On April 22, India was rocked by a sectarian terrorist attack intentionally designed to target non-Muslims in Kashmir. These sectarian murders targeted 26 men and wounded 20 others. The men had been separated from their wives, mothers, and children and identified as non-Muslims through either failing to recite the Islamic declaration of faith or for being uncircumcised.
Some survivors succeeded in convincing the attackers that they were Muslim, while others were executed after simply saying they were Hindu or Christian. Despite the sectarian nature of the attack, one of the victims was a local Kashmiri Muslim, Syed Adil Hussain Shah, 28, who had attempted to wrestle the gun from an attacker’s hand but was killed in the process.
The attack, near the town of Pahalgam, was felt across India, as victims and survivors came from across the country, and included newlywed officers from the Indian Air Force, Navy, and Intelligence Bureau.
For many in India, the attack felt like an echo of the October 7 attacks, a reminder that terrorism is a global phenomenon.
Ambassador J. P. Singh spoke to The Jerusalem Post about the attack, including the Indian emotional, political, and military reactions.
He emphasized the deep connection between Pakistan amd terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir region.
“When it comes to such incidents, there is a track record. There is a track record of cross-border terrorism. There is a track record of Pakistan sponsoring all these terrorist incidents.”
The two groups singled out for responsibility were Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. LeT claimed responsibility for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which claimed the lives of 166 people, including four Israelis, and wounded nearly 300, while JeM gained notoriety in 2002 for executing Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl.
The ambassador pointed to visits members of Hamas made to Pakistan following October 7 and in the lead-up to April 22, as well as comments by Pakistan Army Chief of Staff Gen. Asim Munir in which he emphasized the difference between Muslims and Hindus as part of the buildup to the attack.
Munir is a relative rarity in the Pakistani military, due to being a practicing Muslim; most previous army chiefs have been much less religious.
“We have never seen even the Pakistani Army chief calling upon [the division of] Hindus and Muslims,” Singh said.
Singh emphasized that the Pahalgam attack had crossed a serious line, comparing it to the Supernova music festival massacre on October 7.
“The methodology is more or less similar to October 7. You are attacking soft targets here; the people who are partying [at Nova] and celebrating, they are the people who are the tourists [in Kashmir]. If you kill tourists, soft targets, you agitate people. But if you kill innocent people, and if you kill tourists or people partying? That creates a lot of anger.”
The complete violation of norms led India to decide that a harsher response was needed, and that India would need to strike Pakistani territory for the first time since 1971, when India intervened to prevent Pakistan from committing genocide in Bangladesh and help Bangladesh gain independence.
Indeed, the Pahalgam attack had a worrying similarity to a 1971 report in the Sunday Times according to which Pakistani soldiers would check the circumcision status of Bangladeshis to see if they were Hindu or Muslim, and then execute the Hindus.
“Then came the operations on May 7.... Since ’71, we had never crossed the international boundary in terms of attacks.”
The ambassador explained that India decided to take a page out of Israel’s book and take the fight to the terrorists, striking them in their safe houses.
“This time our forces hit the heartland of Pakistan, and again, maybe learning from your side also, because you have to hit hard and you have to hit inside. So here we hit hard and we hit inside. The idea was, first, to attack those terrorists, second, to attack the terrorist infrastructure, and third, to [strike] even all those who supported [the attack].”
What happened in Operation Sindoor?
The May 7 operation, called Operation Sindoor, was named after the red dye that married women wear in India, which the widows of Pahalgam will no longer wear.
“Since the ladies lost their husbands in this particular operation, Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] decided to name this Operation Sindoor,” Singh said.
The Indian military identified 21 sites across Pakistan, eventually narrowing the targets down to nine, all of which were part of terrorist infrastructure.
Two of the locations were “Muridke, the headquarters of LeT, and Bhawalpur, the headquarters of JeM.” The attack in Bhawalpur targeted the murderers of Daniel Pearl and succeeded in killing one of them.
Pakistan took this as a violation of its sovereignty and felt it needed to respond, and began launching drone operations into Indian territory.
India responded by launching attacks against Pakistani military targets such as radar installations, using Turkish and Israeli drones. The ambassador had praise for Israeli drones, saying “Israeli drones were quite, quite effective.”
“We targeted only the terrorists, but when their drones started attacking our military infrastructures... we decided that we needed to neutralize their radar system.”
The ambassador recounted the events that led to de-escalation and eventual ceasefire.
“Early morning, on May 10, our air force attacked their air force bases, their 11 air bases. In three or four cases... the runways were completely destroyed. They cannot use those runways, and in some cases, the hangars where their planes were were destroyed.
“Meanwhile, parallelly, some diplomacy was going on. The US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and many other countries were reaching out to both India and Pakistan to cool down and de-escalate. We had told them that of course we would de-escalate. We have already achieved our goals.
“In a way, the whole of Pakistan was exposed, all their myths of strategic depth got destroyed, demolished. Then, at that time, they frantically reached out to the Americans. And then again, [the US] reached out to us and others, and they wanted us to de-escalate because Pakistan has a nuclear weapon.
“But I think they got panicked. Pakistan got panicked, or used this to create panic in the American mindset. Then, on May 10, their director-general of military operations reached out.”
Singh explained the Indian position that retaliation against the terrorists had been necessary, and that India’s war goals had been achieved.
“We told them right in the beginning that innocent people had been killed. This was not the first time that [innocents] had been killed. We have to retaliate, and we will. We will kill the terrorist, we will demolish and destroy the terrorist infrastructure. That’s our objective, and we have achieved our objectives.
“We have created a new normal. Under that new normal, Prime Minister Modi will no longer be defensive. He will be offensive. He will go against these terrorists and he will go against this terrorist infrastructure, and he will go against all the supporters of this, even if it is now the Pakistan Army.
“Second, we have nothing against the Pakistani people as such. We don’t want to kill Pakistani people as such. We don’t have anything against them. It’s basically the terrorists. There is no more strategic depth. They stand naked. You can easily target them.
“Third, and most importantly, I feel, is that they always use this nuclear doctrine... nuclear deterrence. You know that they have nuclear weapons, and that’s detrimental. Then they always try to use this nuclear blackmail.
“I think that with this attack we have made big holes in their nuclear deterrence, so that [it] is, in a way, eroded. There are big holes. We have created big holes so they can no longer blackmail. They have nuclear weapons. They will still try to, in a sense, blackmail, but they are no longer as effective as before.”