India, Sept. 6 -- Strategic autonomy told the world what India would not do. Sagacious balance is simply what India did in Bishkek, in real time, in front of everyone and, increasingly, without needing to say so out loud.

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek in the last week of August, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi sat at a table while the rotating SCO presidency was passing to Islamabad for 2026-27. Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir were very much in the room. On that platform, Modi said plainly that terrorism "cannot be an instrument of state policy". This was a line delivered not from a podium of his choosing, but inside the very forum his neighbour was about to chair. In the same 48 hours, he he...