Op Sindoor and the Resetting of India’s Engagement with the West

What strikes an observer most on the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor is how much the world has changed in the last one year — from being a strategic partner, India has become a “hellhole” for the US President, the army with a nation has yet again become an instrument of neocolonial designs in West Asia, and most importantly, India recalibrated its relationship with China, resetting it from outright hostility to cautious good neighbourliness. Some of these changes were driven by US imperialism and its tool, Pakistan, in the Indian subcontinent, but the most substantial changes for India have been the result of native ingenuity.

The massacre of 26 honeymooners and tourists on April 22 at the scenic spot of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir was a trap. And now it appears that it was not just a Pakistani snare, but a larger Western set-up using trusted Islamist terrorists as bait. India responded by bombing nine sites of terror infrastructure used to train foot soldiers of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Muzaffarabad of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and deep inside Pakistan's Punjab province, including Bahawalpur and Muridke. 

Pakistani retaliation resulted in an aerial engagement, which yet again proved Indian superiority, simply because there were no visible hits. Pakistan had sent missiles towards high-value targets in Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, and Delhi. But the Russian S-400 and the indigenous air defence mechanism proved effective, not allowing a single military or civilian objective of significance to be hit. There is no evidence nor satellite imagery of Indian losses to buttress Pakistani claims. 

While rushing into the Western-designed Pakistani trap, India turned the tables by bombing the Nur Khan Air Force base, which is close to the Strategic Plans Division, or the nuclear command headquarters. Whether the base had a nuclear storage facility or not remains an unanswered question. But the West has not forgiven India for this attack that exposed who really controls the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. US President Donald Trump quickly intervened to call for a ceasefire, soon followed by the Pakistani DGMO’s phone conversation with his Indian counterpart. India agreed.

Meanwhile, the Western press erupted with war poetry about Pakistan downing Indian jets. So what? Any armed conflict entails losses of men and material, and an aerial engagement, by definition, involves aircraft losses. A long-sanctioned country like Iran could easily shoot down some of the most modern US aircraft, yet there was no similar war poetry from London. The very fact that the Western press and its Indian affiliates chose to highlight a few losses, if any, of Indian aircraft instead of the successful targeting of Pakistan’s nuclear command-linked infrastructure proved which way the westerlies were blowing. 

The West uses the media as a strategic force multiplier and also a tactical instrument during conflicts and military operations. So, the huge global media hype over the loss of Indian jets was a clear signal of the Western hostility that framed both the Pahalgam massacre and the retaliatory attacks. It was also a clear indication that the West refuses to endorse India’s right to respond to attacks on civilians with kinetic force. Trump’s needless intervention seeking a ceasefire, which would have likely happened anyway, was another Western institutional vote of no-confidence against India’s role as a great power and regional hegemon.

Thus, Operation Sindoor and its Western response to it marked the end of the Western dalliance with India as a regional great power to be built up against China. The reason, of course, is obvious. India refused to play a proxy role in the West’s attempt to contain China. India’s deliberate and cautious efforts to militarily disengage and diplomatically engage with China were bearing fruit through measured de-escalation. This is not what the West wanted. It wanted India to play the Ukrainian role and to keep China bogged down. Ever since the India-China de-escalation began and the Quad was rendered ineffective, regimes had begun falling across the Indian subcontinent — from Pakistan to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. 

Pahalgam was the trap set for the Indian government. If it didn’t act, it could be pilloried for being lily-livered, and if it did, war poetry could be written about the foolhardy conduct of the conflict. Someone even wrote how Pakistanis were smarter in wining and dining Western masters, stopping short of blaming Indians for not being better butlers. The post-Pahalgam response was supposed to be a no-win operation. It was meant to mark the end of the West’s security dalliance with India and restart the process of the US offering security guarantees to Pakistan. The intended post-script was obviously regime change in New Delhi.

It would have worked splendidly but for Trump abusing India and its Prime Minister. Indians, wired to love the West, including many in the current establishment, would have otherwise refused to read between the lines. Policymakers would likely have dismissed the West’s obvious tilt against India as routine diplomatic misdemeanours by a superpower had Trump not openly articulated what he, MAGA and the American establishment really thought about India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  

When India sought Russia’s help to befriend China, the move brightened the skies like a lightning strike across the icy Himalayan peaks. On September 1, the Russia-India-China huddle at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit meeting in the Chinese city of Tianjin offered both optics and optimism for a regrouping and the prospect of multilateralism prevailing over US imperialism. This was an outcome few Western pundits could have anticipated, because they had been made to believe that Modi would never walk across a room to shake hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping after the Ladakh standoff. However, the West had created a greater crisis of credibility for India, which was effectively defused well by the Russia-India-China huddle.

So much more has happened since. Pakistan has become the West’s chosen arbiter of peace and procurer of precious oil reserves. India is sitting out, no longer making claims of being a Vishwaguru — perhaps a much-needed lesson in self-awareness. But it has emerged from the Western snare relatively unscathed, and the amendment to Press Note 3 allowing Chinese FDI opens a new chapter in understanding Asian realities and India’s economic needs. China is a superpower, and India has much to learn and gain from its bigger neighbour.