A year after Operation Sindoor, where do India and Pakistan stand? Did India militarily achieve what it set out to via the operation? Is its first anniversary occasioning any commentary and analysis in Pakistan? Has the diplomatic sweet spot Islamabad is in now made it even harder for India to convince the world of its position? What of the impact, on both sides of the border, that Sindoor has had on civil society, civil liberties and freedom of the press – is it a legacy of the operation that will not go away?To discuss these questions and more, and to draw up a balance sheet – military, political and diplomatic – of sorts, Siddharth Varadarajan was joined by Sushant Singh in Delhi and Khurram Husain in Karachi. Here is a lightly edited text of their conversation, transcribed by Ipil Baski, an editorial intern at The Wire.Siddharth Varadarajan: Hello and welcome to this discussion on The Wire. We are going to be looking at a balance sheet of Operation Sindoor one year on. As the media has been reporting and as people know, May 7 marks exactly one year from the time that the Indian military announced that it had launched strikes on nine targets across the Line of Control and the international border in Pakistan.The Indian foreign secretary held a press conference later, soon after the military action, where he described India’s military action as “measured, non-escalatory, proportionate and responsible”, action that he said was focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and neutralising terrorists who were about to launch further attacks in India.The military action in Operation Sindoor was of course India’s response to the terrorist attack at Pahalgam on April 22nd in which 26 civilians were killed – 25 Indians and one Nepali national – and soon after Pahalgam the government of India announced a number of diplomatic measures, coercive measures, including suspension of the Indus Water Treaty. And there was a lot of speculation that some kind of military action, some kind of kinetic action, would be taken.That decision finally was implemented on May 7. The Indian Air Force attacked nine targets across the Line of Control and the border in Pakistan, and we then had a conflict of sorts between India and Pakistan that lasted three days. It essentially came to an end – the ceasefire was announced on May 10, but interestingly the first intimation or first announcement of the ceasefire came in a tweet at 5:25 pm IST – a tweet by the US president, and this was followed by a tweet a few minutes later by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.Both Rubio and Trump spoke about how US mediation had essentially brokered this ceasefire and Rubio’s tweet added another twist when he said that both the governments of India and Pakistan had agreed to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site. Of course, the government of India later denied that there was any such understanding.But essentially this conflict lasted three days and in some ways we are still coming to grips with its consequences. But the purpose of today’s discussion is really to analyse the sort of balance sheet – military, diplomatic, political – and we are joined by two specialists, two experts on strategic and political matters, one from India, one from Pakistan. We have Sushant Singh in Delhi. He is a lecturer at Yale University and somebody who writes widely on military and strategic affairs. And we are joined from Karachi by Khurram Husain, who is a political analyst, a journalist, a columnist who formerly was associated with Dawn newspaper, which is Pakistan’s leading English language daily, and the BBC.Khurram, you’ve been a guest on our show immediately after Sindoor and we welcome you back, and Sushant, it’s great to have you also for this. We had done a sort of rough and ready postmortem soon after the hostilities ended; we now have the luxury of a year having elapsed, and I want to engage both of you in this broad discussion on what we’re calling a sort of balance sheet.So I want to start with you Sushant. Let’s try to sort of do this sequentially, looking at the military aspects, diplomatic aspects and then maybe political-psychological aspects a little bit later. But in broad military-security terms, what is it that the government of India thought it accomplished as a result of Operation Sindoor? And how does that belief or those claims of the government of India measure up one year later?Sushant Singh: Firstly, thank you Siddharth. It’s wonderful to be in this conversation with you and Khurram. Khurram is a very dear and old friend. We go a long way.As far as the first anniversary of the military conflict between India and Pakistan is concerned, I think the aims as laid out by India were to dismantle, as you said, the terror infrastructure and to kind of establish a kind of deterrence, so that such kind of attacks do not happen again, whether in Indian-administered Kashmir or elsewhere. If you were to look at the outcomes, clearly the outcomes really don’t match what was set out upfront.The Indians did hit all the nine targets as you said: two of them by the air force, seven