Strategic Patience or Strategic Paralysis? Rethinking India’s Response to Pakistan’s Proxy War

Analysis

By Zahid Sultan, Irshad Ahmad Bhat 

The Indian strategic establishment must urgently shift its posture from episodic retaliation to sustained and long-term recalibration aimed at permanently neutralizing the ideological and operational threat emanating from Pakistan. The artificiality of the Pakistani state—an entity born not of national coherence but of religious exclusivism—has been maintained for decades through a toxic combination of militarism, jihadism, and external patronage. Since 1947, Pakistan has operated less as a conventional state and more as a revisionist, ideological project built in opposition to the Indian civilizational idea. It has rejected coexistence in favour of permanent confrontation.

The ideological basis for Pakistan’s creation—the so-called two-nation theory—was premised on an unbridgeable civilizational divide between Hindus and Muslims. This assertion, advanced by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in March 1940 and rooted in the exclusionary logic first espoused by Choudhary Rehmat Ali, has never been subjected to internal scrutiny by the Pakistani establishment. Instead, it continues to serve as the foundational justification for the state’s hostility towards India. Ironically, this ideology was categorically repudiated by the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, when a linguistically cohesive Muslim population seceded from West Pakistan after a genocidal crackdown. The partition of Pakistan itself exposed the hollowness of religious homogeneity as a binding force.

Yet, rather than internal reform, the Pakistani military responded to the humiliation of 1971 by crafting an aggressive forward defence doctrine. This was formally enunciated during the Multan Conference of 1972, where then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the military elite resolved to pursue nuclear weapons at any cost and to bleed India through asymmetric warfare. This doctrine became operational in the 1980s, with Punjab and later Jammu & Kashmir emerging as the primary theatres for Pakistan’s proxy war. State-backed jihadist organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad were not aberrations—they were the direct products of Pakistan’s national security calculus, nurtured by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and publicly valorised as strategic assets.

The fundamental shift in India’s threat perception should, therefore, move away from reacting to individual attacks and instead focus on dismantling the architecture that enables such violence. India’s policy response over the past two decades—ranging from Operation Parakram under Vajpayee to the post-Pulwama airstrikes under the Modi government—has remained tactically robust but strategically insufficient. Surgical strikes and targeted air operations serve symbolic purposes and boost domestic morale, but they do not address the deeper pathology: a state structure in Pakistan where the military owns the country, not the other way around. The deep state, driven by its institutional memories of 1971 and sustained by an inflated sense of grievance, continues to prioritise anti-India operations over economic development or democratic consolidation.

The international community has also been complicit in allowing Pakistan’s military-jihadist complex to persist. During the Cold War, Pakistan was indulged as a bulwark against Soviet expansion; post-9/11, it was repositioned as a “frontline state” in the War on Terror. Both paradigms allowed Pakistan to leverage its geography while concealing its duplicity. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad continue to operate with impunity, shielded by Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and legitimised by its narrative of victimhood. The result is a nuclear-backed rogue state using terrorism as state policy, emboldened by the strategic caution of others.

India must now pursue a policy of total strategic recalibration. This means internationalising Pakistan’s war crimes in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; supporting democratic and subnational aspirations within Pakistan; economically isolating the regime through regional trade architecture; and recalibrating India’s military doctrine to pre-empt and punish terror mobilisation in real time. If Pakistan continues to export jihad across its borders, strategic patience must be replaced with strategic proactiveness.

Finally, India must reclaim its civilizational confidence. The idea of Bharat’s natural boundaries—geographical, cultural, and civilisational—has always extended till the eastern banks of the Indus. The political arrangement post-1947 was a disruption of that continuity. It is time to acknowledge that the existence of Pakistan as it stands today is not merely a challenge to Indian territorial sovereignty but a challenge to the very idea of peaceful, pluralistic coexistence on the subcontinent. Tactical responses can no longer suffice against an entity whose foundational imagination is predicated on India’s dismemberment.

 India must prepare for a future where Pakistan, as currently constituted, ceases to exist—not through expansionism but through internal implosion aided by external pressures. The endgame is not about conquest but about correcting the historical aberration of 1947. India must no longer fear this inevitability. It must prepare for it—politically, diplomatically, and militarily.

Disclaimer: This paper is the author's individual scholastic contribution and does not necessarily reflect the organization's viewpoint.

Zahid Sultan (Freelance Researcher.  PhD in Politics and Governance from Central University of Kashmir. Email: Zahidcuk36@gmail.com

Irshad Ahmad Bhat ( Freelance Researcher: Pursuing PhD in Political Science) Email: bhatirshad81@gmail.com