Opinion In Op Sindoor debate, both Government and Opposition stopped low — but they flagged crucial issues

After a long time, Parliament came alive and voices of the people’s representatives, across the political spectrum, rang out in the House with urgency and concern on a vital national issue. Ever since Operation Sindoor was carried out in the wake of the terror attack at Pahalgam, there have been unanswered questions. A fuller public debate was waiting to be joined, after the military dust settled. The deliberations in the Lok Sabha over two days broke a silence, filled a gap. At the same time, that the three Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who extinguished 26 lives on April 22 were killed in Dachigam in the Kashmir Valley on Monday in “Operation Mahadev” brings a needed moment of closure for the families of the victims, and for the nation that shares their grief. Alongside the long-awaited debate in Parliament and the success in Dachigam, mention of The Resistance Front, a proxy outfit of LeT, which has claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, in a key UNSC report — the first mention of the LeT in the report since 2019 — brings a diplomatic victory for India.

But while Parliament did well to discuss Operation Sindoor — what led to it, how it was conducted, and its aftermath — an overtly partisan and short-term politics also narrowed the scope of the debate in the House. Both the members of the government and Opposition spoke, but it did not always seem that they listened to each other. For Prime Minister Narendra Modi to paint the main Opposition party, Congress, as compromising national interest, and as the spokesman for the enemy, as it were, is unseemly. For him to then connect the dots from Congress’s stance vis-à-vis Pakistan to its alleged “tushtikaran” or appeasement of the minority at home is disquieting and uncalled for. As was Home Minister Amit Shah’s reference to the “dharm” of the terrorist. While BJP criticism of earlier Congress governments on national security is legitimate political thrust and parry, the debate on Operation Sindoor needs a common ground of respect and reciprocity, not labelling and name-calling. At the same time, Rahul Gandhi’s challenge to the government — to lay Pakistan low once-and-for-all — was bellicose, and belonged more in a clumsy insta-reel than in the nation’s highest forum of debate. His show-me-your-guts dare to the PM to call out US President Donald Trump for his claims of choreographing the India-Pak ceasefire was immature.

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Yet, the debate flagged crucial changes that will unfold and resonate in times to come. Rahul Gandhi may deny and dismiss it, but a “new normal” has indeed been consecrated by Operation Sindoor, red lines have been redrawn by India vis-à-vis Pakistan. It is true that this recalibration may not always open up space for manoeuvre for Delhi, but may also limit it. India’s challenge will be to ensure that it is not straitjacketed by the recast concept of deterrence. In a global environment where Trump has upended established patterns and certainties, and China is tilting the balance, India will have to move forward carefully, in its neighbourhood and beyond — calling Beijing and Washington names is neither diplomacy nor strategy. In that journey, Operation Sindoor constitutes an important milestone. The debate that has begun in Parliament must go on.