Military intervention in Myanmar will only lead to further militarisation of the Indo-Myanmar border

Nandita Haksar

In 1950, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa produced an award-winning film called Rashomon. Some regard it as one of the best movies ever made. The movie became the source of the ‘Rashomon Effect’, situations when various stories of the same event compete and contradict one another.

There are reports of Indian armed forces having dropped bombs by drones in villages inside Myanmar between July and October 2025 resulting in the death of several civilians, including a child. Most reports have prefaced the word bombing with ‘allegedly’ since the Indian Army has neither confirmed nor denied the bombing.

Perhaps the only paper to quote ‘army sources’ is the Organizer, the mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayam Sangh (RSS). Dibya Kamal Bordoloi writing for the Organizer, quoting army sources, states that ‘In a major and highly coordinated cross-border operation, the Indian Army reportedly carried out a series of drone strikes early Sunday morning (on 13th July 2025) on insurgent camps belonging to ULFA Independent (ULFA-I) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) inside Myanmar’s Sagaing Region, close to the India-Myanmar border in the Naga Self-Administered Areas.’ (https://organiser.org/2025/07/13/302505/bharat/indian-army-carried-out-cross-border-drone-strikes-on-ulfa-i-nscnk-camps-in-myanmar-report-militant-causalities/) Bordoloi states that there were over 100 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), making this one of the biggest such aerial attacks.

So far India has not issued an official statement on the bombing, but it can be assumed that it would justify it on the ground that the bombing was aimed at the Northeast insurgents hiding in Myanmar. It is likely that Myanmar military council provided intelligence about exact locations of the rebels, then gave permission to bomb them.

Independent media in Myanmar has noted that Myanmar’s military regime has remained silent in the face of India’s repeated drone attacks and reconnaissance missions inside Myanmar territory. 

Experts say that it is likely that there is a tacit understanding between New Delhi and the military junta in Myanmar to undermine each other’s rebel groups, noting that Manipur’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a separatist militant group in Manipur, is also cooper