SCO Backs India’s Stand

When PM Modi told the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin that the world "cannot remain confined to an action-reaction approach" to terrorism, he was articulating a lived reality that no other member of that grouping has had to endure with comparable intensity: India remains the only major democracy that has, for four decades, faced terrorism deployed as a deliberate instrument of a neighbouring state's policy. From Kashmir to Mumbai, and most recently to the Pahalgam attack that preceded Operation Sindoor, the toll of Pakistan-sponsored terror on Indian soil is not a matter of conjecture but of repeated, documented tragedy. Two nuclear-armed neighbours have been pushed to the brink of war on several occasions precisely because one side has treated terrorism as a legitimate strategic tool rather than a crime to be prosecuted and dismantled.

It is this history that gave Mr Modi's remarks in Tianjin their weight. Speaking in the presence of Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and China's President Xi Jinping, he called for the "comprehensive dismantling" of terror financing networks, recruitment pipelines and safe havens. He insisted that there could be "no place for double standards" in how the SCO's members respond to cross-border terrorism. The phrase "instrument of state policy" was carefully chosen. It was not an oblique reference; it was as direct an indictment as diplomatic protocol allows, and it landed squarely on Islamabad.

What makes this moment more consequential is the record of China's conduct at the UN. Beijing has, on multiple occasions, used its Security Council veto or procedural holds to block or delay the listing of Pakistan-based terrorists and organisations under the UN's 1267 sanctions regime. That pattern of shielding has repeatedly spared Pakistan the full weight of international sanctions and scrutiny. Yet even with China chairing the summit and hosting Islamabad's delegation, the SCO's Tianjin Declaration went on to strongly condemn the Pahalgam attack, extend condolences to its victims, call for justice against those responsible, and explicitly reject double standards in counter-terrorism. The declaration reflected India's position, despite Beijing's history of providing diplomatic cover for Islamabad, marking declaration reflected India's position, despite Beijing's own history of diplomatic cover for Islamabad, is a genuine, if incomplete, diplomatic achievement for New Delhi.

PM Modi did not confine himself to terrorism alone. His reference to connectivity projects needing to "respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries" was a pointed, if indirect, allusion to China's Belt and Road Initiative, sections of which run through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir - Indian territory under illegal occupation. That India, a founding member of the SCO, chose to raise this at the summit's plenary rather than let it pass unspoken signals a diplomacy less interested in avoiding friction than in placing uncomfortable facts on the record.

There was also a wider strategic logic in Mr Modi's remarks on West Asia. By linking the Iran-Israel-US crisis to the imperative of resolving disputes through "dialogue and diplomacy" rather than the battlefield, he implicitly reminded the assembled leaders that regional conflicts do not stay regional; they unsettle global supply chains and economies far beyond their borders. The subtext was not hard to read: an India-Pakistan confrontation driven by terrorism carries precisely that kind of wider cost, and the SCO's members have a shared interest in preventing it.

None of these developments should be mistaken for a definitive turning point. Pakistan is set to take on the SCO chair next year, and Islamabad's own record suggests continuity rather than reform. But India's calculus is evidently a patient one: to keep raising its concerns consistently across every multilateral platform available to it, from the SCO to the forthcoming BRICS summit in New Delhi, so that the diplomatic cost of shielding terrorism keeps rising. At SCO, a joint declaration highlighted India's concerns. In a forum where India remains a minority voice among states far more invested in Beijing's and Islamabad's goodwill, that is not a small outcome - it is a marker of how far New Delhi has learned to make its case even where the room is not naturally inclined to listen. Pakistan will keep facing Indian diplomatic pressure until it abandons state-sponsored terrorism; until then, India has all the other options.