Dr Attiq-ur-Rehman
The commemoration of Youm-e-Takbeer this year has added another phase in South Asia’s intense regional politics, in which the Indian government is compelled to accept the legitimacy of Pakistan’s counterbalancing potential against New Delhi’s multifaceted aggression, especially against territorially adjoining nations.
The celebration of Youm-e-Takbeer 2026 is the actual celebration of Pakistan’s formal resolve to deter or suppress Indian plans for achieving strategic supremacy over Pakistan by undermining the scope of regional stability, as a result of the May 2025 crisis.
The May 28 celebration could be treated as the festivity of Pakistan’s ability to win a war against India, under the Modi administration, which is suffering from an extreme and irrational Pakistan syndrome.
A brief history of Modi’s rule in India, from Chief Minister of Gujarat to the country’s 14th Prime Minister, shows that the country is passing through serious political and diplomatic disorders, aligned with Modi’s ideological obstruction rooted in an extremist and an ultra-nationalist political agenda.
These disarrays have resulted in overt armed aggression against Pakistan in the form of Operation Sindoor despite adequate awareness of Pakistan’s credible deterrent capabilities centred in Islamabad’s declared nuclear weapon status. Modi administration’s launching of a multipronged hybrid operation in May 2025 introduced an unambiguous enactment of a non-contact warfare scenario in South Asia under the nuclear threshold. In response, the Islamabad-based defence planners were forced to implement the adequate security measures outlined in a comprehensive military option, officially called Operation Bunyan al Marsoos.
It was a well-calculated, well-structured, and timely military action that communicated to the Indian security establishment Pakistan’s credible retaliatory capabilities and their effective operational applications in the targeted domains. Further support from the country’s indigenous population enabled the armed forces of Pakistan to secure an appreciable victory against a neighbouring belligerent Hindu nation with hawkish political ambitions.
The victory from a brief armed confrontation with India, dubbed by Pakistan’s government as the Marka-e-Haq (battle of the righteous), and its first celebration in May 2026 led the entire world to reminiscence the actual strength of Pakistan’s defence, initiating from the 1998 nuclear tests.
Responding to India’s Pokhran-II, the tests in Chagai empowered Pakistan’s formal commitments to keep the nuclear politics of its home region secured from the threat of instability and the prevailing fragile regional security landscape. It showed the strong determination of the Islamabad-based policymakers to preserve South Asian strategic stability on rational grounds, while wisely calculating the Indian government’s aggressive strategic manifestations against its neighbours.
In this way, the annual celebration of the nuclear tests on May 28 highlights Pakistan’s multidimensional efforts to support the greater vision of peace and stability in South Asia by exclusively addressing the leading territorial disagreements with India. It shows the country’s decisive pursuit of promoting conductive diplomacy and a robust crisis management mechanism through multilateral cooperative efforts, especially those sponsored by the international community.
In this setting, Islamabad’s proposals for creating a nuclear-weapon-free zone in South Asia in the pre-1998 scenario and the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute on the given instructions of the United Nations are important factors validating Pakistan’s defensive approach. An additional strength of this approach was evident in the May 2025 war, where a swift and calibrated response by the Pakistan armed forces eventually pushed the Indian government towards the United States’ mediating rescue.
It was a deliberate appeal by the Modi government to the Trump administration to mediate an immediate ceasefire after a few hours of Islamabad’s brief retaliatory military operation.
Pakistan’s victory legitimated the role of nuclear weapons in South Asia in establishing a robust deterrent while serving the country’s core objectives of concentrating the greater vision of peace and stability in a nuclearised region. It has shown the operational attributes of Pakistan’s pragmatic defensive approach to denying New Delhi’s political narrative, fixed in the Modi administration’s alleged claims of victory.
Thus, the combination of Marka-e-Haq and Youm-e-Takbeer in 2026 has proven a greater preservative of nuclear deterrence in South Asia, and its practical regional applications, appearing from the ashes of Operation Sindoor 2025.
Both achievements are seen as the two pillars of Pakistan’s strategic identity, linked to Islamabad’s war-fighting and war-winning capabilities, while opposing New Delhi’s regional hegemonic ambitions rooted in its reckless strategic posture undermining the regional strategic calculus. Both celebrations in May 2026 have altered the strategic landscape of South Asia this year due to New Delhi’s multiplying anti-Pakistan obsession and its explicit transformation into an overt continuation of Indian-belligerent regional stance.
It has been made clear through various inconsiderate statements by Indian mainstream political and military officials that the civil-military leadership has agreed to continue Operation Sindoor despite witnessing temporary pauses in the form of a ceasefire. Apart from such aggregated Indian perceptions, the celebrations of May 2026 in Pakistan have gone beyond the conventional description of Pakistan’s possession of a nuclear bomb and its classical deterrent patterns against the expected Indian aggression.
This year’s celebrations clearly exhibited Pakistan’s robust war-fighting capabilities and their strategic manifestations under the nuclear umbrella. Suitable analogies to the scenario are difficult to find in the world’s history of nuclear politics, as South Asian nuclear politics has recently witnessed a brief series of brinkmanship between Islamabad and New Delhi.
In short, it can rationally be maintained that an explicit nuclear weapon status of Pakistan has made clear to the entire world the validity and legitimacy of Islamabad’s strategic posture aiming to restore regional peace and stability while avoiding jumping into an undesired catastrophic direction during a crisis. It has also communicated to the critical or Indian-influenced strategic commentators of the world that Pakistan has robust capabilities to design a timely and calibrated response to external aggression, which requires careful futuristic considerations.
The combined symbolism of May celebrations, Marka-e-Haq and Youm-e-Takbeer, provides an appropriate justification for emphasising the credibility of deterrence in Pakistan’s national security framework. In its defined comprehensive framework, deterrence and stability are treated as the fundamental priorities, defining Pakistan’s standing within the regional complex security apparatus.
In this way, the South Asian version of global voices of crisis management and durable peace projection are required to adopt impartial and balanced standings towards India-Pakistan regional contestation where New Delhi’s misperceived strategic assessments are actual concentrating points.
The author is a Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations, NUML, Islamabad. (arehman@numl.edu.pk). https://www.numl.edu.pk/faculty/446
