From Restraint to Resolve

The clinical strikes undertaken during Operation Sindoor, shorn of bellicosity and theatrics, reinforced the quiet, lethal confidence of the Indian state rooted in the 5,000-year-old grammar of statecraft. A grammar where Kautilya’s realism and Gandhi’s restraint are not contradictions, but complementary tools of the same kit. However, Pakistan, predictably, responded with noise. It is good at such superfluous things. Loud denials, blustery press conferences, conspiracy theories, and claims of an illegitimate victory. What Operation Sindoor revealed was not just India’s undeniable tactical superiority but also the widening canyon between two rivalrous ideas of statehood. On one side is the Indian republic - vast, messy, argumentative, plural and maturing into its ancient role as a Vishwaguru. On the other lies a garrison state, shrivelling under the weight of its own hoary mythologies. While India acted from foresight, Pakistan reacted with grievous delusion. This was not a story of two countries trading fire. This was the story of one country outgrowing the need to explain itself and the other incapable of understanding why.

Pakistan’s strategic bankruptcy

Pakistan, since its doomed birth in 1947, has inhabited a paradox. Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar called it a state that existed in the opposition. It is not an organic nation, but a negation of all that India represents. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s aim was not a separate territory but a sanction to practice the worst form of political brinkmanship, which oppresses even the Ahmadiyyas and Bohras. In choosing a hardline reading of religion as the cornerstone of nationhood, Pakistan locked itself into a narrow and brittle identity, perpetually threatened by far more culturally confident India. Borrowing from Hobbes’ Leviathan, Pakistan’s state apparatus placed itself in a permanent state of siege against India. But unlike Hobbes’ sovereign who monopolises violence to prevent a “nasty and brutish life”, the Pakistani Leviathan, in direct contravention of the norms of a republic, placed its trust in a spiteful military. This praetorian institution behaves less like a servant of the people and more like a mercenary corporation with guns. The result is a state where foreign policy is dictated not by diplomacy but by GHQ Rawalpindi.

Pakistan’s approach to geopolitics is purely theological. It operates through the lens of Ibn Khaldun’s tribalistic nationalism, leading to a peculiar miasma of ideology and insecurity that breeds strategic irrationality. And this has real-world consequences. Pakistan’s open support for jihadist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed is to hone them into blades which ‘bleed India by a thousand cuts’ and ultimately help establish the mythical ghazwa-e-hind — an eschatological vision of Pakistan’s conquest of India. This is pure delirium. No Clausewitzian general would sponsor terrorism against a neighbour ten times your size. But again, Clausewitz did not give his doctrines for failing states run by military oligarchs.

Pakistan’s misguided obsession with Kashmir is less about territory and more about validation. Without Kashmir, Pakistan’s ideological claim to nationhood is hollow. Because a prosperous and thriving Kashmir in India is the direct anathema of Pakistan’s protestations that India mistreats its minorities. And so, like the tragicomic Macbeth haunted by the ghosts of irrelevance, Pakistan repeatedly lunges at India. Through attacks like in Pahalgam, through the infiltration of terrorists, through vapid rhetoric, and through empty sabre rattling by brandishing the now redundant nuclear threat; only to retreat into sulking mode when it faces defeat.

India’s strategic restraint

In stark contrast, India has a more realistic strategy. Kautilya understood the world as it is, not as it should be. Indian statecraft, therefore, evolved not from a place of paranoia but maturity. For decades this manifested as strategic restraint. Even after the Kargil War, India did not cross the LoC. But the 21st century has witnessed a paradigm shift. After the Uri attack in 2016, Pulwama in 2019, and now Pahalgam in 2025, India responded with cross-border strikes. Operation Sindoor didn’t just strike across the border, it cleared the fog off decades of strategic ambiguity. It marked the end of a phase where India absorbed and endured. This was not an escalation. It was emancipation from the illusion that Pakistan is still a peer or even a coherent state. It was realism borne out of the Mahabharata’s Shishupala doctrine. India is ready to forgive 100 times, but the 101st infraction is a bridge too far.

Shattering the myth of parity

Pakistan likes to pretend that it is India’s near-equal, thanks to nuclear weapons and due to consistent hyphenation of India and Pakistan by the global west. A dispassionate look at the cold, hard numbers is enough to dissuade one from this pipe dream. India’s GDP is ~$4 trillion while Pakistan’s is ~$400 billion. India’s defence budget is ~8x Pakistan’s defence budget. India’s FOREX reserves are in excess of $600 billion, while Pakistan is lucky to not default on the balance of payments. India has almost eliminated extreme poverty, whereas Pakistan continues to have one of the highest poverty rates in Asia.

If anything, India’s long-term strategic aim should not be war, but Pakistan’s irrelevance. This is already happening. Post the abrogation of Article 370, Kashmir is a closed chapter internationally. India enjoys rich ties with the Arab states, leaving Pakistan’s pan-Islamic pitch sound like a broken record. Today’s India is a spacefaring, manufacturing powerhouse, demographically young, intensely plural, economically robust and a uniquely democratic giant. Pakistan, meanwhile, is a rentier state addicted to IMF loans. Its youth is increasingly radicalised and its internal politics are queered by the heavy hand of the state. Pakistan remains trapped in the resentment cul-de-sac.

The ideal solution, thus, is to let Pakistan stew in its own contradictions and continue with its shenanigans while India continues its march forward towards a brighter and better future to fulfil its inevitable tryst with destiny.

The writer is an incoming civil servant and writes occasionally on public affairs. Views expressed are personal