of them by the army using loitering munitions and artillery. But these are civilian targets, these are what Indians would like to call terror camps, which really are very rudimentary infrastructure, buildings, etc. which can be constructed very quickly again. The backbone from where these terror groups or where these armed militants come in, that has not been resolved in any way.And I don’t think in any way or any manner, any of the military strikes that India did were able to establish some kind of deterrence or put a fear of military strikes in Pakistani generals’ mind or the Pakistan military’s mind. Contrary to that in fact, I think if you look at the balance sheet now, Pakistani military leadership has emerged stronger, both within Pakistan and outside, and I think they are far more emboldened to respond if something like this were to happen again, to respond even more aggressively.So, to answer your question very simply: militarily, India wanted to attack these terror camps, what India calls terror camps, these nine of them, and destroy them. Yes, it did destroy them. Those attacks were successful. We’re not even talking about what India lost in the bargain. We still don’t know, because whether India lost five aircraft, six fighter jets or whatever India lost that night while trying to bring down those nine sites, that I think would itself count a lot against the balance sheet.Thereafter, when the escalation takes place, I think it is more at the tactical level that the escalation is taking place, that the Pakistan Army is sending some drones and some UAVs, trying to fire some missiles, Indians are trying to fire some missiles, and by the last day Indians were firing BrahMos from deep inside; those BrahMos missiles were effective.The point I’m trying to make is, a military has to be deployed for a purpose. It has to be used for a political aim or for a strategic aim. What was the strategic aim of those strikes? Otherwise militarily, it is just violence. It is just a showpiece thing, that I can inflict violence on another country or I can hit this target or that target. My fundamental problem with Operation Sindoor throughout has been that none of these strategic aims were clear and it was well known to us that those strategic aims would not be achieved by what was being done.SV: If I just stop you for a second, just to play devil’s advocate here, don’t you think that targeting highly visible, highly symbolic sites like Muridke for example, or Bahawalpur, in a way sends a message to the leaders of terrorist groups in Pakistan that they cannot now, henceforth, assume that they will be able to get away with whatever they do, that perhaps they themselves will be the targets of assassination, targets of an airstrike, and that this may have some kind of a deterrent effect?I’m not saying–I mean one year is too short a period of time, I mean it’s easy to conclude on the basis of the fact that there hasn’t been a major terror strike in the past year if we ignore the blast in a car outside Red Fort. But obviously, there may be very good reasons why they want to lie low but are not really deterred. But in terms of this ‘message’ – the Indian officialdom makes a lot about the fact that we sent a message, and this message has been understood by the chiefs of Laskhar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. How valid do you think is that claim?SS: I think that that argument is has very limited validity. Because we also know that none of these non-state actors could be could be functioning without the backing of the Pakistani military. And if you have to deter someone, you have to deter the Pakistani military. If you have to deter someone, you have to deter Field Marshal Asim Munir. And that clearly would not have happened with these strikes.The symbolic value of hitting Muridke or Bahawalpur – I think that symbolic value is more for the Indian audience, for your domestic audience. Politically, it sends a great signal to your domestic audience that you can hit there. In real terms, whether it is in terms of the kind of infrastructure that you have destroyed or in terms of deterring the Pakistani military, I think it has very limited value.This is not to say that hitting those targets has no meaning or has nothing else. But it also has escalatory potential. And what did you lose in the bargain? If you lost six of your fighter jets or five of your fighter jets, including Rafales, while trying to bring down nine non-military targets that had nothing to do with the Pakistani military, and you lose your aircraft on your own side, I think that should call for a different kind of reckoning of what happened there.SV: Before I go to Khurram, Sushant, how much concrete information do we have one year on about the losses? We’ve seen statements. There was a general statement by the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). If you join all the dots and connect everything that has been said officially, do you have a sense of what exactly Indian air losses were, for example?SS: So nobody has ever officially confirmed the quantum of losses. A lot of people have confirmed