Author: sachin nandha, trustee and director
On 25th April at around 2:50pm, a clear afternoon, in the meadows of Pahalgam—a town long associated with Kashmir’s serene beauty and emerging peace—terror struck with ruthless precision. The attack was not random. It was a deliberate assault on the fragile but real gains that Kashmir, and India more broadly, have painstakingly nurtured over the past decade. See Understanding Kashmir post 370.
Beyond the immediate tragedy, the Pahalgam attack compels us to ask deeper questions:
- How must India’s security architecture evolve to meet the demands of an era defined by hybrid threats, proxy warfare, and disinformation?
- And more fundamentally, how must India’s society renew its long-term commitment to resilience—not just in tactical terms, but as a civilisational imperative?
Pahalgam: More Than a Town, A Symbol
Pahalgam has, over recent years, become emblematic of a new narrative in Kashmir: one of reconciliation, tourism, and quiet normalcy. Visitors flocked to its valleys, hospitality flourished, and the region began to shed the heavy legacy of insurgency and militarisation.
Striking Pahalgam, therefore, was more than an act of terror—it was an attack on the very idea that Kashmir could move beyond cycles of fear. It was designed to reignite trauma, to destabilise confidence, and to fracture India’s carefully woven fabric of recovery.
Understanding this symbolic dimension is essential. Security is not just about preventing physical attacks. It is about safeguarding progress itself.
A Response Marked by Professionalism
It is important to note that the immediate security response to the Pahalgam attack was commendable. Coordination between agencies was swift, professional, and effective demonstrating that many structural reforms implemented over the past decade have matured into real operational capacity. Even critical observers across political lines have acknowledged the absence of major lapses in either intelligence response or tactical execution.
In this specific case, it is perhaps more accurate to describe the operational environment as an intelligence black area:
Signals were sparse, patterns were diffuse, and no significant early-warning indicators were available. Thus, while there was no actionable failure, the event reaffirms the need for continual enhancement of India’s intelligence synthesis capabilities—especially in challenging terrains where information gaps persist.
Strengthening the Foundations for the Future
Building on these gains, India must continue strengthening its security architecture—not as a criticism of what was lacking at Pahalgam, but as a proactive investment in future resilience.
First, institutional coordination must be permanently embedded. The establishment of a Unified Security Command at the regional level ensures that in more complex, multi-site scenarios, the clarity of command remains robust.
Second, intelligence must be fused, not just collected. Regional Intelligence Fusion Centres, integrating inputs from human, technical, and local sources in real time, can better address intelligence black spaces—especially in an era where adversaries are innovating faster than traditional structures can adapt.
Third, strategic vigilance must be redundant but discreet. In Kashmir today, security is increasingly invisible by design—a sign of success, not weakness. Maintaining layers of unseen resilience—through surveillance technologies, predictive analysis, and rapid response forces—ensures that normal life can flourish without overt securitisation.
The Cross-Border Reality: Old Tactics, Evolving Strategies
The persistence of cross-border terror infrastructures is a reality India cannot ignore. Groups operating from Pakistani territory, often with varying degrees of state support or tacit complicity, continue to act as force multipliers for instability.
While India’s international diplomatic efforts to expose and isolate such tactics are important, the primary lesson is clear: self-reliance is paramount. After the Uri attack in 2016, India’s doctrinal shift toward surgical strikes and proactive countermeasures demonstrated that deterrence can and must be enforced when necessary.
The Balakot air strikes of 2019 further expanded India’s willingness to act beyond its borders to defend national security.
Pahalgam reaffirms this trajectory. A sustainable security strategy must retain full-spectrum deterrence capabilities—including covert disruption, strategic messaging, economic countermeasures, and calibrated kinetic options.
Hybrid Warfare: Securing the Physical and the Psychological
The Pahalgam attack was not confined to the physical realm. Within hours, manipulated videos, false flag narratives, and communal polarization efforts began to circulate across social media platforms. This is the signature of hybrid warfare:
The blending of physical attacks with psychological operations to fragment, disorient, and weaken societies from within.
India’s security doctrine must now formally treat strategic communications, information security, and societal resilience as critical domains of national defence. Dedicated information command units, real-time media monitoring cells, and partnerships with civil society actors must become the norm, not the exception.
India must not only defeat attacks on its borders. It must also defend truth itself.
Technology, Human Capital, and Sustainable Security
India has rightly invested heavily in security technology, from AI surveillance to smart fencing and sensor networks. However, one key insight from global military practice must be emphasised: Technology must augment high-quality human capital, not substitute for it.
In Western military models, technological investments build upon strong human analytic and operational capacities. For India to fully realise the dividends of its technological investments, parallel investments must be made in training, leadership development, and systemic human capital uplift across security forces. Only when people and technology evolve together can true operational transformation occur.
Global Context: A Broader Trend
What India faces is not unique. The use of disinformation alongside kinetic action is now a staple of global conflicts—from the Ukraine-Russia war to operations in the Middle East.
This underscores another vital point: India’s experience, and India’s innovations in hybrid defence, will have global relevance. As India’s geopolitical stature rises, so too will the necessity of sharing best practices, building resilience networks, and shaping global norms for hybrid conflict response. In that sense, India’s fight is part of a broader human struggle—to defend open societies against forces that seek to corrode them from within.
Toward a Sustainable Security Strategy
From Pahalgam, several imperatives emerge clearly:
- Operationalise Unified Commands: Seamless, multi-agency coordination must be built into daily operations.
- Create Regional Intelligence Fusion Centres: Actionable intelligence must move rapidly to prevent, not just respond to, attacks.
- Maintain Strategic Vigilance: Invisible but constant layers of security must protect both citizens and progress.
- Invest in Border Innovation: Technology—AI, drones, sensor arrays—must become the backbone of future border security.
- Strengthen Offensive Deterrence: Deterrence must be multi-dimensional and proactive, calibrated to the threat environment.
- Institutionalise Narrative Security: Counter-disinformation must be a standing function of national security, not an ad hoc reaction.
- Anchor Security in Democratic Strengths: India’s resilience is strongest when it rests on transparency, civil liberties, and public trust.
Security as a Civilisational Mission
At the International Centre for Sustainability, we believe that sustainable security is not built solely through force. It is built through wisdom, resilience, and a relentless commitment to sustaining human dignity.
The attack on Pahalgam sought to fracture India’s confidence. India’s response must be to strengthen it—in its systems, in its institutions, and most importantly, in its collective spirit. In the final analysis, true security is not simply the protection of territory. It is the preservation of the possibility of hope.
It is a mission that India must embrace, not just for itself, but for the future of free societies everywhere.
