After Red Fort Blast: Modi's 5 Response Options and 3 Deal-Breaking Risks

The terrorist attack at the Red Fort in New Delhi on 10 November raises a fundamental question: how do you tackle an enemy which differentiates viscerally between Hindus and Muslims in every facet of its daily life, but makes no such clear-cut distinction in the victims of its attacks on India?

This question is central to any response being studied by the Indian government since the victims of the Red Fort blast belonged to both communities. It is a matter of political objectives and, by corollary, a matter of policy as well.

For a decade now, it has been established policy that terror and talks cannot go together. A sage move which has obviated the need for hollow prattle with Pakistan. For nearly as long, as evidenced by our responses to terrorist attacks at Uri, Pulwama and Pahalgam, the Indian government has responded with punitive strikes on terror infrastructure on Pakistani soil.

Again, a judicious policy decision, since it has firmly punctured that fearsome myth of Pakistani nuclear blackmail if India were to ever militarily transgress the international boundary. Thrice now, we have demonstrated that we can, and will, punish Pakistan by conventional means without triggering an apocalyptic nuclear counter-response from Rawalpindi.

But, beyond a point, punitive attacks become increasingly ineffective because, in spite of the pain, the enemy grows callouses and becomes rather inured to this treatment. Second, these punishments start to appear like some sort of ‘containment strategy’; and one which really doesn’t work as effectively as one might want because there is still simply too much seepage across the border into India.

At the same time, somewhat contradictorily, the need to respond becomes a political necessity because, if you don’t live up to political expectations set by your own track record, then you start losing political capital.

In which case, the question arises as to what an optimal response might be. Wild subjectivity rules the roost in this grey field of difficult decision making. Might ‘kadi ninda’ be too ridiculously tepid? Might the launching of an all-out conventional war be an outrageously disproportionate response to ‘just’ nine Indians killed? What, then, is the response-value of nine Indians killed? Which was the worse attack – the one that happened at the Red Fort, or the much larger and more nefarious one that was thwarted by our valiant security agencies?

And in the process, policy making on Raisina Hill can start to chase its own tail into an undesirable spiral. Unfortunately, there is no correct answer, and that is the truly sad ground reality. Thus, wondering what the government’s response to this latest attack might be is, in fact, subsidiary to the broader question of what its objectives are.

Look at the situation we are in: a century of absolutist Muslim cultural separatism, born of insecurity and persistently fostered to date by hoary tenets of secularism, have led to the formation of a vast fetid pool of rootlessness and hate, within which, the easiest thing to elicit in an impressionable mind is zealous radicalization.

Many of the terrorists who plan attacks or are killed while executing them may have lived and died as Indian citizens only in name, because they surely did not have India in their hearts. How do you tackle that cancer? How much will change if you annihilate their sponsor, Pakistan? True, it is a stoutly-held public belief in India that our issues will end if and only if Pakistan either ceases to exist, or mends its ways (little chance of that). But in reality, it is extremely difficult to tell because, lest we forget, it is these very separatist tendencies which gave birth to Pakistan in the first place. Badshah Khan and the Pathans who voted to join the Indian union were a transitory aberration, and we cannot hope for the resurrection of their ilk any time soon.

Consequently, considering all of the above, and even though there is really no point in trying to second-guess this Indian government, we still need to review some of the options at hand, even if only to understand the nature of the beast, and the constraints our nation faces.

At the tactical level, options are a-plenty. The Indian Air Force can go in, this time with full SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences), unlike the restrictions placed on it on the first night of Operation Sindoor in May 2025. The Brahmos, India’s supersonic cruise missile, can cause terrific damage without being interdicted by enemy defences. The Indian Army could initiate a conventional localized episode in, say, Kutch; one, whose prosecution it could control on its terms, and simultaneously threaten Sind. And more.

At the strategic level, options are fewer, graver, and fraught with both risk and cost, but they do exist. For example, punishment could take the form of an attack on crucial Pakistani civilian infrastructure by the Indian Navy, like the country’s lone LNG terminal at Karachi. The impact on Pakistani civilians woefully deprived of both feedstock and energy would, however, be devastating.

Or, there could be another epidemic of ‘unknown gunmen’ in the Srinagar valley, across the border, or even targeting interests related to Rawalpindi in the Occident. No doubt, the last part would attract international ire upon India.

A third option is to look inward and undertake a ruthless, merciless no-questions-asked clean-up of terror modules within India. This would inevitably lead to further alienation of the Muslim population. The government would also be heavily burdened by the shrill outrage from our opposition parties, who would naturally view this housekeeping exercise as one in which their electoral rice bowls are fatally broken.

A fourth option is an economic blockade, but that is technically an act of war. In which case, a fifth option is total, conventional war (at a time when the mountain passes are closed, and the chances of China actively coming to the aid of Pakistan are marginally less) ending in the elimination of Pakistan as a sovereign entity.

There are three principal risks here. Would America or China allow this? Would India be able to successfully secure all Pakistani nuclear warheads and fissile material? What happens if the Indian attack, projected to be completed in a week or so, gets bogged down, and transforms into an attritional grind that goes on for months?

These are some of the matters which the Cabinet Committee on Security would weigh in the political balance as it deliberates upon the government’s next course of action. Whatever that is, it may be borne in mind that the next round cannot be just a punitive strike because, while this subcontinent is large enough to host multiple sovereign nations, it is too small to suffer two belligerent nuclear nations. This story has only one ending.