The Sindoor Dividend

ALTHOUGH A THICK SHEAF OF PAPERS IS USUALLY VISIBLE on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desk prior to a speech in Parliament, he does not often consult it. Relying on his ability to focus and work through the argumentation of his lengthy interventions, Modi does not have much need for notes and references. But on Tues­day, July 29, evening around 7PM, just as he got to the meat of his response to the dis­cussion on Operation Sindoor in Lok Sabha, he paused and glanced at the papers before him with some deliberation. Not only did he want to be on the spot with facts but he was also keen on ensuring his emphasis and the import of his remarks was not lost.

On the night of May 9, said the prime minister, US Vice President JD Vance called him re­peatedly, seeking an urgent word. “In the course of events, dur­ing the night of May 9, the vice president of the United States tried to talk to me. He was trying for an hour, but I was in a meeting with the armed forces… Later, I called back and said you had called three-four times. The US vice president told me over the phone that Pakistan is planning a big attack,” Modi said. Before elaborating on his response, he paused to note, “Those who do not understand, will not understand,” evok­ing a twitter from the treasury benches. The comment was aimed at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who interjected to demand Modi deny claims that US President Donald Trump pressured India into a ceasefire. “My answer was, if this is what Pakistan intends to do, it will pay a very high cost… If Pakistan at­tacks, we will answer with a big attack. This was my answer and I further said, a bullet (goli) will be answered with a cannon shell (gola).” Pakistan has understood that in future, India’s response will be stronger than in the past. “Today’s India is progressing rapidly with the mantra of atmanirbharta (self-reliance)… But the country is also seeing that while India is progressing, Congress is increasingly dependent on Pakistan for issues… It is importing issues from Pakistan,” he said.

The prime minister, who spoke for close to an hour and 45 minutes, divided his carefully considered reply to the debate on Operation Sindoor into three parts. He began by dwelling on the chain of events and the nature of India’s attack first on terror hubs and then on Pakistan’s air fields and radars. He then rebutted at length the allegation that India succumbed to US pressure and called off military operations and recalled the actions of previous Congress governments in failing to secure the national interest. He then linked these themes to argue that Congress’ pursuit of appeasement politics is the root cause of its failure to take decisive steps against terrorism. “Congress has always compromised on national security. The people who are asking me why has Paki­stan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) not been reclaimed… They should answer whose government allowed Pakistan to occupy PoK. The answer is clear,” Modi said and then delivered the punchline he was building up to. “If terrorism grew during Congress raj, a big reason is the politics of appeasement, the politics of vote banks.” Referring to the reported comments of Congress leader Salman Khurshid in 2012 that Sonia Gandhi was moved to tears when she saw images of the Batla House encounter, Modi said, “A big Congress leader cried over the slain ter­rorists,” even as Priyanka Gandhi could be seen shaking her head in disagree­ment. Khurshid’s comments at a rally in Azamgarh, where leading members of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) came from, were not the only instance of Con­gress leaders questioning the actions of their own government. Former Mad­hya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh had also raised doubts about the National Human Rights Commission’s probe into the Batla House encounter although he denied having done so later. At the time some Congress leaders were made privy to photographs extracted from the mobile phones used by the IM terrorists to record their attacks before they stopped levelling accusations of a false encounter.

Congress’ allegations that the Modi government agreed to a ceasefire due to US pressure, that the killing of 26 tourists in Pahal­gam in Jammu & Kashmir on April 22 was an intelligence failure, and that it used the armed forces for political purposes lay at the heart of the party’s attack. The questioning of Operation Sindoor was led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who picked on Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s speech to claim India agreed to a truce on the intervening night of May 7-8 itself. “He said, at 1:35AM we called Pakistan and told them that we have hit non-military targets and we do not want escalation. These are the words of the defence minister of India. Maybe he does not understand what he revealed. The DGMO [director general of military operations] of India was told by the Government of India to ask for a ceasefire at 1:35 at night itself on the night of Operation Sindoor.”

The misrepresentation was clearly deliberate as Singh had made no such claim. The message conveyed by the Indian direc­tor general of military operations explained the rationale of the attacks on terror hubs but this did not amount to a request for ceasefire that happened only when the Pakistan DGMO sought a cessation of hostilities on May 10. Rahul followed up by say­ing, “When we say we do not want escalation, it means I have slapped you once, I will not slap you again… Why? Because the goal of this exercise was to protect the prime minister’s image… the goal of this exercise was to make sure he uses the Air Force to protect his image.”

