(GIST OF YOJANA) India's war Against Terrorism

GIST OF YOJANA : India's war Against Terrorism

AUGUST-2025

India's war Against Terrorism

Context:

The heinous attack on civilians at Baisaran Valley in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam region on 22 April 2025, has once again demonstrated the scourge of cross-border terrorism that India has experienced for more than four decades. Tackling, countering, and fighting terrorism and its enabling ecosystem have become the central pillar of India's national security strategy.

In the past, India chose restraint, preferring dialogue and engagement with Pakistan over coercion and direct action. However, the pathological behaviour of Islamabad and Rawalpindi in pursuing terrorism as an instrument of state policy has now exhausted New Delhi’s patience. Over the last decade, policymakers have redefined India's counter-terrorism (CT) stance, choosing pre-emption and proactiveness to neutralise Pakistani maleficence.

Utilising Force as a Military Response

In responding to the Pahalgam attack, India’s response was swift and precise in the form of 'Operation Sindoor’, hitting the terrorist infrastructure targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen.
In carrying out these strikes, India utilised precision-strike capabilities to avoid civilian casualties, since many of the terrorist sites are located in densely populated civilian neighbourhoods.
While this was the deepest military campaign that India launched inside Pakistan since the 1971 War, it broadly followed the template that the country has been following in the last few years in tackling terrorist activities.

Strengthening Institutional Capacity

However, beyond the military response, India has undertaken several steps in the last 15 years within the domestic CT apparatus to strengthen law enforcement and intelligence capabilities as part of its 'zero tolerance against terrorism’ policy.
Many of these reforms began right after the 2008 Mumbai attacks that were carried out by the LeT, with the support of the Pakistani Army. In the aftermath of the attacks, the government reinvigorated the Multi- Agency Centre (MAC) within the Intelligence Bureau.
In 2009, the government also established the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has since emerged as the primary CT agency. Another key measure has been the establishment of the National Intelligence Grid, which enables real-time information sharing between agencies by linking their databases.
The PMLA Amendment Rules, 2023 have tightened India’s anti-money laundering framework by lowering the threshold for identifying beneficial owners from 25% to 10%, expanding due diligence norms, and bringing professionals like CAs and CSs under its scope.
It also mandates registration of NGOs on the DARPAN portal and includes crypto transactions within its purview— aligning India’s compliance with global FATF standards and boosting transparency across financial and non- profit sectors.

Disrupting Kashmir’s Insurgency

J&K has become the key focus when it comes to fighting terrorism. Adapting its CT strategy to the changing nature of insurgency in the Kashmir Valley, the security establishment has focused on keeping pressure on terrorist groups and the associated ecosystem.
Tackling the cross-border infiltration of militants on the International Boundary (IB) and the LoC has been another key dimension in fighting insurgency in J&K, as these infiltration routes have long brought the Pakistani militants to fight with the Indian security agencies and sustain the terrorist violence.
Moreover, it has constructed extensive barbed-wire fencing along the LoC and IB, deploying an Anti-Infiltration Obstacle System and strengthening surveillance through reconnaissance drones, night- vision equipment, and hand-held thermal imaging devices to detect unauthorised crossings.
These measures undeniably contributed to the substantial drop in violence in the region. In this context, the massacre at Pahalgam was a calculated move to undo these hard-won gains of recent years.

Countering Radicalisation

Amidst this, a significant challenge has been that of radicalisation, which has emerged as a sensitive issue for policymakers. As several studies have pointed out, multiple factors contribute to this phenomenon, including peer pressure, victimhood feelings, and self-radicalisation enabled by cyberspace and social media propaganda.
While the influence of pan-Islamist terrorist organisations like the ‘Islamic State and ‘Al- Qaeda’ has diminished on the ground, their efforts in the virtual space to influence vulnerable minds and mobilise cadres persist.

Collaborating with Like-minded Diplomatic Partners

In the face of the evolving threat of terrorism, India has expanded its diplomatic engagements on counter- terrorism, seeking to enlist like-minded partners. For this, New Delhi has leveraged several regional and multilateral platforms, including the G20, FATF, and its ‘No Money for Terror’ conference.
In 2022, India also hosted the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) special meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee and the 90th INTERPOL General Assembly in New Delhi, which discussed evolving a coordinated approach to countering terrorism by leveraging best practices and learnings from each other.

Way Forward

It is a matter of fact that Pakistan has chosen to utilise terrorism against the Indian state to compensate for not only its conventional inferiority against India but also New Delhi's meteoric rise in its global stature.
This is the policy of bleeding India with a ‘thousand cuts’ through sub-conventional warfare. In that sense, every act of terrorism from Pakistan/PoJK-based anti- India terrorist organisations like the LeT and JeM is meant to derail the success story of India.
Of course, over the years, acts of cross-border terrorism, too, have undergone shifts. For several years, mass-casualty terrorist attacks in a major Indian city, such as the 2005 Delhi serialblasts, 2006 Mumbai train bombings and 2008 Mumbai attacks, were the usual practice for the terrorist organisations.
Then they shifted to attacks targeting security forces and military personnel in bordering regions of Punjab and J&K, as was seen in the case of incidents at Gurdaspur (2015), Pathankot (2016), Uri (2016), and Pulwama (2019). Consequently, attacks in the hinterland went down drastically.
The following change came about post- August 2019, when the state of J&K was reconstituted into the Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh. Since then, we have seen the emergence of proxy groups like the TRF and PAFF carrying out terrorist attacks and attempting to keep the insurgency alive.

Conclusion:

Eradicating terrorism is an enduring struggle, especially amid the evolving geopolitical dynamics and shifting priorities of nations. Nevertheless, India must remain steadfast in its resolve and strengthen its resilience in confronting this menace.