Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 8

India’s Ways of (Non-) War: Explaining New Delhi’s
Forbearance in the Face of Pakistani Provocations
In the two decades since New Delhi
and Islamabad went overtly nuclear
in May 1998, India has been
the victim of repeated armed provocations
by Pakistan and substate actors
supported by Pakistan. Each of these
attacks has sparked a crisis or serious
tension in Indo-Pakistani relations, and
in each case, Indian political leaders
have demonstrated notable forbearance
by not striking back in ways that might
escalate to a major India–Pakistan war.
India’s restraint was evident during India–Pakistan
conflict episodes 1 in 1999,
2001–2002, 2008, and 2016. The longstanding
dispute over the territory of
Jammu and Kashmir 2 was at the root
of the spring 1999 conflict, which was
sparked by Pakistan’s initiation of secret
subconventional military operations
on the towering Himalayan mountain
peaks just across the line of control
(LOC) in Indian Kashmir. After initially
struggling to mount an effective
military response, Indian forces eventually
prevailed over the intruders with
ground and air attacks that were strictly
limited to the Indian side of the LOC. 3
In December 2001, Jaish-e-Muhammad
(“Muhammad’s Troops”—JeM) terrorists
linked to Pakistan 4 ignited another
crisis with an attack on the Indian parliament
in New Delhi. The crisis was
prolonged when militants followed up
in May 2002 with a mass-casualty attack
on an Indian military installation in
Kashmir. India responded with a massive
mobilization of its military forces
along the Pakistani border and LOC,
and Pakistan reacted in kind. Although
India seemed close to launching a conventional
invasion of Pakistan at two
distinct points in the standoff, known
as Twin Peaks, the crisis was eventually
resolved without the use of force in the
autumn of 2002. 5 In November 2008,
10 terrorists from the Pakistan-linked
Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Pure”—
LeT) 6 roamed around Mumbai unleashing
a 60-hour bloodbath. The
terrorists came ashore on boats before
rampaging through the city murdering
civilians at luxury hotels, a busy rail station,
and other soft targets. The death
toll was 166. 7 As in 2001–02, Indian decision
makers debated launching a punitive
military response, but Congress
party Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
ultimately desisted. Since 2008, there
have been no terrorist attacks of a similar
magnitude, but a number of smaller
attacks—such as the January 2016 siege
in Pathankot—have been attributed to
terrorist groups that are known to have
ties with the Inter-Services Intelligence
organization (ISI)—Islamabad’s apex
spy agency. The most recent of these
took place in September 2016, when
infiltrators from Pakistan crossed the
Kashmir LOC and attacked an Indian
military encampment at Uri, killing 19
soldiers. In response, Bharatiya Janata
Party (“Indian People’s Party”—BJP)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered
what New Delhi termed “surgical
strikes” against terrorist “launch pads”
on Pakistan’s side of the LOC. 8
In sum, we now have a substantial
historical record of Indian decision
making across two decades of an overtly
nuclear South Asia, involving different
types of Pakistani or Pakistan-abetted
attacks in both Kashmir and India
proper. During this period, different In-
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