losses: like I saw India’s defence secretary’s interview with CNBC-TV18 where he mentioned, ‘oh don’t talk about loss of Rafales, it has to be in singular’, which clearly tells you that at least one Rafale was lost. Or what the CDS said in Singapore to Bloomberg Television or what other people have said.The general sense, I think, is broadly in the range of five to six fighter jets were lost including a Rafale. Definitely that’s what the general sense is, although officially it has not been acknowledged.So one of the funny thing about this military conflict, Siddharth, is that what we knew maybe 72 or 96 hours after the military conflict is what we still know. There is nothing new which has come out, which is very very unusual. Usually, within a year, you would know far more than what you know immediately after the military conflict. And I think that’s true on both sides, India and Pakistan, because both sides are trying to very tightly control the narrative and not provide any new information whatsoever, as to what was known. That’s a tragedy I think, unfortunately.SV: Khurram, obviously on the Indian side the first anniversary of Sindoor is being officially marked as a moment of triumph and celebration of what the Indian military accomplished. Clearly in Pakistan the view or perception is completely different. Is the first anniversary of Sindoor or these or the military attacks that India launched on Pakistan, is it a date that people are taking note of? Is it occasioning commentary and analysis? Have there been statements by the government or the military or is it something that has just sort of gone by?Khurram Husain: No, no, it’s definitely being observed, Siddharth, and today the military’s held a long press conference in which they’ve recalled those events. Over here we’re calling it Marka-e-Haq, the ‘Battle for Truth’, and it’s being hailed as a great victory, a moment when Pakistan you know demonstrated its ability to protect its own airspace against a numerically stronger adversary. And they’re also showcasing all the new technology that they are going to be getting in the future to further upgrade their air capabilities.So, I think if there is an air of celebration over there in India, there certainly is one over here as well. There’s an air of triumphalism, and that’s what this date marks for Pakistan.SV: Is Pakistan afraid or are there concerns that–the fact that two countries have a completely divergent narrative here? That the Indians are convinced they won, the Pakistanis believe they won. Ordinarily, this is a recipe for escalation and a disaster. Are there concerns on the Pakistani side that chances of miscalculation, bravado, etc. are going to only increase, and the next time there is an incident–and incidentally, I think there would be many people on the Indian side who may also concede that notwithstanding the history of links between the Pakistani military and extremist groups inside Pakistan, people here would be prepared to concede that there are groups who perhaps don’t operate 100% under the control of the Pakistani military.Is there a fear then that provocative acts by individuals may lead to something that next time around may be rather more difficult to contain?KH: There’s definitely a fear, whether you want to call it a fear or just a sense, that there is a decent likelihood of a repeat. This was there even at the conclusion of last year–after the ceasefire on May 10, and if I remember correctly, in fact, we even talked about it back then in our conversation that it doesn’t seem as if this has ended. I mean it seems like an extended ceasefire, but there may well be a round two.Of course, at that time most people expected a round two to happen within 2026. So far it hasn’t happened. But from the military side here in Pakistan, they are definitely mindful of the fact that there is a decent likelihood of there being a round two and a new casus belli suddenly materialising. The evidence for that is the fact that they are arming themselves for that and then they’re showcasing the kind of acquisitions that they are undertaking to be prepared for when that eventuality comes.And one of the things that military analysts over here were rather concerned by is something that Sushant just mentioned in his remarks: the use of the BrahMos missile towards the end of the exchanges, which is a dual-use nuclear-capable missile, and using that in hostilities of this sort. It said a lot of things at the same time. It said that this is the one missile that we have left in our arsenal. The one weapon we have left in our arsenal that’s capable of penetrating Pakistani air defences, but at the same time it’s a dual-use weapon and when from the Pakistani side…SV: And it’s nuclear-capable. Just for viewers to understand.KH: Yeah, nuclear-capable. And from the Pakistani side when we see one of these coming in, that gives us two minutes in which to decide whether it’s carrying a nuclear warhead or not. And that was a rather dangerous and a rather reckless thing to do in the middle of these hostilities, to use that particular weapon. I think on this side as well they’ve