The Iron Lady's Clay Feet: Myth, Memory, and Modi’s Pakistan Problem

Different Times, Different Terrain

Indira Gandhi wielded power in a different geopolitical era. Today Modi has to exercise strategic restraint shaped by nuclear realities, economic imperatives, and the complex arithmetic of Indian democracy—an approach less dramatic but more durable.

Comparisons flow with numbing regularity in India's political discourse. "Indira Gandhi would have responded more forcefully." "Indira knew how to handle Pakistan."

With tedious predictability, this refrain surfaces from certain quarters of India's right wing whenever tensions with Pakistan escalate as they have after the recent Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor.

But myth is not memory. And 2025 is not 1971.

Let’s dispense with the hagiography. The India of 1971, which Gandhi led to victory over Pakistan, was a different beast from the India of 2025. Start with the obvious: nuclear weapons. Pakistan in 1971 was a conventional power, prickly but manageable.