By Rati Agnihotri
Operation Sindoor marks many firsts not just in the context of India’s response to the menace of cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan, but also in terms of India’s strategic doctrine impacting its engagement with the world at large.
PM Modi’s crystal-clear assertion that Operation Sindoor is now India’s official policy against terror and that moving forward, an act of terror will be treated as an act of war and responded to accordingly should be read as much symbolically as literally. This signaling is meant as much for the global community as for Pakistan. Despite the cessation of hostilities from both sides, the government has emphasised repeatedly that Operation Sindoor is ongoing.
Operation Sindoor signals a decisive change in India’s strategic narrative, and it has brought about a major paradigm shift in India’s foreign policy, the glimpses of which one has already witnessed in the light of the developments surrounding the Prime Minister’s recently concluded 3-nation visit to Cyprus, Canada, and Croatia, respectively. The bilateral and multilateral engagements held during this visit have already donned the significance of a curtain raiser heralding the changing contours of India’s foreign policy.
The choice of countries on PM Modi’s itinerary was also rather unconventional. He became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Cyprus in over two decades and the first Indian PM to ever visit Croatia.
The choice of Cyprus and Croatia on the itinerary, relatively lesser-known small European countries perhaps also signals a paradigm shift in the dynamics of India’s engagement with Europe. For a long time, India’s Europe policy has been characterised by a Western European tilt. However, over the past couple of years, India has been pushing those boundaries by reaching out to a more diverse set of European countries including Poland, Denmark, Slovakia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Austria, Greece, Belgium, Portugal, etc.
India is now proactively exploring options in Europe beyond its traditional association with geopolitical heavyweights like the UK, Germany, France, and Germany. The diversification of its Europe basket provides India with a greater degree of leverage in terms of seeking mutual alignment with its strategic interests.
The approach has already yielded significant results. For example, India’s bid for permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council is supported by several European countries including UK, France, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia, and Cyprus.
In the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, one can expect a further deepening of this diversification. The response of the global community to the operation has also been an eye-opener for India in terms of laying bare the double standards of powerful Western countries vis-à-vis terrorism.
While most Western countries have displayed all the right optics and paid lip service to India’s fight against terrorism, they have stopped short of endorsing India’s right to protect its boundaries from the menace of terrorism. The glaring dichotomy in response to terrorism in one’s backyard and one that impacts the Indian subcontinent is largely rooted in the cold and calculated pragmatics of geopolitical interest.
Thus, even as India sent multi-party delegations to countries across the world to reiterate its strong stance against terrorism, the US government made no bones about hosting Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir whose hateful, inflammatory, and bigoted speech highlighting the supposed significance of the “Two-Nation Theory” covertly sanctioned and rather called for anti-Hindu violence by emphasising the supposed “differences” between Hindus and Muslims and how it is supposedly impossible for the two communities to coexist under one nationality.
Thus, India’s foreign policy post-Operation Sindoor is undergoing a massive transformation on various fronts. First, diplomatic niceties are giving way to an unequivocal directness of approach. That is, India is getting more direct in terms of seeking clear alignment with its strategic interests, most importantly vis-à-vis its national security concerns and its decisive fight against terrorism. This was evident in India’s unique initiative involving the visits of multi-party delegations to more than 50 countries to communicate to expose Pakistan’s state-sponsored terror machinery in front of the global community.
Secondly, Operation Sindoor has already become a significant component of India’s foreign policy. During Prime Minister Modi’s recent visits to Cyprus, Canada, and Croatia, India emphasised its tough stance against terrorism at various bilateral and multilateral meets. Expect this momentum to get further amped up in the near future. India’s strategic narrative as defined by Operation Sindoor will play a significant role in shaping the contours of India’s international diplomacy.
Thirdly, India’s consolidation of the Global South in its quest for a new world order will pick up even more pace in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor. It is from various countries of the Global South that India has received the maximum support in its fight against terrorism. The country’s diplomatic outreach on Operation Sindoor has yielded concrete results in countries like Colombia, Panama, Guyana, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
Thus, India will further consolidate the global South – seeking a consensus on its decisive fight against global terrorism, and points of convergence on many other issues for refashioning a new global order rooted in the principles of equality and fairness, rather than being governed by colonial frames and the prevailing discourse of Eurocentrism.