awakened to the fact that defence against such a weapon is now also something that Pakistan needs to–given India’s willingness to use it in a in a conventional low-intensity, I don’t want to call it a war, what do we call it, a set of exchanges with each other. But given the willingness to use it in this context, now something needs to be done to develop an air defence against it as well. So, I think it’s escalatory in that direction as well.SV: Sushant, you wanted to come in on the BrahMos?SS: Yeah, so just one thing, because this is said a lot by a lot of Pakistani analysts whom both Khurram and I know, but the Indian military and the Indian strategic leadership is pretty clear, they say BrahMos is only a conventional missile. From the Indian side, Indians have never thought of deploying it as a nuclear weapon, but this is what the claims are. Just to be clear what the Indian claim is, and that’s why Indians say that they use the BrahMos.I’ll just add to what Khurram said about the air defence. One thing in which Pakistan did very poorly was clearly air defence. The Chinese air defence which they had bought from the from the Chinese did not perform up to the mark against incoming Indian projectiles. Compared to that, the Indian air defence, the Indian ecosystem of S-400s, local air defences, etc. performed far better during the exchange.As Khurram said, Pakistan clearly has learned those lessons and also seen what has happened in Iran and what’s happened in Ukraine. So what we see next time won’t be a repeat of what has happened in 2025, it will probably be a very different kind of war, escalating much faster, because of nationalism on both sides, and also because of these newer technologies. People have now seen what Iran has done or what the US has done or Israel has done or what Ukraine has done, and the technology is moving very very fast and being learned very very fast by both the militaries. And that makes the next conflict a very riskier proposition.SV: Khurram, I want to just come back to you on one issue. Yes, I think it’s useful to analyse and speculate about the kind of escalation which could happen were there to be another attack and so on. But before one reaches a military sort of escalation, there is some amount of room after a terrorist incident where the proper kind of politics can help to defuse a situation. Has there been any reflection or introspection? Just as Pakistan faults the Indian side for instinctively blaming Pakistan for Pahalgam–and as your government has repeatedly said ‘where is the evidence’ and so on, that India did not provide the kind of evidence, certainly not the kind of evidence that India was able to share with Pakistan after the Bombay terrorist attacks of 2008.But equally from the Indian side, questions could be asked about Pakistani officials and even civil society commentators having their head in the sand. I mean there was lots of commentary on the Pakistani side that this was a false flag operation. A lot of statements that were seen as very distasteful by people on the Indian side. And that perhaps a more reasonable, rational response from the Pakistani side might have prevented or might have acted as a dampener to the kind of escalatory impulse which was visible. Has there been any rethink or discussion in Pakistani security?KH: To be perfectly frank, Siddharth, things have moved on quite a bit from Pahalgam over here on the Pakistani side. Because shortly after the May war, we had the June war in Iran, and even though Pakistan was not really a party in that, the fact that it was happening on our border and the fact that Pakistan had relationships in the Gulf mattered. And the attention of the country turned in that direction very quickly.Immediately after the June war, Pakistan was approached by Gulf countries, by Iran as well, in fact; you’ll notice that the day the June war ended between America-Israel and Iran, the Iranian army chief called his counterpart in Pakistan and this was an on-record conversation that they had. On record in the sense that it was announced by both sides. I asked Vali Nasr, one of the scholars of Iran, what might they have spoken about, and his answer was, most likely about air defences. About how Iran can bolster its air defences the way Pakistan did.Now, I agree with Sushant that I think some vulnerabilities were perhaps exposed during the May war with India. The drone swarms for example were effective in being able to penetrate Pakistani airspace and operate in over Lahore and some areas. The BrahMos missile was able to penetrate. And these have been noted on this side, and some way to shore up Pakistan’s air defences further is definitely a part of the conversation here.But on the whole, Pakistan’s ability to ensure that its airspace could not be violated or penetrated by Indian aircraft was noted in the Iranian side, by the Gulf countries, and they contacted Pakistan. And you saw that by about October Indonesia had dropped its plans to acquire Rafales and was instead buying J10-Cs in the same order.So Pakistan got involved with a lot of other things. The demonstration effect of that war overshadowed the causes and what might have gone into making it. People approached Pakistan from all over the world asking ‘can you help us build air defences of the sort that you just showed in that war over there?’ And the consequences and the effects were there around the world. In October, we had the Indonesian decision, in September, we had Saudi Arabia entering into a mutual defence agreement with Pakistan, which is anchored to some extent at least in Pakistan’s ability to provide a mutual defence. The Saudis would not enter such an agreement with Pakistan if they felt that Pakistan was not able to help provide some kind of defensive ability.In the middle of all this, I think what exactly happened in Pahalgam sort of fell by the wayside, I must say. And what were the causes behind the war became less important and the consequences that flowed from the war became more important.SV: Understood. Sushant, while there is obviously a debate and a different perception in Pakistan and India as to who won the war – in terms of the military gains on the battlefield, what was accomplished, what wasn’t accomplished – there seems to be an emerging consensus, I would say globally, and not a few – I mean I’m sure many people in India subscribe to this too – that the diplomatic battlefield that has played out in the past year, for a variety of reasons, is something where India’s view and narrative has not prevailed.Sindoor is one of those unique wars where the country which proclaimed that it had won – which is India – then embarked on a series of global sort of missions where members of parliament were sent in a sort of outreach program to convince the world why India acted the way it acted, that India had prevailed, and so on and so forth. And if the sending out of these missions was not an admission of a failed narrative, then certainly the events of the last six to eight months, the growing proximity between Pakistan and the United States, the growing proximity between Field Marshal Asim Munir and US President Donald Trump, are stuff that would constitute a nightmare for the Indian side.And of course, there are different dynamics playing out. Khurram is right to refer–I mean you spoke about the Iran war last year, then you have the Iran war this year, there’s a slightly different dynamic involved there, right? One can think of reasons independently of whatever happened between India and Pakistan that the US may want to use Pakistan’s good offices, but there is no denying the fact that the way in which Sindoor played out, the fact that the US was invited eventually by India and Pakistan to help to mediate and bring about a ceasefire, the fact that you gave Donald Trump and his whole administration a sort of entry point and the Pakistani establishment clearly took full advantage of that to draw closer.So, there is a sense in which the Pakistani proximity to the United States and all the gains that are accruing to Pakistan diplomatically in a way flow from Sindoor in some sense. They are the sort of stepchild of Sindoor. So how do you assess one year on this diplomatic terrain? Has it become even more difficult for India to convince the world, or is this just a blip, that once the Iran war moves on, things will revert to some other kind of mean and that India will once again find many takers for its position?SS: To start, even if we were to take the claim of the of the Modi government on face value and believe that all the military successes that they claim happened, I think the way you summarise the diplomatic outcomes or the strategic outcomes where Pakistan has definitely emerged much stronger than what it was when the conflict happened. When the conflict happened, Pakistan seemed to be on the back foot. India seemed to have the moral high ground and as per the Indian claims, India also seemed to have the military high ground in a certain sense.But what happened there was–one is very clearly a close collaboration between Pakistan and China, which many of us now forget. The fact that the Pakistanis for the first time were using Chinese military equipment in such large numbers. They’ve never used Chinese military equipment in active conflict before this in such large numbers and successfully used it. They were using Chinese satellite imagery, they were using Chinese intelligence inputs, which now as we see the Americans are blaming Iran for using the Chinese inputs and Russian inputs. That clearly emerged out of that, but that’s a long-standing relationship, but it paid off for Pakistan.And then as you rightly said President Trump invited Field Marshal Munir for a long meal in the White House and thereafter they seem to be the best of friends, his ‘favourite field marshal’ as President Trump says, and clearly Pakistan’s stock in Washington D.C. seems to be on a high, higher than it probably has ever been since Musharraf’s time after 9/11.Simultaneously, something has happened with Saudi Arabia as well. We should not forget that the Saudis have entered into a strategic defence pact with Pakistan. What we should really worry the Indians and surprise Indians is that Pakistan at this point is