elections and since this bail had been extended thrice, he could not be considered a security threat. Opposing his plea, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) argued that Rashid should not be granted bail and if he is allowed to attend Parliament in custody, then he should be made to pay the travel expenses. Rashid's lawyers argued that he shouldn't be made to pay travel expenses as he was seeking to attend Parliament as his public duty and not for some personal work. After hearing the arguments from both sides, Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh reserved the order for July 21. Earlier this year, the Delhi High Court had allowed Rashid to attend Parliament on two occasions – on March 10 and February 25. The MP was arrested on August 9, 2019, four days after the abrogation of Article 370 and the removal of J&K's special status. According to the NIA, Rashid used various public platforms to 'propagate the ideology of separatism and secessionism', and was closely associated with various terrorist organisations. The agency had also alleged that he wanted to 'legitimise' the United Jihad Council (UJC), a platform of anti-India militant groups in J&K. According to the NIA, Rashid's name cropped up during the interrogation of businessman and co-accused Zahoor Watali. After being chargesheeted in October 2019, a special NIA court framed charges against Rashid and others in March 2022 under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging war against the government), and 124A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code and for offences relating to terrorist acts and terror funding under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Time of India
3 days ago
- Sport
- Time of India
'ICC needs to look at the umpiring': Paul Reiffel in focus after 'anti-India' bias; facts tell different story
Ben Stokes of England talks with umpire Paul Reiffel on Day 1 of the 3rd England vs India Test at Lord's Cricket Ground. (Getty Images) India cricketers R Ashwin and Anil Kumble has raised concerns about umpire Paul Reiffel 's decision-making during the Lord's Test between England and India, suggesting potential bias in his decisions against India. During the fourth day's play, several controversial decisions led to heated discussions. A notable incident involved Joe Root being given not out by Reiffel to a Mohammed Siraj delivery, which replays showed would have clipped leg stump. Another contentious moment occurred when Indian captain Shubman Gill was given out caught behind off Brydon Carse, a decision later overturned on review. Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW! "My experience with Paul Reiffel... You need to talk to him. You need to set him up. I am not saying that you ask him to give it out. But he has this thing... whenever India bowl, he feels it's not out, whenever India bat, he feels it's out. If this is happening not just against India but against every team, then the ICC needs to look at the umpiring," Ashwin stated on his YouTube channel Ash Ki Baat. Shubman Gill blames 'judgement error' as Rishabh Pant run-out haunts India in Lord's heartbreak Referring to the Gill decision, Ashwin commented: "See this. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Đây có thể là thời điểm tốt nhất để giao dịch vàng trong 5 năm qua IC Markets Tìm hiểu thêm Undo I have a sedan. That can go through the gap between the bat and ball here. When I saw this the first time, I felt it was not out." Ashwin further elaborated on his concerns about Reiffel's decision-making patterns: "But this wasn't the first time (a wrong decision was given). My dad was watching the match with me and he was saying, 'If Paul Reiffel is there, we won't win.' Whenever Paul Reiffel is umpiring, decisions go against India. When we are bowling, umpire's call is usually not out. When we are batting, there's no umpire's call (in our favour). There's something there. My dad says whenever he is umpiring, India lose." Anil Kumble shared his perspective on the umpiring after one of Siraj's deliveries trapped Joe Root in front of the stumps. Upon review, the ball was shown to be hitting the stumps but the umpire's call rule came into effect. "It seems Paul Reiffel has decided that it is not going to be out. Anything close, not out," said the legendary leg-spinner. Fact check: Does Paul Reiffel have an anti-India bias? India vs England: India fall short at Lord's, England lead series 2-1 The match saw 11 decisions being reviewed when former Australia seamer Reiffel was the umpire. With England batting, India took two reviews, one was overturned while the other remained as is on umpire's call. During India's turn to bat, India's review was overturned while England's stayed not out as they chased a wicket. During the second innings of the Test, India took four reviews with three coming out unsuccessful, including one as umpire's call. Only one decision came out in India's favour. As India chased the win, they were successful in overturning one of two reviews they took. England, meanwhile, suffered the frustration of umpire's call on a not out call. 'Pretty cooked': Ben Stokes after leading England to Epic Lord's triumph In total, of the 11 dismissals that were put to on-field umpire Reiffel and subsequently reviewed, seven came out in India's favour. England could celebrate only four times after a review. Statistical analysis of Reiffel's umpiring record in matches involving India presents a different picture. In 39 international matches across formats where Reiffel has officiated, India have won 23 matches, maintaining a win percentage of 58.97%. The DRS statistics show that out of 21 "umpire's call" verdicts in reviews against Reiffel's decisions, 11 have favoured India, representing 52.38% of such calls. In Test matches specifically, 14 out of 21 successful reviews against Reiffel's decisions have been in India's favour. Catch Rani Rampal's inspiring story on Game On, Episode 4. Watch Here!
