India will treat any terror strike as an act of war

India today put Pakistan on notice when it said that any future act of terrorism will be considered an Act of War against India and will be responded accordingly. This is a major change of India’s stance in dealing with terrorism, something that has plagued it for decades. It signals an end to the era of pusillanimity that characterised Indian responses to terrorism in the past.

It is significant that the statement, issued by top government officials, was made during a war-like situation with Pakistan when the latter country retaliated against India’s taking out of terrorist bases in its territory.

In the past, governments in India have responded to terrorist violence without a systematic policy of addressing the external sources of terrorism. Only one country has sponsored terrorism on Indian soil on a regular basis: Pakistan. In the 1993 Mumbai bombings in which 257 people lost their lives, gangster-turned-terrorist Dawood Ibrahim and his local proxies were involved. Ibrahim continues to find shelter in Pakistan. In the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks in which 173 people lost their lives was planned and executed by Lashkar e Taiba terrorists who had been trained and dispatched from Pakistan. The list of terrorist activities in which Pakistan has been involved is considerably longer.

After the 2009 Mumbai attacks, India virtually sued for peace with Pakistan even as New Delhi allegedly followed a policy of trying to “isolate Pakistan diplomatically.” That did not yield any change in Pakistan’s behaviour and it continued to send terrorist squads with impunity to India.

WHAT DOES THE NEW POLICY IMPLY?

In the past two major incidents of terror strikes fomented by Pakistan, directly or indirectly using local proxies, India responded by an ever more aggressive response curve. In 2016 after the Uri attacks that lead to the death of 19 India soldiers, India launched a cross-border raid into Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) to destroy terrorist launching pads. In 2019 after the Pulwama terrorist attack in which 46 CRPF troopers were killed by a suicide bomber, India made the most extensive use of air power after 1971—targeting a location well inside Pakistan—to hit a terrorist location.

These responses were in the nature of one-off formulations taking into consideration immediate circumstances. The same policy was followed—on a much more extensive and at a far more intense level—after the Pahalgam terrorist atrocity.

While the response to the latest terrorist attack is still on, a major change has been effected.

This, in effect, implies:

– The envelope of responses will not be limited to a small kinetic response with an immediate target/goal in mind. All military assets will come into play at once.

– The response will not be only military in nature. India could, for example, turn the river water taps in the Western flowing rivers in J&K off.

– The nature of diplomatic response will be far more intense than it has been in the past when India had to suffer such atrocities.

2025 India-Pakistan warNarendra Modinew policyOperation SindoorPahalgamterror attack