India’s Operation Sindoor, launched in response to the Pahalgam terror attack, marked the country’s most decisive action yet against Pakistan’s long-standing ‘bleed India with a thousand cuts’ strategy. While it remains to be seen whether this will permanently end Islamabad’s proxy warfare, the missile strikes on its terror infrastructure may well have marked the close of a violent chapter.
Operation Tupac: Pakistan’s Decades-Long War from the Shadows
By the late 1960s, after the failures of the 1947 war and the disastrous Operation Gibraltar in 1965, Pakistan recognised that direct military confrontation with India was untenable. The humiliation of the 1971 war, which led to the creation of Bangladesh, pushed Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment to rethink its strategy. In response, it launched Operation Tupac, long-term covert operations to balkanise India. Designed by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), this operation sought to destabilise India through espionage, insurgency, and propaganda, while building proxy groups to wage a war from the shadows.
Approved by General Zia-ul-Haq in 1988, Operation Tupac unfolded in multiple phases. In its early stage, Pakistan’s ISI concentrated on forming and nurturing separatist outfits in Kashmir, Punjab, and among the diaspora in Western countries. Drawing from the Muslim Brotherhood’s playbook of cloaking Islamist agendas under innocuous English names, Jamaat-e-Islami rebranded its Halqa-e-Ahbab-e-Islami as the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). Simultaneously, groups like the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) emerged in the 1970s, and the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in 1976. These groups, later joined by Islami Chhatra Shibir in Bangladesh and APPNA in North America, laid the foundation of a growing transnational Islamist network.
The second phase marked a shift toward militancy. Hizbul Mujahideen was created in 1989, followed by Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1990. The JKLF’s separatist campaign escalated violence in Kashmir and triggered the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. But this war wasn’t fought solely with guns and grenades. Pakistan also built a parallel ecosystem of psychological warfare. ISI-backed platforms like The Message International (1989), Sound Vision (1988), the Kashmir American Council, World Kashmir Freedom Movement, and Sikh Youth of America (1989) worked to systematically tarnish India’s image globally by projecting it as oppressive and intolerant. Phase three of Tupac began under the Modi government in 2014, which initiated a crackdown on NGOs violating the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). Between 2014 and 2017, over 18,800 NGO licences were revoked, reducing foreign funding from ₹17,773 crore (2015–16) to ₹6,499 crore (2016–17). The 2016 demonetisation further disrupted terror funding.
Rebranding Conflict: The Shift from Armed Struggles to Narrative Wars
As a response, on 3 October 2016, a new Pakistan Senate strategy sought to internationalise the Kashmir issue by manipulating internal Indian divisions and aligning with global lobbying networks. This led to a rise in anti-India organisations across the US and UK. The war has simply moved to think tanks, social media, and the halls of global diplomacy. Existing groups were rebranded, ‘Justice Foundation Kashmir’ became the ‘Institute of International Affairs’, while new entities like ‘Americans for Kashmir’, ‘Stand with Kashmir’, ‘Friends of Kashmir’, and ‘Free Kashmir’ emerged. Simultaneously, ideological pressure groups like Equality Labs and the ‘Polis Project’ began to propagate narratives on caste and Hindutva, focusing solely on India’s alleged human rights issues. Backed by ISI, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Muslim Brotherhood, these groups intensified their activity after Article 370’s abrogation in 2019. Other rebrands included IMANET to ‘Save India’, and ‘Coalition Against Communalism’ to ‘Hindus for Human Rights’ (HFHR), led by Sunita Vishwanath. ‘The Kashmiri American Council’ and ‘World Kashmir Awareness Forum’ continued lobbying the US Congress. Despite superficial name changes, the actors and agendas remained consistent.
Framing India as a Fascist, Casteist, and Islamophobic State
The narrative of India as a fascist, religiously intolerant state gained traction post-2016. Western commentators such as Audrey Truschke, CJ Werleman, and Peter Friedrich circulated terms like “fascism” and “genocide” in relation to India. Pakistani leaders, including Imran Khan and Arif Alvi, echoed these claims. They were amplified online by manipulated social media trends and political voices within India, including the CPI(M), Congress and the so-called activists. ISI-backed Khalistani groups infiltrated the Delhi farmers’ protests, with Gurpatwant Singh Pannun of Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) falsely alleging assassination plots. In 2020 and 2021, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) labelled India a “Country of Particular Concern”. Though initially dismissed by the US State Department, persistent lobbying by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) led to India’s formal inclusion. Notably, Anurima Bhargava, then USCIRF assistant director, was connected to George Soros’s OSF.