The message was elaborated by other Congress speakers like first-term MP Praniti Shinde who said Operation Sindoor was a stunt. “Operation Sindoor sounds patriotic, but it was a tamasha (stunt) performed on the media. No one is saying what was achieved by Operation Sindoor,” she said.

The questioning of Operation Sindoor, after a condemnation of the terror attack at Pahalgam, is part of a consistent pattern. In a Janus-faced response to the 1998 Pokhran II nuclear tests conducted by the Vajpayee government, Congress, under Sonia Gandhi’s leadership, praised scien­tists and the military for the successful nuclear explosions but criticised the gov­ernment for using the tests for political ends. Sonia issued a statement 10 days af­ter the tests and said “real strength” lies in restraint and the fruits of science would be better utilised to serve the poor. At the time, the Clinton administration threatened to impose sanctions on India and Congress perhaps saw an opportunity. However, the charge of misusing national security objec­tives for political purposes is not dissimilar to Congress’ criticism of Operation Sindoor.

Modi sought to zero in on the main Opposition party’s shifting stance, pointing out that Congress demanded proof of the 2016 surgical strikes on terror launch pads in PoK after the attack on the Army camp in Uri. “When they found the public mood to be supportive of the surgical strikes, they began saying they had done it too,” said the prime minister. In the case of the 2019 air raid on Balakot following the Pulwama attack, Congress had asked for evidence that the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) camp was indeed hit by Indian missiles. During the 1999 war, Congress sought the convening of a special session of Parliament, and in the case of Operation Sindoor, asked for explanations for the failure to prevent Pahalgam and why the military action was halted.

Congress sought to interpret the statements of the defence minister and Home Minister Amit Shah that India had at the very outset said it did not want to escalate the confrontation with Paki­stan as an imposition of political restraints on the armed forces that, among other things, led to a loss of fighter jets. Rahul Gandhi questioned Modi’s assertion that a “new normal” had been set in India’s response to terrorism where an act of terror would invite serious reprisals by pointing to Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir’s lunch with US President Donald Trump as a failure of Indian foreign policy. The somewhat simplistic interpretation of India’s redefined anti-terror stance suits political articulation but government speakers outlined a principle or doctrine where­by India’s right to self-defence extends to targeting Pakistan-based terror organisations and their state sponsors.

Shah addressed the Congress argument, saying, “We are being asked, if you were in such a good position, why did you not go to war… there are several consequences of war. To do so (go to war) or not requires thought.” The minister would be aware that the argument could be easily flipped if hostilities had prolonged, with the government accused of creating prolonged regional instability. A war that spilled into weeks and required a major diversion of national resources was not in India’s interest. In a different context, Trump displayed similar skill in hitting Iran’s key nuclear sites and yet ensuring neither Tehran nor Tel Aviv escalated hostilities that might have led to a shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz. Concluding a confrontation in keeping with stated objectives on suitable terms meets the strategic goal of con­trolling the escalation matrix—that was the upshot of Shah’s re­marks but he did counter the political argument too, referring to Jawaharlal Nehru’s decision to accept a ceasefire with Pakistan in 1948 at a time when Indian forces had turned the tide on the enemy. Rahul Gandhi’s view that the Indian declaration that any terror attack would be treated as an act of war undermines deter­rence is a selective application of mind, as the posture is intended to convey that intent will be backed by a readiness to use force.

THE DISCUSSION ON Congress’ preparedness to allow vote-bank considerations to prevail in the fight against ter­ror was potentially the most damaging for the party and the public perception on this count can settle the debate whether the Modi government is a better bet on national security. Modi brought the subject centrestage, saying, “Despite overwhelming global evidence linking the (26/11) attackers to Pakistan, Congress tried to push narratives of ‘saffron terror’… They were more inter­ested in protecting their vote banks.” He referred to a WikiLeaks account to recall that a Congress leader confided his opinion to a US diplomat that Hindu organisations could be as dangerous as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Congress’ bid to focus on the failure to track down the perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack lost its sting with three terrorists being cornered and shot on Monday, July 28.

