History is shaped not just by what happened, but also by what didn’t. In the early 1980s, India was ready for a pre-emptive strike on its sworn enemy that would have rewritten the future of South Asia. The plan was bold. Israeli jets would take off from Jamnagar airbase, refuel midair, and obliterate Pakistan’s Kahuta nuclear facility—then still vulnerable. Operation Bonsai, as the Israelis reportedly codenamed it, had support in the highest quarters of Indian intelligence. But it was vetoed by Indira Gandhi—twice. Once in 1982. Again in 1984.
Why?
Washington’s arrogance. Pakistan was its Cold War ally. The same Washington that now sermonises India about non-proliferation while running covert operations from Tel Aviv to Tehran. That selfsame empire sent veiled warnings of “consequences” if India dared cross the line. And so Indira blinked. The rest is nuclear fallout. Now imagine a counter-history. Had the Kahuta facility been flattened before it reached criticality, Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent would never have existed. No mushroom cloud diplomacy, no doctrine of “plausible deniability” through nuclear cover that emboldened the Pakistani deep state to launch asymmetric warfare. Kargil might never have happened. The 2001 Indian Parliament attack could have met with full-spectrum retaliation. The 26/11 Mumbai massacre might not have been followed by a strategic shrug and a surgical strike for optics. More importantly, Pakistan would have been forced to behave like a conventional state, not a jihadist startup with nukes.
Instead what has Islamabad done since going nuclear?
Hosted Osama bin Laden under the nose of its military in Abbottabad.
Launched Kargil under the nuclear umbrella.
Orchestrated Parliament, Pathankot, Pulwama, Mumbai, Uri—all while claiming to be a victim of terrorism.
And now exports its nuclear paranoia to every diplomatic forum, begging for parity while threatening instability.
The biggest lie sold to the world was that nuclear weapons would stabilise South Asia. Instead, they emboldened asymmetric war, turned Pakistan into a state where generals run foreign policy and terrorists run strategy.
Even more disturbing is that by aborting the Kahuta strike, India outsourced its strategic future to American restraint. It gave the leash of South Asian security to a bipolar world where CIA cables mattered more than R&AW assessments. We let Washington play god—while Tel Aviv, the master of surgical precision and political will, stood ready to act. Today, Israel does what it must to protect its citizens. It bombed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. It obliterated Syria’s al-Kibar facility in 2007. It even allegedly sabotaged Iran’s Natanz plant in the dark of night. No apologies. No UN resolutions. Just national interest, clearly defined and brutally defended.
Indira’s caution was understandable—she had just survived the Emergency era and a bruising internal battle. But history does not remember leaders for caution. It remembers them for courage. And in the calculus of nations, restraint without deterrence is surrender in slow motion.
A nuclear Pakistan was not inevitable. It was enabled.
By America’s hypocrisy.
By India’s wavering.
And by a belief that peace could be achieved without power.
In the alternate reality where Indira acted and Israel struck, South Asia might have faced short-term chaos—but gained long-term clarity. Instead, we inherited a nuclear-armed narco-state next door, one that produces terrorists like assembly-line exports and holds the world hostage with its radioactive belt of impunity. Indira Gandhi’s greatest act of restraint may yet prove to be India’s greatest strategic error. The bomb that wasn’t dropped became the bomb that blew up South Asia’s future.