PM Modi’s strategic legacy: How India changed the grammar of statecraft

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to surpass Jawaharlal Nehru’s tenure as India’s longest continuously serving Prime Minister, much attention will naturally focus on political longevity. Yet, from a strategic perspective, the more important question is whether India has altered the way it conceives and exercises national power.

States are ultimately judged not by rhetoric but by behaviour. For decades, India’s strategic culture was characterised by caution, restraint and a preference for managing challenges rather than shaping events. Such an approach had its rationale in a developing nation confronting multiple internal and external pressures. However, over the last decade, a discernible shift has occurred. India has demonstrated a greater willingness to employ diplomatic, military, technological and economic instruments in a coordinated manner to protect national interests.

PM Modi’s most significant strategic legacy probably lies in the altering of the grammar of Indian statecraft — expanding the range of instruments India is willing to employ and the confidence with which it employs them.

The Politico-Military Signal

The clearest evidence of this shift can be seen in India’s response to terrorism and cross-border provocation.

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The surgical strikes of 2016 following the Uri attack were important not because of their military scale but because of their strategic message. India publicly acknowledged cross-Line of Control operations and demonstrated a willingness to impose costs without triggering wider escalation.

The Balakot air strike following the Pulwama attack marked a further evolution. For the first time in decades, India crossed an international boundary to strike terrorist infrastructure. More significant than the physical damage was the signal that geographical sanctuaries would no longer guarantee immunity.

Operation Sindoor represented another step in this progression. Its importance lay not merely in punishment but in calibrated escalation. India demonstrated both the capability to impose costs and the political confidence to terminate operations on its own terms. Many interpreted these actions solely through the prism of deterrence. Their deeper significance lay in establishing a new framework of political resolve, strategic messaging and escalation management.

Equally important was the conduct of Operation All Out in Jammu and Kashmir. By systematically targeting terrorist leadership and networks while simultaneously expanding governance and developmental outreach, the state sought to deny proxy actors any comfort zones. Security operations and political messaging worked in tandem.

Taken together, these episodes reflected more than military action. They demonstrated a political willingness to employ force in a calibrated manner while retaining escalation control — an important departure from earlier patterns of strategic behaviour.

Doklam, Ladakh and Strategic Resolve

A second transformation occurred in India’s approach to China.

The 72-day Doklam standoff of 2017 was not merely a border incident. It was a test of political will. India demonstrated a readiness to stand firm in defence of its strategic interests despite sustained pressure from a more powerful adversary. The outcome had an important psychological impact, reinforcing confidence within the armed forces and signalling that coercive diplomacy would not automatically succeed.

The events in eastern Ladakh in 2020 presented a more serious challenge. Much commentary has focused on the crisis itself. The more significant story, however, was India’s response. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, India executed one of the largest and fastest military mobilisations in recent decades. Troops, equipment, infrastructure and logistics were surged into a difficult high-altitude theatre on a war footing.

The lesson of Ladakh was not that China challenged India; great powers challenge one another routinely. The lesson was that India demonstrated the capacity to absorb a strategic shock without losing national balance or developmental momentum. Equally important, it showed a willingness to push back against increasingly assertive Chinese behaviour while retaining a longer-term commitment to stability.

Strategic Transformation Beyond the Battlefield

Having observed India’s strategic evolution over four decades in uniform and public life, I have rarely seen national security receive such sustained political attention. One of the less appreciated aspects of the Modi era has been the early recognition that future conflict would extend beyond conventional military domains into cyber, information, technological and cognitive spaces; the classic multi-domain operations (MDO).

The creation of the Chief of Defence Staff, efforts towards greater jointness among the services and the gradual movement towards theatre commands reflect an understanding that future warfare will increasingly be multi-domain in character. Institutional transformation is rarely dramatic. It demands patience, consensus and persistence. The fact that these reforms continue to be pursued despite their complexity reflects a recognition that military effectiveness in the future will depend upon integration rather than service-specific excellence alone.

Equally significant has been the emphasis on defence self-reliance. Indigenous production, private sector participation and growing defence exports are no longer viewed merely as economic objectives; they are strategic necessities. Strategic autonomy in the twenty-first century must rest upon technological and industrial capability.

The Maritime Turn

One of the least discussed but most important aspects of contemporary Indian strategy has been the growing maritime orientation of national policy.

For a nation whose prosperity and security are deeply linked to the seas, maritime consciousness arrived relatively late in strategic thinking. Over the past decade, however, the Indo-Pacific has moved to the centre of policy. Initiatives such as SAGAR, deeper engagement with maritime partners and greater emphasis on naval capability reflect an appreciation that India’s future influence will depend significantly on its maritime reach.

The decision to pursue the Greater Nicobar project illustrates this thinking. Measured in electoral terms, such projects often appear expensive and slow. Measured strategically, they are investments in future influence. Located near one of the world’s most critical maritime corridors, Greater Nicobar has the potential to significantly enhance India’s ability to shape developments across the eastern Indian Ocean and the approaches to the Malacca Strait.

This is statecraft measured in decades rather than years.

Strategic Autonomy and Civilisational Confidence

The same strategic confidence is evident in India’s diplomacy. The Modi government’s approach has combined strategic autonomy with unprecedented diplomatic activism, allowing India to engage competing power centres without becoming captive to any of them.

India has expanded relations with the US while preserving longstanding partnerships with Russia. It remains active within BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation while participating in the Quad and strengthening ties across Europe, West Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific.

At its core, India’s diplomacy increasingly reflects a Nalanda Approach: engaging all major centres of power, avoiding exclusive alignments and preserving strategic autonomy. In an era of growing geopolitical polarisation, this flexibility has become an important source of influence.

Complementing this has been the reassertion of civilisational confidence. Through cultural diplomacy, heritage conservation and a more confident articulation of India’s place in the world, there has been a visible effort to present India not merely as a nation-state but as a civilisation with a distinctive voice and contribution.

The Emergence of a Strategically Confident India

Ultimately, the most significant transformation may be psychological.

The Modi years have witnessed the emergence of a greater willingness to think strategically across multiple domains simultaneously — military, technological, economic, diplomatic and civilisational. National confidence today derives not merely from economic growth but from a growing belief that India possesses the capability to shape events rather than simply respond to them.

As Prime Minister Modi surpasses a historic milestone in tenure, historians will continue to debate individual successes, shortcomings and policy choices. Yet strategic assessments often focus less on individual events than on enduring shifts in national behaviour.

Viewed through that lens, PM Modi’s most important legacy may be that he helped India move from a posture of strategic caution to one of calibrated strategic confidence. The emergence of a willingness to shape events rather than merely respond to them has altered the grammar of Indian statecraft. In an increasingly turbulent century, that transformation may prove among the most consequential developments in India’s strategic evolution.

(The writer is the Governor of Bihar and former Commander of the Indian Army’s Srinagar-based Chinar Corps. He has served extensively in J&K and is a commentator on strategic affairs, national security and geopolitics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)