In what can only be a case of bad timing, former Home Min­ister P Chidambaram’s remarks that terrorists need not be from Pakistan gave Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just the ammunition it was looking for and its speakers did not fail to present this as a “clean chit” to Pakistan. Aware that the trial court was to pro­nounce the verdict on the Malegaon blasts case on Thursday, July 31, Shah emphasised attempts to promote the saffron terror theory when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in office. It was ironic that it was Chidambaram who slipped up on the identity of the Pahalgam terrorists. Under his charge the home ministry had made an astonishing U-turn on the Lashkar plot to kill a high-profile leader, understood to be Modi who was then chief minister, in Gujarat in 2004. Among the four Lashkar terrorists killed was a Mumbra teen called Ishrat Jahan and it was claimed by her family members that she had nothing to do with the terror organisation. The encounter had been carried out on the basis of Central intelligence inputs and in its first affidavit filed be­fore the trial court, the home ministry had identified the module members as Lashkar. But a second affidavit said there was insuf­ficient evidence of Lashkar links. A political controversy shook UPA when former Home Secretary GK Pillai revealed that the initial affidavit was altered at the “politi­cal level”, indicating a bid to place the Gu­jarat government in the dock for a “false” encounter by suggesting those killed were not terrorists. At the time, Chidambaram had said he had made small editorial changes to the affidavit. Speaking in Ra­jya Sabha on July 30, Chidambaram said time will tell if Operation Sindoor would prove to be decisive. But at the same time, he agreed that it was a strong and success­ful response which was at variance with Rahul’s claim that the armed forces were used to boost Modi’s image.

Although the I.N.D.I.A. bloc ranged itself against the government, not all con­stituents echoed Congress’ aggressive rejec­tion of Operation Sindoor as a public relations gimmick. Nationalist Congress Party (NCP, Sharad Pawar)’s Supriya Sule, who had led one of the parliamentary delegations that visited foreign countries to explain India’s rationale for attacking terrorist sites in Pakistan, ap­preciated the government’s decision to reach out to the Opposition. “It was the greatness of the prime minister that he showed faith in the Opposition leaders to lead the delegations,” she said, even as she defended Congress’ record in confronting Pakistan.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) Kanimozhi ar­gued that while the parliamentary delegations—she had led one herself—were a good step, such a situation should not have arisen. Her colleague A Raja took on the government speakers for referring to the alleged failures of Nehru and Indira Gandhi rather than accepting responsibility for the current situation. Barring a second-rung Trinamool Congress (TMC) speaker, no other I.N.D.I.A. constituent outright rejected the utility of Operation Sindoor.

The BJP attack on Congress’ record on national security and foreign policy was an inversion of sorts. The Opposition party and Delhi’s commentariat have seen BJP as unschooled in international affairs. Yet Congress found itself under unrelenting fire from a party it has seen as a gauche and rustic opponent lacking in nu­ance and imagination. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar joined issue with Rahul Gandhi’s statement that the Modi government ignored the Pakistan-Chi­na collusive threat: “If you had listened to me, you would not have lost five planes.” Jaishankar began by tracing the Pakistan-China collaboration back to Is­lamabad’s decision to hand over Shaks­gam to China and reminding Congress media in-charge Jairam Ramesh of his coining the term ‘Chindia’ with positive connotations.

The debate on Operation Sindoor saw, not surprisingly, the fault lines between ‘secular’ and ‘nationalist’ politics coming to the fore. In attempting to dent BJP’s claim to represent the ‘nationalist (rashtrawadi)’ opinion, Congress was reminded of its susceptibility to allowing political considerations influ­ence anti-terror policy. Congress opposed the anti-terror law Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (POTA) legislated by the Vajpayee government on grounds that it targeted minorities, in particular Muslims. UPA scrapped the law after it assumed office, only to bring back parts of it by amending the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) after the 26/11 Mumbai at­tack. It also mandated the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to investigate terrorist crimes. The need to do so was simple: a law was needed to curb, investigate and put on trial terror­ist organisations and their members. In the end, past baggage and its overreach in attempting to dismiss Operation Sindoor in its entirety saw Congress failing in what any opposition is expected to do—put the government in the dock.

2025 India-Pakistan conflictAmit ShahBJPCongressDiplomatic OutreachNarendra ModiOperation SindoorPolitical DividendRahul Gandhi