Any terror incident will be seen as act of war: India

NEW DELHI: In a drastic revision of its security doctrine, India on Saturday declared that it would from now on consider every instance of terrorism directed against it as an 'act of war' and would respond accordingly.

Sources explained that the decision considerably lowers the threshold for India to give full-scale military response to attacks orchestrated from across the border.

Although India responded militarily to terrorist attacks in Uri in 2016, Pulwama in 2019 and, most recently, Pahalgam by exercising the military option, the decision on Saturday bakes the new security posture into a doctrine.

India, like US & Israel, reserves right to hit terror targets in Pakistan

In Balakot, India first exercised the right to strike at terror centres inside Pakistan. It took that forward after Pahalgam. The principle that a country sponsoring terrorism cannot hide behind territorial sovereignty has been established in international practice since 9/11. India now wants to assert this right even at the risk of wider conflagration," said Dilip Sinha, India's former permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

The announcement in the evening came just after India accepted Pakistan's feelers in the morning to pause hostilities. However, it could not be ascertained whether this had figured in the deliberations between the directors general of military operations of the two sides.

While deciding to react militarily against the terror attacks in Pulwama and Pahalgam, India did not detain itself either by Pakistan's demands for evidence or international counsel for a joint probe. "This has now been elevated to the level of doctrine," with India keeping for itself the right to decide which act of terror is to be considered an act of war. "This puts us in the same league as the US and Israel, which have reserved the right to unilaterally exercise military option against terrorists," explained Sinha.