in a very sweet spot with the United States, with China, with the Saudis.And you can see the effect in the way they’re trying to negotiate a peace deal between Iran and the United States. That’s not a mean thing. It’s not a mean achievement. Whether a peace deal is achieved or not is immaterial here. The fact that Pakistan seems to be in that kind of a sweet spot, where it can afford to negotiate and arrive at a deal clearly shows that Pakistan has done far better than what India has done.What the Indian side seems to think is that a lot of bluster and this is a loss of narrative. I don’t think it’s a loss of narrative. My own sense is that the Indian political leadership and Indian strategic leadership did not clearly think through the consequences of their action. They were more focused on what they could sell domestically to the audience here within India rather than look at the larger strategic consequences globally.There was also this belief that President Trump is a very dear friend of Prime Minister Modi and whatever we’ll do he’ll come out in our support, like probably what he did in 2019 after Balakot to a certain degree. All those premises, all those beliefs have completely been thrown by the wayside. They have completely been proven wrong in a certain sense with what India did.So I would completely agree with what the way you characterised it: that one year on, diplomatically Pakistan seems to be in a much stronger place, while India seems to be in a much weaker place.Can India now redeem itself and regain its place? It will be very tough, Siddharth. As Ruchir Sharma said the other day at that Indian Express event, in the global economy nobody’s talking about India anymore. For the last year or so, a couple of years, nobody’s been talking about India and if the Indian economy is not being spoken about and if the Indian economy is on a weak wicket, then India has very limited play whatsoever, especially if President Trump is not [inaudible], you are not going to have the Quad anymore. President Trump wants to have a deal with China. There’s very little leeway that India has diplomatically at this point in time. And economically, India is not doing well either.So in the short term, it’s very difficult for–or even in the medium term, it’s very difficult for India to emerge out of it unless they dramatically change their policies. But with the kind of people that we have at the helm – Modi, Jaishankar, Doval, Amit Shah – it’s highly unlikely that they can change any of the policies. They are more concerned with the domestic audience and trying to play the domestic audience to their narrative and [get the audience to] buy that narrative so that they can perform well electorally within India rather than look at something larger.SV: Khurram, two questions for you prompted by what Sushant was saying. The first is General Asim Munir – of course from the Indian point of view, we look at him in strategic terms, there’s a diplomatic challenge that he presents, his rising stature, his growing proximity to Trump throws a whole set of diplomatic and strategic challenges for India.But for Pakistan there is also a domestic political component here. That for better or worse, Sindoor seems to have strengthened the salience of the military in a situation where Pakistanis are yearning to have a normal setup and break free from the domination of the military. This so-called hybrid regime seems to have become less hybrid and more military, in terms of who ultimately calls the shots.So there is obviously this one element which may strengthen Pakistan vis-a-vis India on the diplomatic front. But many people in Pakistan would regard it as a negative consequence domestically.The second question has to do with the risks involved with Pakistan finding itself in the middle between the US and Iran, between the US and China, between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan is in a sweet spot, you have good relations with all of these countries. But the risk is that if you fail to maintain the proper sort of balance or if you fail to mediate or midwife outcomes that produce stability, peace and security, then there’s a great risk that things might turn and become worse for Pakistan.How do you look at these two sets of challenges, the domestic and the and the foreign policy one which have, become very acute in the last one year?KH: Well to be honest Siddharth, I regard the first set of challenges that you outlined with a little bit more concern. Because the domestic ramifications of Pakistan’s global diplomatic successes are actually–they’re a mixed bag, shall I say. Democracy has been suffocated even more, and the role of the military has entrenched itself much much more, and the state has become harder, that’s the sort of language that we are using over here.I think the kind of concerns that this regime had at the outset, that they have come into power via a rigged election in February 2024, have now been muted. And the stone in their shoe, the original stone of legitimacy, in their shoe is no longer biting that hard anymore. The military has succeeded in sort of overturning the