On May 10, 2025, the guns fell silent. After four days of intense cross-border shelling triggered by the Pahalgam terror attack, India and Pakistan agreed to a sudden ceasefire. President Donald Trump was quick to take credit, announcing that 바카라common sense바카라 had prevailed. But beneath the surface of diplomatic photo-ops and press releases lies a more uneasy truth: Is this ceasefire a step toward peace, or just another pause before the next eruption?
Outlook바카라s new issue, Gated Neighbourhood, goes behind the barricades of diplomacy, media spectacle, and statecraft to ask urgent questions. Has India바카라s Operation Sindoor redrawn the lines of deterrence? Has the media deepened nationalist hysteria at the cost of truth? And what does this new normal reveal about a world where the lines between conflict, diplomacy, and media spectacle are increasingly blurred?
Amir Ali, professor at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU, writes on the media바카라s performance in wartime, where anchors become agents of chaos. He critiques the 바카라fabricated fog of war바카라 on Indian television, citing false claims like the attack on Karachi Port, and warns that such manufactured outrage erodes public reason and democratic institutions.
Tanvir Aeijaz, who teaches Public Policy at the University of Delhi, examines the geopolitics of peace and war through the dichotomy of 바카라hawks바카라 and 바카라doves바카라. He warns that hawkish jingoism, especially post-Pahalgam, risks turning every counterterror operation into a justification for pre-emptive strikes. Aeijaz notes that while Operation Sindoor may have been a calculated retaliation, its glorification by media and politicians risks embedding a dangerous new norm: every terror attack as an act of war. For now, he writes, the ceasefire is a triumph for doves바카라but for how long?
Former Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Subrata Saha offers a stark counterpoint. In a detailed military analysis, he portrays Operation Sindoor as a strategic masterstroke바카라India바카라s 바카라new benchmark바카라 in anti-terror policy. With surgical strikes on terrorist HQs in Muridke and Bahawalpur, India demonstrated its capacity for depth and precision. But the mission, Saha argues, was more than military바카라it was ideological. India, he says, has drawn new red lines: no more tolerance for nuclear blackmail, no distinction between terror and its state sponsors, and no apology for hitting first. For him, diplomacy may follow, but deterrence must lead.
From the ground up, Outlook brings you layered perspectives: Ishfaq Naseem reports from Kashmir바카라s border towns, capturing how ceasefire politics are felt in homes, Pragya Singh unpacks how social media became a parallel warfront and Avantika Mehta investigates India바카라s under-resourced foreign service, struggling to keep pace with its global ambitions even as China and others outstrip it in both scale and strategic capacity.
Gated Neighbourhood traces how borders are being militarised, minds are being shaped, and how, on a global stage, the theatre of power plays out.
Read these stories and more in the latest issue of Outlook.
