India to see terror repeat as ‘act of war’

Hours before announcing the short-lived cessation of hostilities on Saturday, India had firmly conveyed to Pakistan that any future terrorist attack on its soil and people would be treated like and responded to as an “act of war”.

This condition was firmed up at the afternoon meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi held with the top military and security brass, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, NSA Ajit Doval, Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan and the three service chiefs.

Before India accepted the offer of ceasefire made by Pakistan Director General of Military Operations this afternoon, it conveyed to the neighbour the new rules of game and the new war doctrine that would henceforth apply.

The sequence of events on Saturday were as follows—Pakistan DGMO contacted his Indian counterpart at 3.35 pm; the government announced its revised war doctrine, “terror attacks will equal acts of war” with Pakistan at 3.49 pm; US President Donald Trump announced a full and immediate ceasefire by India and Pakistan at 5.33 pm and Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced the same at 6.07 pm.

Short-lived truce

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3.35 pm: Pak DGMO contacts Indian counterpart

3.49 pm: India announces its revised war doctrine

5.33 pm: US President Donald Trump announces ceasefire

6.07 pm: Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri too announces truce

8 pm: Pakistan resumes hostilities along western and northern front

While the agreement with Pakistan was to cease military action starting 5 pm on Saturday and for the DGMOs of the two militaries to speak again on May 12, the fragile peace didn’t last even two hours as Pakistan resumed hostilities along India’s western and northern sector around 8 pm.

Top government sources told The Tribune that India’s revised war doctrine was framed with an unreliable and hostile neighbour in mind. The radical shift in Indian position on proxy wars which Pakistan has hitherto dismissed as actions of non-state actors follows decades of evidence of Pakistan’s incorrigibility at peaceful engagement, said official sources.

At the two review meetings the PM chaired today—one before the announcement of a ceasefire and one afterwards—discussions are learnt to have been held on Pakistan’s historical obsession with “bleeding India with a thousand cuts.”

The Pakistan army, still licking the wounds of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh, has followed a clear and predictable path vis-à-vis India ever since. After the creation of Bangladesh, then Pakistan PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, addressing the Multan conference on January 20, 1972, had announced two decisions—to bleed India with a thousand cuts and to acquire nuclear capability even if citizens had to eat grass.

“Pakistan has since launched ceaseless hostilities against India, never breaking the cycle of proxy terror wars here. From Punjab in the 1980s to Jammu and Kashmir in early 1990s and later to nationwide terror attacks—Parliament in 2001, Uri in 2016, Pulwama in 2019 and Pahalgam in 2025—Pakistan has never stopped sponsoring terror in India,” said an official source.

An acute consciousness in the Indian political and security establishment of Pakistan’s continuing brazenness in the pursuit of bleeding India with a thousand cuts policy appears to have necessitated a revised war doctrine.

History stands testimony that neither the Congress-led UPA’s policy of diplomatic shaming across the world nor PM Modi-led NDA government’s muscular policy of surgical and airstrikes have so far deterred Pakistan. A new approach is now set to be tried and tested, its limits and contours unknown.

Apart from India, the US and Israel are the only other countries with war doctrines that treat terror attacks on par with acts of war.