domestic narrative in its favour. The key turning point in that was what we call Operation Marka-e-Haq over here and you’re calling Operation Sindoor in India.But the May war with India was one key turning point, and since then Pakistan’s rising stock in global capitals and then their role in the diplomacy with Iran has further entrenched that. It’s now looking very difficult to see what the road back to a democratic Pakistan looks like, number one.To your second question, yes, I think there is a significant risk, everybody in this country was aware of that. But there was no alternative but to walk this road. I for one, and this is just my personal analysis, I think that the risk is now getting smaller and smaller, because my perception is that the appetite to resume hostilities in Washington D.C. is diminishing, and they are now very keen to just conclude this matter one way or the other on whatever terms that are necessary. I think this diplomacy will–SV: Pakistan should keep making requests to Donald Trump. That’s the way to go.KH: I think that will come in due course. But for now I think they are focused on clinching this diplomacy. But the requests, if you’re going to call it that, they will come in not only to Donald Trump but to the Gulf countries too, Siddharth, because the outcome of this war is going to change the Middle East in very fundamental ways and it seems like Pakistan’s going to be an important player in the new Middle East that is emerging. It’s hard to say exactly what that role will be and what not, but it’s worth being mindful of the fact that the ground is shifting in very important ways to the West for Pakistan. The concerns regarding what’s happening on the east are being overshadowed by what they are seeing on the West these days.SV: Sushant, this would be another sort of negative in the ledger book for India, right? I mean if Pakistan is able to leverage its growing salience on the Western side into not just a regional repositioning but a global repositioning, this also alters the terms in which the world is going to then look at the India-Pakistan dynamic. They will be perhaps be less patient, less tolerant of escalation, and escalation rhetoric, as and when India were to engage in that.SS: No absolutely, I completely agree with you. This is what Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dreamt of in early 1970s, that Pakistan could be both part of West Asia as well as part of South Asia at the same time, and leverage one against the other while being very friendly with China. Of course, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto could not achieve that at that point in time because of what the Soviet Union did and the whole first Afghan war, the invasion of Afghanistan, etc. that happened at that point in time. But this has been a long-standing dream or vision of many Pakistani leaders and at this point in time they seem to be fulfilling that vision.But if you ask me Siddharth what India’s bigger worry should be. India’s bigger worry should be China’s rising strength and the very close relationship between China and Pakistan. I think Indians should be really scared of it. I know for a fact–I was on a discussion, I think it was at the Stimson Centre, where the then-Pakistani NSA very clearly said that in 2020, when the border crisis erupted between India and China, the Chinese side were nudging the Pakistani military at that point in time to mobilise on the Line of Control. The then-Pakistani Army chief chose not to mobilise. I don’t think with Field Marshal Munir that is going to be the case. That kind of rethink has definitely taken place in Pakistan.Secondly, the kind of technological advancements that China has had. I think there were already a report in the South China Morning Post that the fifth-generation fighter, the export version has been unveiled by China and that is going to go to Pakistan. India doesn’t have anything comparable, whether in terms of technology that the Chinese can produce, or the kind of military superiority that the Chinese can produce, or the kind of diplomatic support that China can bring in. And I think that is what should really worry India. The fact that China and Pakistan are so close and India has no answers to China and the Trump administration seems to be wanting to be friendlier to China than it wants to be with India, that is I think a bigger military and strategic worry for India.SV: In fact, the thrust of Indian strategic thinking for not just the Modi government, but for the last perhaps three decades, was predicated on the idea that India could bandwagon with the US against China. And the risk in that strategy always was that the US may not be there for you, and the US may actually want to repair relations with China and then you are left out in the cold. So this is an issue.We have just a few minutes left, I just wanted to put to you gentlemen a final set of concerns that I think should figure in the balance sheet. The impact of Sindoor on civil society, on civil liberties, on media freedom, on the militarisation of discourse in society. Sushant, this has been a pretty dreadful