Posted on August 03, 2025
Karachi:
Narendra Modi may have thought that May would bring her best time. After having successively increased the bet with Pakistan each time that militancy revisited Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (iiojk), its regime had a ready game book. Pakistan, scapegoat for its own failures on the disputed territory, would be “taught a lesson”. And if the last time had brought one or two Indian jets to descend – for his district on the right, lessons have surely been learned, “strategic costs” required. Pakistan, embraced with its own problems, political and economic, certainly could not follow the doctrine of the disproportionate response that the government of Modi had so carefully cultivated.
And so the military brass from India received carte blanche and the Sindoor operation was launched. In a few hours, however, or a few minutes, it was clear that he hung like an albatrosh around the Modi government’s neck.
This week, while the Parliament of India met for its monsoon session, the government was faced at its calculation time. Far from a victory tour, the debate on the Sindoor operation took place under a cloud of discomfort. The Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah, doubled, telling the legislators that the terrorists responsible for the attack on Pahalgam on April 22, who sparked the crisis, had been “neutralized” in a separate mission nicknamed the mahadev operation. But the moment of the announcement, clearly aligned with the parliamentary session, hausses the eyebrows. Was it a real update or a political theater designed to regain control of the story?
Opposition chief Rahul Gandhi, who showed an increasing comfort disruptor, did not buy it. He demanded the transparency of the costs of the operation, wondering why, if the mission had really succeeded, India was to rely on external mediation to stop hostilities.
Mediation of the end of hostilities and the safeguarding of South Asia of the “nuclear disaster” is something that US President Donald Trump has ordered credit for all the visible opportunities in the weeks following the Sindoor operation. To the point that some may wonder if he draws a kind of childish pleasure from rubbing the Nose of the Modi regime in the fact that, despite all the nationalist fanfaron, it is Washington’s call, not the Delhi directive, which attracted the curtain to this brassard act. Trump sang on this subject in consecutive press conferences, praised Pakistan’s excellent cooperation “, and almost published a mid-Crise dashboard where the government of Modi appeared as the reckless actor who needs supervision.
This story has not gone unnoticed either by the commentary on India, many of which are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions about the costs of strategic adventurism in a multipolar world. This was not how Modi’s third term had to begin. The electoral domination of the BJP had promised continuity, certainty and a foreign policy without apologies. Instead, barely two months in the new term, the titles are saturated with words as “climbing”, “de -escalation”, “rear” and “restraint”. And while New Delhi insists that the Sindoor operation was a “necessary corrective” for “intransigence” of Pakistan, the consensus emerge – even among the elite of national security of India – is that the operation has not succeeded in handing over a strategic reset.
More revealing is the emerging discourse in Indian praise. Sympathetic writers at BJP have gone from triumphalism to tactical justification. The most independent, however, do not punch. In The threadThe author and analyst Pushparaj Deshpande has exposed the government’s contradictions.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi said to Parliament that” the Indian armed forces had been granted to full freedom (operationally to attack Pakistan) “. However, this assertion was contradicted by a former defense attaché who revealed that the Indian air force suffered avoidable losses due to political instructions prohibiting strikes on Pakistani military facilities and air defense systems, “he wrote. Likewise, Deshpande stressed that the claim of the Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh in Rajya Sabha according to which “Pakistan could not cause any damage on the Indian side” was directly contradicted by the Chief of the Defense Staff of India (CDS), who confirmed the loss of IAF fighter planes during clashes with Pakistan. “These collectively suggest a deliberate attempt by the BJP government to hide the real costs of the operation, probably to protect the image of Prime Minister Modi,” he concluded.
An editorial in The Hindus has struck a similar note: “The strident approach of the Narendra Modi government seeks to change [what India claims is] The behavior of Pakistan and reassures its domestic audience … A demonstrated desire to use force against Pakistan in the event of a terrorism incident is a final turning point in India’s strategy … But there is not yet evidence that it works, although there has been the chest around it by the ruling party … The success of this approach is considerable. »»
The play went further, questioning the government’s contradictory claims: “The government claimed the success of the achievement of its objectives to launch a military operation and denied having acted under pressure to end the war. The head of the opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi demanded a sharp response to allegations repeated by US President Donald Trump.
The editorial did not chop the words in its closing assessment: “The [Indian] The government contradicts when it says that the operation was a success and that it continues … There was little self-reflection concerning the towers which led to the incident of terrorism, and if and how the government plans to resolve them. »»
Apart from the borders of India and more and more in them, the perception at the moment is as follows: India has played on a rapid and decisive action to reaffirm regional domination and rather found itself to return under international supervision, explaining the unaccountable counts and avoid questions on the drop in its own plane. And they are not only editors of editorial staff of Scenography. Retired military officials and political analysts – many of which are aligned on the strategic affirmation of Modi’s vision – now question the long -term viability of what they call “deterrent of performance”: the idea that visible and punitive strikes can substitute for a lasting strategy.
This course correction seems to take place as the official channels are trying to project confidence. The Ministry of External Affairs of India insists that the Sindoor operation sent an “unmistakable message” and that the commentators aligned with the BJP tried to crop the operation as a success precisely because it avoided the wider war. But it is unlikely that this sleight of hand holds up for a long time.
The unanswered question – why initiate an climbing doctrine if it must be abandoned halfway through diplomatic pressure – is now echoing not only to thinking groups and the editorial rooms, but also among the voters who expected their government to dictate the conditions, not to negotiate cessation of cessation via foreign capital.
Irony is bitter. Modi’s strongest affirmation on geopolitical weight has always been its ability to align the nationalist feeling with the calculation of realpolitik. But this time, Washington and Beijing – both wishing to preserve regional stability – seemed more in control of the crisis calendar than Delhi. And Islamabad, far from being “taught a lesson”, emerged with marked diplomatic points and the international credibility reinforced by its restraint and its preparation to engage.
It remains to be seen if the government of Modi will learn from this episode. But one thing is already clear: the game book that brought it at this moment may not transport it much further. Not without counting with the limits of the show and the growing costs of overcoming.
