The great Indian shame

On the dawn of May 7, as the world scrolled through morning headlines and war correspondents stirred in newsrooms, India’s military jets ripped through the pretense of peace and into Pakistani airspace. ‘Operation Sindoor’, they called it, a name soaked in Hindu symbolism and martial mythology. Nine strikes. Civilians injured and lives lost. A madrassa flattened. A mosque desecrated. And for what?

The official rationale was swift: retaliation for the tragic April 22 Pahalgam attack, which killed Indian tourists in Occupied Kashmir. But scratch beneath the surface, and India’s narrative unravels faster than the hastily drawn maps behind a press conference podium.

There is no proof, no dossier, no publicly available evidence linking Pakistan to the attack. No intercepted communications, no recovered weapons trail, no credible claim from a group operating within Pakistani territory. Instead, what we witness is India, yet again, weaponising presumption, turning grief into theatre, suspicion into strategy. Operation Sindoor isn’t counterterrorism. It is state spectacle. A retaliatory charade aimed at inflating Delhi’s chest and shrinking its conscience.

Let us cut through the fog: this was an act of aggression under international law. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter categorically prohibits the use of force by one state against another. The only legal loophole, Article 51’s right to self-defence, demands not just a past attack, but an ongoing or imminent threat, not a suspected plot or a retaliatory impulse. The ICJ in Nicaragua v United States (1986) clarified that even arming or aiding non-state actors does not justify force unless there is clear attribution and evidence of a significant armed attack by or on behalf of the state in question. India has provided none.

The Caroline Test of 1837, a cornerstone of customary international law, demands that any act of anticipatory self-defence meet the criteria of being “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” India’s Operation Sindoor, launched two weeks after the Pahalgam attack, fails this test by an embarrassing margin. It was neither immediate, nor overwhelming, nor necessary. Furthermore, under the Oil Platforms case (ICJ, 2003), the court emphasised that even if an armed attack occurs, the use of force in response must be proportionate and necessary. Bombing residential areas, religious institutions, and civilian infrastructure in Pakistan, without providing any concrete intelligence trail or causal link, fails both standards.

India’s claim of targeting ‘terrorist infrastructure’ within Pakistan, absent attribution or imminence, bears dangerous resemblance to the doctrine of pre-emptive force rejected by most legal scholars. As Antonio Cassese noted, “self-defence must remain the exception, not the justification for discretionary armed reprisals.” Even if the perpetrators were non-state actors, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (ICJ Advisory Opinion, 2004) makes it clear: Article 51 applies only when the attack is attributable to a state. Pakistan has categorically denied involvement and called for an international investigation, a position consistent with due process, not defiance.

India’s actions are not driven by legal delusion alone. They are propelled by something more dangerous: electoral desperation and ideological intoxication. Narendra Modi’s government, bruised by economic stagnation, internal dissent, and global embarrassment over its handling of minorities, needed a distraction. A theatrical villain. And who better than Pakistan, the eternal ‘other’ in India’s domestic narrative?

Operation Sindoor isn’t a military campaign. It is a campaign advertisement. A spectacle of aerial chest-thumping sold to Indian voters who have been conditioned, over years of jingoistic programming, to equate bombs with ballots. This is not a new strategy. Balakot in 2019 served the same political function. Only now, the stakes are higher, the deaths realer, and the silence more damning.

What India calls ‘preemptive deterrence’, any serious strategist would call strategic infantilism. Why? Because deterrence demands credibility. It requires that your actions produce stability, not volatility. But Operation Sindoor does the opposite; it frays red lines, invites escalation and poisons diplomacy. India’s decision to bypass established dispute-resolution mechanisms, such as the UN Security Council, bilateral forums, or Track II diplomacy, also violates its obligations under the UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations (1970), which mandates peaceful resolution of disputes before use of force is even contemplated.

International legal scholar Thomas Franck argued that the legitimacy of force increasingly depends not only on formal legality but also on procedural integrity and transparency of evidence. By unilaterally launching airstrikes and refusing third-party scrutiny, India has defied both.

Article 20 of the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on State Responsibility allows for countermeasures, but only in response to internationally wrongful acts proven through adjudicative or diplomatic processes, not as unilateral declarations. India bypassed these obligations and embraced what Michael Glennon describes as the “double standard syndrome”: one rule for adversaries, another for allies. By treating speculative intelligence as a license to strike, India has weaponised probability over proof, and in doing so, reduced the international order to a hierarchy of hunches.

In the face of such provocation, Pakistan’s response has been marked not by bravado but by measured dignity. It hasn’t retaliated blindly. It hasn’t engaged in populist war hysteria. It has done something far more difficult and far more statesmanlike. It has activated diplomatic channels. It has briefed international allies. It has called for independent investigations. It has reaffirmed its commitment to the UN Charter. And in doing so, it has not only upheld its sovereignty but elevated its moral and legal stature. To many, this calm is mistaken for docility. But this is a grave misreading. In a region where nuclear stakes loom, restraint is not weakness. It is wisdom under fire. Let the record reflect: it was not Pakistan that opened the gates of escalation. It was India who chose the airstrip over the conference table.

Operation Sindoor must be remembered not as a precision strike, but as a precise unravelling of the international order. Because what happened on May 7 is bigger than South Asia. It is a test case for whether international law still means anything, or whether, in a world of shifting alliances and strategic hedging, it has become a decorative relic. If the international community does not hold India accountable, if it fails to condemn this act with the same moral vocabulary it reserves for other regions, it will signal a dangerous truth: that some borders are sacred, while others are negotiable.

India named its operation Sindoor, the sacred vermilion mark worn by married Hindu women, steeped in centuries of symbolism: continuity, strength, devotion. Perhaps the name was meant to invoke legacy, to wrap violence in the fabric of tradition. But in Pakistan today, that word has been seared into memory with a different meaning. Sindoor now marks not love, but loss. Not union, but rupture. It is not drawn across foreheads; it runs through debris, across the bodies of children, and over the pages of law discarded in the dust.

Let the world not mistake this crimson for honour. It is not sindoor, it is blood. And it will dry, yes, but not before it stains the conscience of those who spilled it, and those who stood by in silence. History does not forget. Nor do we.

The writer is the director of the Centre for Law, Justice & Policy (CLJP) at Denning Law School. He holds an LLM in Negotiation and Dispute Resolution from Washington University.