Why Modi did not go on a Pakistan-bashing spree after the Delhi blast
On 28 November 2008, Narendra Modi, then Gujarat’s chief minister, stood outside the Oberoi Trident hotel in Mumbai, ready to deliver a clear message. Terror attacks had unfolded just days ago. Modi blamed Pakistan, well before any evidence was available. He argued that “the country needs a government that takes decisive action, not one that watches while terrorists strike at will.” He spoke of himself as the man who saw conspiracies others missed. Throughout his career, this would be a key pillar of Modi’s political identity: the promise to target and punish Pakistan. As prime minister, he did so after Uri in 2016, Pulwama in 2019 and Pahalgam in April 2025.
But this November, when a car explosion near Delhi’s historic Red Fort killed at least fifteen people, something was different about Modi’s script. The prime minister spoke of conspirators. He spoke of justice. He promised that those responsible would not be spared. Yet conspicuously absent from his remarks was any mention of Pakistan.
This omission is not an accident, or a moment of tactical recalibration or restraint. There have been some leads bringing up the possibility of Pakistani involvement. In a video, now viral on social media, Anwarul Haq, the former “Prime Minister” of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is heard saying that terror groups linked to Pakistan carried out attacks “from the Red Fort to the forests of Kashmir.” An Indian Express report has also noted that one of the handlers of the Delhi blast fled to Pakistan. Where the Modi government has previously pounced on Pakistan on far less evidence, it has so far held back even in the face of these new developments.
In one sense, this represents an admission that Operation Sindoor—the military operation of May 2025 after the Pahalgam attack, when triumphalist claims of destroying terrorist headquarters inside Pakistan—has failed to eliminate the threat of terrorism in India. By characterising the Delhi blast’s perpetrators as self-radicalised rather than Pakistan-backed, the government has tacitly confessed that eleven years of Modi’s Hindutva regime have produced the ideological and social conditions that can induce people to embrace extremist violence, without requiring any external support. Most critically, Modi’s stance reflects a converging set of geopolitical constraints. It is a reckoning of US President Donald Trump’s transactional pivot toward Pakistan, Asim Munir’s consolidation of unprecedented control over Pakistan, Pakistan’s new defence pact with Saudi Arabia, and India’s own vulnerabilities.