Now, let’s discuss in detail how this paradigm shift in India’s foreign policy after Operation Sindoor is already being reflected in PM Modi’s recent visits to Cyprus, Canada, and Croatia.
The strategic significance of Cyprus comes partly from its strong anti-Turkey stance given Turkey’s infringement of its sovereignty. During his visit to Cyprus, PM Modi conveyed India’s consistent and unwavering support for the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of Cyprus. This was a no words minced clear message to both Pakistan and Turkey, signaling a newfound directness in approach and a clear-cut alignment with national security interests in India’s international diplomacy rulebook.
Also, since Cyprus is set to assume the Presidency of the European Union by 2026, India hopes to wrap up the trade deal with EU by the end of the year. Besides, Cyprus’s unequivocal support for India’s bid for the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council is also crucial.
In his address at one of the sessions of the G7 Summit in Canada, PM Modi reiterated India’s firm stand against terrorism, while also implicitly exposing the hypocrisy and double standards of the Western world in their response to Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism affecting India.
“Will countries understand the grave threat posed by terrorism only when they become a target?”, the PM posed a decisively hard-hitting question to the global community. Without naming any country or pointing fingers at any entity in particular, he asked how perpetrators of terrors and victims of terrorist attacks could be equated. Finally, PM Modi sought accountability from global institutions on India’s behalf, urging them to act decisively rather than being “mute spectators to terrorism”.
The issue of terrorism also figured in the bilateral talks held between PM Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. The Canadian PM said he wishes to work with India on “the issues that we look to tackle together, from energy security…the future of artificial intelligence, to the fight that we have against transnational repression and against terrorism”. Although the mention of “transnational repression” was perhaps an oblique reference to the issue of Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s killing, the fact that Carney immediately balanced it out by adding terrorism, a term that also broadly encompasses India’s concerns at the Khalistani terrorism ecosystem in Canada, is reflective of a vastly changed narrative in the context of India-Canada bilateral relations.
PM Modi’s decision to travel to the G7 Summit in Canada under the country’s new leadership sends a strong message to the Khalistani ecosystem and signals the evolving dynamism of India’s foreign policy that is not bound by the dogmas of preconceived notions or premediated cliches.
During his Croatia visit, PM Modi expressed gratitude for the country’s support following the Pahalgam terror attack and emphasised India and Croatia’s shared set of values in combating terrorism. The two countries also made significant commitments regarding the deepening of their defence partnership. The Indian Prime Minister said that defence production along with training and military exchanges, would be focus areas of the cooperation, drawing from the existing Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation signed between India and Croatia in 2023.
Croatia’s positioning as a crucial maritime gateway to Europe makes it even more strategically significant for India, especially in the context of the ambitious India-Middle East-Europe – Economic Corridor project. According to the official statement released following the bilateral meeting of Indian Prime Minister Modi and his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenković, both sides noted the significance of improving connectivity including through the IMEC project and agreed to deepen cooperation in shipping domains and ports in the view of the long maritime traditions of both India and Croatia.
India is also exploring various unconventional options in its global engagement guided by the pragmatics of its strategic interest. For example, India recently reached out to Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, despite the fact the New Delhi has yet not officially recognised the Taliban government. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had a telephone conversation with the Taliban’s Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. Following the conversation, the External Affairs Minister referred to the conversation in a post on X – “Good conversation with Acting Afghan Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi this evening. Deeply appreciate his condemnation of the Pahalgam terrorist attack.”
In another diplomatic move marking a significant shift in its policy in the Korean Peninsula, India recently resumed diplomatic operations at its embassy in Pyongyang after a three-and-a-half- year hiatus. India appointed Aliawati Longkumer as its next ambassador to North Korea.
These new developments reflect a new trend in India’s foreign policy – one that increasingly prioritises alignment with strategic interests over hollow moral posturing.
As India creates multiple new equations of various permutations and combinations vis-à-vis its bilateral partnerships and multilateral engagements, it will get increasingly challenging for prominent Western countries to use Pakistan as a strategic geopolitical tool against India.
