Originally published : https://www.theweek.in/news/defence/2026/03/13/redlines-redrawn-operation-sindoor-and-indias-new-normal-review-chronicling-indias-strategic-military-retaliation.html
On April 22, 2025, when a group of armed-to-the-teeth terrorists opened up their automatic guns, piercing the silence of the picturesque Baisaran Valley in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, mowing down 26 innocent people, including one local pony operator, they would not have imagined the kind of forces of retribution their cowardly attack would have unleashed.
And yet, while demonstrating capability and resolve, India retained the key to escalatory control, not losing sight of the fact that it was the first such open conflict in history between two nuclear-armed countries. Therein lies India’s biggest victory.
Nor did Pakistan—the patron of the terror elements—perceive such a response, as much as in intensity as it was in scale.
The events and happenings, the military strategy and thinking behind it, the varied kinetic action, the grey zone warfare, the precise coordination and jointness, and India’s overall response is well chronicled in the very important book on the subject ‘Redlines Redrawn: Operation Sindoor and India’s New Normal’ by a well-accomplished quartet Major General Bipin Bakshi, Air Marshal Rajesh Kumar, Ambassador Anil Trigunayat and Brigadier Akhelesh Bhargava.
In the days following the attack, there was global apprehension on how India would act. Because this India was a new India, an India that would leave no terror act unanswered.
It would lead to a watershed moment in India’s military history and set a precedence in India’s security establishment that would be worthy of emulation in the times to come. It was the establishment of an SOP, a template of how India would react. If not about the tactics, it would certainly be of the strategic shift in intentions and abject willingness to go to the farthest extent possible.
Accordingly, on May 7, about two weeks after the Pahagam attack, the Indian military hit back. The Indian Army and the Air Force took on nine terror-linked sites as bomb after bomb kept on ramming these sites, while the Navy blocked off any possible Pakistani military activity from the South. The destruction was widespread, and the casualties of the terrorists in the scores.
Yet the Indian establishment, in a script woven with maturity, warned the Pakistani state that this offensive was not against the Pakistani state but against the forces of terror that the state sponsored. A counter-response by the Pakistan military resulted in another forceful retribution, resulting in widespread destruction of vital Pakistani military installations and assets.
The book effectively captures the transition of Indian military strategy from Cold Start to the Doctrine of Dynamic Response.
As Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi says in the preface, the book resonates deeply the “confluence of military precision, diplomatic foresight and technological innovation” that Operation Sindoor exemplified.
The entire chain of events has also led to a new normal, a “state of no war no peace”. As the book says: “How will Pakistan recalibrate its proxy war strategy in response to this evolving Indian doctrine? The answer may well define the trajectory of South Asian stability in the years to come.”
Paradoxically, but something which makes immense strategic sense, India has not declared the conclusion of Operation Sindoor. In that sense, it is still ongoing. It is rooted in the firm understanding of the changing nature and character of modern warfare.
As Maj Gen Bakshi writes: “India’s new normal doctrine of assertive, cost-imposing retaliation across the length and breadth of Pakistan aims to deter future grey zone attacks. Pakistan’s low-cost proxy war option, adopted for the last few decades, has hit the wall of Indian retribution. Op Sindoor has given a very clear signal of significantly increased costs for Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism; however, it remains to be seen if Pakistan will fundamentally change its long-standing strategy.”
And in the concluding chapter, what comes as a bonus for the military practitioners and scholars is a detailed list of recommendations for the three armed services, new age military domains, geopolitical strategy and information warfare. A book to be read well, absorbed and treasured.
