Last month, India dispatched seven delegations comprising Members of Parliament (MPs) and former diplomats to more than 30 countries across the world to put forth its view on terrorism emanating from its neighbor, Pakistan, and New Delhi’s military response to the particularly brutal April 22 terrorist attack at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir. The attack left 26 people, mostly Indian tourists, dead.
The initiative, which saw the Narendra Modi government combining conventional and public diplomacy, came on the back of a realization in New Delhi that the Indian military action against Pakistani-sponsored terrorism had not garnered much support as compared to the past. In 2016, for example, after a terrorist attack in Uri near the Line of Control in Kashmir, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan pulled out of a regional South Asia summit that Pakistan was to host, citing Islamabad’s support for terrorism as a reason.
The parliamentary delegations’ outreach was not limited to only government representatives of host countries but also to lawmakers, members of think tanks and the Indian diaspora. The delegations, with 59 MPs from across the political spectrum, represented different states, social and religious strata. This was to drive home the point that on terrorism, India as a country, stood united in its position that terrorism fomented by Pakistan would not be tolerated and would be met with a military response.
All groups have returned and are reporting that India’s message was well received and understood.
Two members of two different delegations that The Diplomat spoke to said their interlocutors in countries they visited did not ask India to present proof for its allegation that the Pahalgam attack was hatched in Pakistan. Opposition Congress parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor, who headed the delegation to the U.S., Panama, Guyana, Brazil and Colombia, corroborated this publicly.
This is significant as, in the days following the attack, Pakistan had repeatedly demanded proof of its involvement in the Pahalgam massacre. Investigating officials had released sketches of three of five gunmen who attacked tourists in Pahalgam, identifying one as a resident of Jammu and Kashmir and two as Pakistani nationals. However, efforts to apprehend them have not been successful.
Neither did any foreign interlocutor question the rationale for India launching Operation Sindoor – the punitive strikes that India undertook against nine different locations on May 7. “That was seen as done and dusted,” one of the delegation members cited above said.
With Pakistan responding militarily to India’s strikes, tensions were high enough for the international community to worry about a nuclear exchange between the two. As it happened, India and Pakistan announced a cessation of hostilities on May 10 amid some intense international diplomacy.
But there is apprehension that another India-Pakistan faceoff could spark a nuclear exchange. This is one of the questions that some interlocutors put to the Indian delegations. The Indian response was that India is a responsible member of the international community with a clear no-first-use of nuclear weapons policy and that it was Pakistan that needed to clearly enunciate under what conditions it would use nuclear weapons, the delegation member said.
With this, India seems to entering the realm of preventive diplomacy, as Syed Akbaruddin, India’s former permanent representative to the United Nations put it. “Preventive diplomacy refers to efforts aimed at preventing conflicts before they escalate. It is usually through early warning mechanisms, quiet dialogue, confidence-building, and early intervention. It is used to defuse crises before they erupt and address humanitarian concerns before they become full-blown disasters. But the nature of India’s challenge is different. India’s innovation lies in expanding the concept of preventive diplomacy to this grey-zone domain. It is about pre-empting political apathy, international indifference, and diplomatic ambiguity before the next act of terror occurs. The goal is to shape global understanding and create conditions that raise the cost of inaction—for those who perpetrate, enable, or rationalise terror,” he wrote in an article published last month.
Preventive diplomacy becomes critical for several reasons.
One, with the world facing many crises—wars between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, and Israel and Iran, and the punitive tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump which are expected to slow down global growth — there is less focus on challenges like terrorism. The global opposition to terrorism as it existed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. has now dissipated. India’s position on Palestine — it has been careful not to criticize the Israeli military action while stating support for the two-state solution — has also required some clarity.
Second, there seems to be an informal consensus among analysts in India that the Narendra Modi government needs to ready itself for not if but when another attack will happen. And when it does, India’s preventive diplomacy could have created space for it to take action, with the international community primed to the idea that India will counter the provocation and calls for restraint would be futile.
Third, India’s preventive approach focuses on ensuring the world leans on Pakistan not to strike India. As Prime Minister Modi said in his May 12 speech, Operation Sindoor on terrorism is only on pause; Pakistan cannot claim innocence by saying non-state actors are the ones responsible. India will react if there is another terrorist attack on India. This response will be on India’s terms and India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail; it will strike terrorist hideouts “developing under the cover of nuclear blackmail.”
Almost coinciding with the visits of the Indian MPs’ delegations, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, the global financial crime watchdog that keeps a check on whether countries are laundering money and involved in terrorist and proliferation financing, condemned the Pahalgam attack. However, it has not put Pakistan on its watchlist, which would have put Pakistan’s financial systems under FATF scrutiny, news reports said. Pakistan has been subject to increased scrutiny previously during 2008-2009, 2012-2015, and 2018-2022.
While India’s preventive diplomacy can be seen as an insurance strategy for the future, there are imponderables at play, one of which is the newly warming U.S.-Pakistan equation. On June 18, Trump invited Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir for a White House lunch — the first in years. In his first term in office, Trump had berated Pakistan more than once for aiding and abetting terrorism.
There is speculation that one of the reasons for Trump softening his stance on Pakistan is due to its geography — Pakistan borders Iran, which Trump has threatened to strike. If the U.S. enters the Israel-Iran conflict, use of Pakistan’s airspace and/ or land bases to launch the strikes would come in handy. A quid pro quo extracted by Pakistan could be that the U.S. leans on India to not take any punitive strikes should another terrorist strike take place in India.
Trump has already annoyed India by claiming to have mediated between India and Pakistan during the May 7-10 crisis — something India has repeatedly and firmly denied.
On June 18, after a hard pushback by India, Trump seems to have backed off a bit from his insistence that he brokered peace between India and Pakistan last month. “Two smart people, two very smart people decided not to keep going with that war. That could have been a nuclear war. Those are two nuclear powers, big ones, big, big nuclear powers. They [India and Pakistan] decided and so I was honored to meet him (Munir) today,” Trump told reporters after his White House meeting with Munir.
Pakistan, for its part, has reportedly warmed itself to Trump by seeking the Nobel Prize for the U.S. President for stopping the possible nuclear war with India. This works well for Pakistan as it draws the U.S. in as a mediator. Trump, with his deal-making credentials, has India wary on this front.
The warming of U.S.-Pakistan ties could become an irritant in the India-U.S. strategic partnership that successive Indian prime ministers and U.S. presidents have nurtured since the year 2000. It could also embolden Pakistan to take a tougher anti-India stance. These signal tough days ahead for Indian diplomacy.