year, frankly, if you look at social media, if you look at Bollywood–and perhaps Khurram in Pakistan there are maybe not as lurid equivalents with something similar.Is this a legacy of Sindoor that’s not going to go away? And it’s independent of who won or who lost. I mean both sides think they won and they both have their narrative and their narratives depend on promoting the militarisation of discourse. They depend on throttling the media to make sure that you don’t have alternative voices. How permanent a problem is this going to be, Sushant and Khurram? Lets start with you Sushant.SS: So clearly Siddharth you bore the brunt of it at The Wire when you were reporting on what happened during the military strikes. My own sense is, Siddharth, there were two parts to it. One is, unlike 2019, in 2025 I saw a lot of people in India speaking up and actually calling out the government, the political leadership and even to an extent the military about what was going on.What came thereafter, in terms of the very heavy boot that the government has brought both upon social media, upon digital platforms, upon journalism, has been really extraordinary in a certain sense. It is at par with any other authoritarian, autocratic regime anywhere in the world that they have brought upon and they don’t want any kind of reportage.What also I have seen is so-called Indian defence journalists writing books, and retired military officers writing books, which are essentially propaganda pamphlets handed over by the armed forces or by the government, which is absolutely ridiculous and preposterous, that people would want to give their names to these kinds of, what should I say, these kind of propaganda pamphlets essentially that are being put out.There has been no objective analysis in any sense, no kind of reportage, no kind of review, no kind of stock-taking of what has gone on. Even today what we have seen – at least on the Indian side, I’ve not followed the Pakistani side – has clearly been a very one-sided narrative of triumphalism, of kind of an achievement, where any voice which disagrees with them or tries to put a contrarian view is likely to be shouted down or ignored completely. There is no way in which those kind of feedbacks are being taken.Is it going to be long-lasting? I think under Modi’s regime, yes. Modi has no appetite for any kind of independent views or independent critiques that may come his way. And he’s unlikely to remove these restrictions or remove these heavy checks that he has put on various kinds of media. I don’t know what the situation in Pakistan exactly is, it was never great in the first place, but I think it may have worsened even more now.SV: Khurram, how do things look on that front for Pakistan?KH: Siddharth, the space for free expression in Pakistan has shrunk considerably since the May war last year, no doubt about it. The May war certainly played its role in catalysing this process in indirect ways, but in the sense that the role of the army became more important in the overall setup, and along with that came curbs on free expression.But this was something that was going to happen anyways, I think, May war or no May war. Under the terrorist attacks that have come from the west, those bring with them the same kind of compulsions and at the same time I think whatever space there was for free expression, they were very keen on silencing Imran Khan’s people over here, the PTI [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf], who were very loud, very vibrant in articulating opposition to the elections of February 2024. So from all sides in fact, there was a push to try and curb the space for free expression.In December of 2025, the newspaper I write for has a remarkable editorial titled “We Will Never Surrender”, and it is worth reading and I ask all of your viewers to go find that editorial and please read it, because the Dawn newspaper in particular came under a lot of government pressure to stop giving voice to those that the government preferred to silence, like the opposition parties for example, and that was their response.So, the pressure has come from all different sides and frankly I don’t see it going back – again, like with democracy, it’s hard to figure out what the road back to a democratic Pakistan is. It’s going to be a long-haul job and a rather fraught one to reclaim this space that we have lost, not just since May ’25, but certainly on an accelerating clip since May 2025.SV: Right. Well, here at The Wire, we believe in using all the space that we have and fighting to always expand the space to work with like-minded people in India and Pakistan to ensure that we have the possibility of civilised, enlightened discourse. And gentlemen, I think what you have shared with our viewers today fits the bill. I’m very grateful to both of you, Sushant and Khurram, for joining us on this very important topic one year after Sindoor. I think what you’ve said has certainly provided great food for thought for people both in India, Pakistan and around the world. Thank you once again for joining us and thank you viewers for watching.Transcribed by Ipil Baski.