Founded in 2016, Equality Labs grew from the earlier ‘Dalit Nation’ and was spearheaded by Thenmozhi Soundararajan, also linked to Soros’s network. Co-founders included Sharmin Hossain, daughter of JSD leader Mohammad Hossain, and Marie Zwick, formerly of TwoCircles.net, itself connected to the IAMC and ICNA-linked Maitreyi. Another key figure was Natasha Dar, a Pakistani-origin activist and granddaughter of 1971 genocide-accused Colonel Bashiruddin. Equality Labs promoted divisive caste narratives, echoed in domestic political calls for a caste census by the Indi Alliance. In 2019, ISI, alongside Al Jazeera, Turkey, and the Muslim Brotherhood, launched a global campaign around “Islamophobia in India”. Hashtags like #IslamophobiaInIndia, often boosted by fake accounts posing as Arab royals, sought to portray Indian Muslims as marginalised. Though many claims were debunked, they gained traction. The IAMC partnered with HFHR, promoting binaries like “Hindus against Hindutva” and “Hindus against BJP” to frame Hindu identity as incompatible with Indian politics. These efforts, backed by the Soros ecosystem, created an echo chamber of misleading narratives.
How Congress’s historical mistakes empowered Pakistan and weakened India
A fundamental question persists: how did Pakistan, a smaller and weaker nation, exert such disproportionate influence? The answer lies in early strategic errors by the Nehru-led Congress. Nehru’s rigid non-alignment and suspicion of the US alienated potential allies. Consequently, Pakistan became a major US beneficiary, receiving $44.4 billion (excluding $12.9 billion in military aid) compared to India’s meagre $897 million between 1946 and 2012 as per USAID.
Leaders like Sardar Patel and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had warned against Nehru’s ideological rigidity. Patel, in a 1948 6 May 6 letter to the Indian Ambassador in the US, stressed industrial cooperation with America. Ambedkar, in Parliament (10 October 1951, 27 May 1952), criticised the huge defence expenditure stemming from Nehru’s failure to build strategic partnerships. Pakistan, meanwhile, channelled foreign aid into terror infrastructure and global lobbying. Despite military victories in 1965 and 1971, India under Congress failed to curb Pakistan’s covert campaigns. The UPA era further weakened national cohesion by propagating terms like “Hindu terrorism” post-26/11 and staying silent during the 1990s Pandit exodus.
Modi’s Strategic Redefining India’s Power and Isolating Pakistan Globally
After the Pahalgam attack, India received strong diplomatic support from the US, Russia, the UK, and Israel, while Pakistan faced global isolation. The UN Security Council, World Bank, and even China distanced themselves. The Pakistan–China axis has weakened in the face of India’s growing global influence. This marks a sharp departure from the past. During the 1962 war, India stood alone. In 1965, 1971, the US backed Pakistan; in Kargil (1999), it pressured India. Today, India’s ties with powers like the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran reflect the strategic vision of Ambedkar and Patel, one finally being realised under Modi.
Modi’s strategy towards Pakistan combined military assertiveness, diplomatic pressure, and strategic global engagement. Early in his tenure, he extended a hand of peace by inviting Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in in 2014 and later made a surprise visit to Pakistan in 2015. However, he maintained a firm stance that dialogue could not coexist with terrorism. In response to terror attacks, India launched strong military actions, including the surgical strikes after the Uri attack in 2016, the Balakot airstrike following Pulwama in 2019, and another decisive response after the Pahalgam attack in 2024. He further reinforced India’s position by revoking the Indus Waters Treaty, declaring that “blood and water cannot flow together.”
Diplomatically, India worked to isolate Pakistan on the global stage by highlighting its role in harbouring UN-designated terrorists like Masood Azhar. Using platforms like the United Nations and various international summits, India exposed Pakistan’s involvement in cross-border terrorism that also affected countries like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. This diplomatic push helped reinstate Pakistan on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list in 2018, reversing its removal in 2015, and curtailed foreign aid flows by presenting credible evidence of state-supported terror networks.
Strategically, India sidelined Pakistan by strengthening ties with countries traditionally close to it. Modi built personal relationships with leaders in the Gulf and the US and the West, facilitating defence cooperation and intelligence-sharing pacts. India’s growing importance as a strategic partner led to moves like the Trump administration’s 2017 decision to cut US military aid to Pakistan. Simultaneously, India’s defence posture was bolstered through the induction of Rafale jets, the acquisition of S-400 missile systems, and deeper involvement in strategic alliances such as the Quad. The abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir further neutralised Pakistan’s long-standing narrative on the region. Through his multifaceted approach and by declaring every ‘act of terror’ as an ‘act of war’, Modi redefined India’s engagement with Pakistan and fundamentally reshaped the regional balance of power.
