NOW that it’s firmly established by an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from within the BJP that Pakistan shot down several Indian planes in the recent military escalation, an admission subsequently made although with less enthusiasm by the country’s top military general, the question is about the lessons learnt. Let’s consider a few.
First, two members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, precursor to BRICS, who have been avoidably hostile towards each other, tested the efficacy of the group’s weaponry, Chinese jets flown by Pakistan, and Russian missiles used by India. Both excelled, if that is the word for inflicting damage on each other. What did not do too well were French-made Rafales that Modi had staked his political reputation on, and which are now a subject of global scrutiny.
The shooting down of India’s Rafales by Pakistani pilots using a complex network of silent radars and Chinese planes with advanced air-to-air missiles has reportedly caused ripples in Nato, and alarm among other clients of Dassault.
The exact number of downed planes varies. BJP leader Subramanian Swamy said five were destroyed and blamed the planes for the loss. India’s chief of defence staff, Gen Anil Chauhan, was in Singapore where he acknowledged the losses but would not reveal the numbers, saying that Operation Sindoor was not yet over.
The May 7-10 military action has apparently revealed limitations of Israeli military technology, which has already been turned into something of a farce by the cash-strapped militias of Yemen and Lebanon.
On one occasion, Benjamin Netanyahu’s toilet was bombed by a Hezbollah drone, probably as a warning. Elsewhere, Russia, another BRICS stalwart, has shown Nato its place in the European theatre, and its war with Ukraine has left the West nonplussed with the unveiling of the unstoppable Oreshnik missile. Some have been given to Belarus as protection against possible Western adventurism after Britain’s reported quest to buy nuclear-capable bombers from the US.
US President Donald Trump seems to want Modi to find new friends and embrace them, preferably in India’s neighbourhood.
A second lesson from last month’s air battles is that in a world where the West and the US are losing their grip on economic and political hegemony everywhere, an intelligent grasp of self-interest within the Global South has become paramount.
The India-Pakistan battle revealed a misstep in the front ranks of the Global South. South Asia’s Moscow link was hitherto monopolised by India, which received its defence lifeline from Russia after the 1971 pact between Indira Gandhi and Leonid Brezhnev. Recently, Russia and India broke the US embargo on Moscow and Indian tycoons close to Modi bought cheap Russian oil to ply a profitable trade of refined oil with Europe.
In a new normal, Russia and Pakistan are reportedly eyeing an energy pact. This, while signals to the naked eye suggest that all is not well in India-Russia ties. Late last year, it was announced in Moscow that President Vladimir Putin would visit India on a routine bilateral trip in early 2025.
That didn’t happen. Mr Modi later indicated his inability to attend the landmark Victory Day parade against fascism at the Red Square. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was assigned to represent Modi.
Eventually, nobody knows if anyone represented India at all. A more agreeable normal for BRICS was reflected in the pictures of Putin and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during their meeting at the SCO summit in Astana when the Russian president offered a greater energy deal to Pakistan. Times are changing.
In this vein, in comments meant for India, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week cautioned Modi that the West was trying to pit India against China. Remember that Pakistan had put its national security on the line for the US against Moscow, but it was plied with monetary and military largesse after Gen Ziaul Haq spurned Jimmy Carter’s offer of $400 million as “peanuts”.
India, on the other hand, appears primed to self-finance, being the West’s hatchet man if it came to that, with unknown consequences for its polity and economy. A handy lesson for India lies in the fact that Pakistan regrets having allowed itself to be used in the West’s cynical agenda.
In a strangely contrarian way, US President Donald Trump seems to want Modi to find new friends and embrace them, preferably in India’s neighbourhood. Trump has been standoffish in his actions and inactions towards India, most notably signalling the aloofness by putting Indian deportees in fetters. The intense hugging and first name-calling relationship with Modi seems to be under review, if not filed away in US presidential archives.
Trump asserts that he likes India and Pakistan equally and wants to help them resolve their Kashmir dispute if they can’t do it themselves. The hyphenation troubles India’s nouveau riche middle classes.
These Indians prefer to forget that their country had pawned gold reserves to foreign banks not too long ago, as history goes and the IMF-prescribed solutions (which Pakistan is now following) involved handing the economy to private carpetbaggers, including one who became the Indian partner in the joint venture with Dassault.
Together with pre-Pahalgam images of Indians in fetters followed by a post-Pahalgam suspension of US visas for Indian students, the diplomatic cul-de-sac Modi has led the country into hurts.
Barring the fact that he needs to bail out a tycoon friend from trouble with US law, Modi’s continued leaning towards the US is inexplicable. Chinese President Xi Jinping met him in October 2019 away from the prying eyes of media and foreign diplomats at a scenic retreat near Chennai.
Xi told Modi that peace between India, Pakistan and China was paramount for the progress and prosperity of South Asia. Modi and his advisers have preferred to surrender the fate of a billion-plus people to the willful (and curiously intractable) terrorists and they are the ones who would decide when to set off another dicey spiral in India’s new normal with Pakistan.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2025
