Prime Minister Narendra Modi is known for his ability to change paradigms. And that’s exactly what he did during his 25-minute speech to the nation on May 12. Obviously emotional about the barbaric massacre of innocent Indian Hindus in Pahalgam on April 22 by Pakistani or Pakistan sponsored terrorists, he laid out the ground rules for India’s future engagement with Pakistan. The message was loud and clear.

Any future act of terror, he said, would be viewed as an act of war and would invite a crushing military response not just against terrorist camps, but also against their sponsors, namely, the Pakistani military and government. Nuclear blackmail of the sort Pakistan has indulged in since 1990 would not be a deterrent. Second, he said, since Pakistan only wants to talk to India about Kashmir, India would henceforth only talk about Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir and terrorism. Third, he said, until India was absolutely convinced that Pakistan had stopped sponsoring terrorists, the Indus Water Treaty would be ‘held in abeyance’ which means Pakistan is now at India’s mercy as far as water is concerned. Thus the old soft approach towards Pakistan has now been replaced by an entirely muscular one. The message is “please behave, or else”. The shock in Pakistan must be immense because it had convinced itself, with good reason, that India would not, in the final analysis, retaliate with so much force. So strong was this belief that neither the retaliation after the attack on Uri in 2016, nor after the attack at Pulwama in 2019 served as a sufficient warning to the Pakistani military establishment and government. Both thought they could live with this level of retaliatory actions. But now under the new Modi doctrine, the two will have to learn that it’s a different, much more belligerent India that they are dealing with. The gloves are off.

It must also have come home to Pakistan how barring China and Türkiye no other country, not even the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries, came to its help. Even for China and Türkiye the help was as commercial as it was strategic because both have sold arms to Pakistan. In other words, never before has Pakistan been so isolated because the world now sees it as an unstable country whose state apparatus is fully controlled by the military. This has always been a problem since 1958 when the first military coup happened but it’s worse now with even the army chief being an Islamist who thinks in terms of preordained destiny.

The ball is now thus firmly in Pakistan’s court not just in the matter of its sponsorship of terror but also how it wants to be governed. The people of Pakistan will have to make a gigantic effort to push the military back to the barracks. It’s worth recalling in this context that after the massive defeat in December 1971 when India broke Pakistan up, the military did return to the barracks but not for long, just five years. This time the reversion should be permanent. Hopefully, the new Modi doctrine will prove useful to this end.

Published on May 13, 2025