Narendra Modi: The Game Changer

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controlled aggression has dramatically altered the rules of engagement with Pakistan.

- Raj Chengappa

THE BOA CONSTRICTOR is a large tropical American snake that kills by coiling around its prey and asphyxiating it. It is a tactic that every Pakistan leader from Field Marshal Ayub Khan onwards feared India may employ to crush its ambitions of taking Kashmir by force.

In the past month, as India began to squeeze Pakistan by utilising a range of tactics—diplomatic, economic and military—to retaliate against the severe provocations in Kashmir, both the Sharifs who run Pakistan—Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army Chief Raheel Sharif— may have felt somewhat breathless at the boa-like grip that Delhi had over them. Particularly after the daringly executed surgical strikes by the Indian Army across the Line of Control on the night of September 28-29 to neutralise terrorist hideouts, which also forced Islamabad into a denial mode.

Confronted by the gravest foreign policy challenge since he took over, Prime Minister Narendra Modi employed a strategy that can best be summed up as three Bs: Bold, Brave, Brilliant. It was bold because even as Kashmir spun out of control in July and Pakistan pushed India onto the back foot, Modi went on the offensive. He raised the human rights violations in Balochistan on Independence Day and then slammed Pakistan for abetting terror at the gathering of world leaders at the G-20 meet in China. India then went on to isolate Pakistan on the international stage and neutralised its efforts to raise Kashmir at the United Nations.