India will never be the same again. Or at least not like what it has been since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
On May 7 and 10, Indian forces were rather confidently subdued by the Pakistani army and air force. On May 7, when the wreckages of India’s highly-touted Rafale fighter jets were discovered, the tone of the Indian government suddenly lowered. That’s when one felt that the May 7 battle was not turning out the way India had hoped.
This war was initiated by India on the assumption that Pakistan was a highly polarised society with an “unpopular army” and an equally unpopular government. Indian strategists were convinced that Pakistan would not be able to withstand an attack by its much larger neighbour with a ‘very popular’ government and superior war machine.
But during the conflict, India — figuratively speaking — was first served a black-eye, and then, on May 10, a bloody nose. It eventually called for a ceasefire mediated by the US. This was first reported by the veteran journalist Nic Robertson on CNN.
India stoked a war expecting a ‘fractured’ Pakistan to crumble. Instead, it was met with unexpected national unity, military pushback and global scrutiny — thus reshaping the regional narrative
Pakistan successfully withstood a major Indian offensive and scored some vital military and diplomatic victories. India, on the other hand, has very little to show for its gambit. Let’s see how India’s infamously loud, jingoistic and fact-free media spins this because, by the evening of May 10, it had started to sound rather disoriented.
One of the most bizarre episodes of the conflict, though, unfolded on Indian TV channels during the night/early morning of May 8/9. For hours, the Indian media kept ‘reporting’ the fall of major Pakistani cities and the country’s government, and the arrest of Pakistan’s military chief. This bewildering tidal wave of fake news kept rising, despite Pakistanis posting videos of complete normality in their country (and, understandably, laughing their heads off). More so, no news outlet outside India reported anything at all about this “sweeping Indian victory.”
One day this episode will (and should) be studied more closely by sociologists (or, for that matter, by psychologists as well). My immediate understanding is that it was a case of a collective fantasy that kept gaining momentum as more and more Indians got sucked into a whirlpool of outright fibs, so much so that they lost all contact with reality.
I guess, the ecstasy and frenzy of those mad hours on Indian media were such that all ability to think rationally and mindfully was sucked out from a lot of Indians — especially middle class Indians, who are Modi’s core constituency. A collective fantasy of the total and absolute destruction of a hated neighbour was played out that night on Indian news channels and on social media. It soon mutated and took the shape of a frenetic ritual.
Most participants of this ritual woke up the next morning with a terrible hangover. Pakistan was still there, as it has always been. The hangover worsened when Pakistan successfully retaliated on May 10 with a barrage of missile strikes. By then, the Indian media and its audience were visibly exhausted. So was the Modi regime. The gambit had failed.
Indeed, Pakistan was/is a polarised society. But it is remarkable the way the country’s many divergent social, economic and political segments almost instantly came together to support the country’s armed forces and government against the Indian offensive. The Indians were not expecting this.
Their understanding of the political situation in Pakistan seems to have been based on an exaggerated perception of the economic and political crisis that Pakistan plunged into in 2022. A perception — which one can now safely claim — was largely formulated by Indian ‘psyop’ (psychological operation) experts on social media through their own ‘trolls’ (pretending to be Pakistani), and through the usual cast of ‘useful idiots’ within Pakistan who readily hitch a ride on any narrative that undermines the “unpopular” armed forces.
This is not to suggest that the narratives in this regard are entirely wrong. Far from it. But they do tend to be exaggerated and are framed to fish for emotions and beliefs that have turned into dogmas. These dogmas are mostly views about Pakistani state institutions and politics. Even though the institutions and the country’s politics have been evolving, their understanding in certain fixed minds seems to have stalled or stopped at some previous point in time. This tendency can be found on the left as well as on the right.
However, many who (I believe) carry this tendency were also openly supportive of the country’s response to Indian hostilities. There were those among them who were clearly struggling, even though they weren’t as vehement in their criticisms as they often are. Most from this segment decided to talk about ‘peace’. Nothing wrong with this, really — but here’s the thing: one is often impressed by the long tradition of anti-war and/or peace marches in Europe and the US. But these marches make sense because they were (and still are) held against one’s own country because its forces have invaded and occupied another country. Think Vietnam, think Iraq, think Afghanistan, think Palestine.
But do you think peaceniks in the US would’ve been singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’ had it been the Vietnamese forces invading the US? Were the Iraqi soldiers singing ‘All We Need is Love’ when facing US troops in Iraq? Of course war can be hell on so many levels. But it wasn’t Pakistan who started the war.
The country’s sovereignty had been breached by a neighbour that has never hidden its desire to break Pakistan into several pieces. Calls for peace had to come from peaceniks in India, the initiator of the war. One just couldn’t expect the Pakistani armed forces and government to pull out acoustic guitars instead of guns and start singing ‘All We Need is Love.’
Perhaps the silliest were many fans of Imran Khan. Some continued their so-called ‘anti-establishment’ tirades, but most, in a rather surreal manner, tried to posit that Pakistan’s victory was somehow dependent on Khan’s release from jail. They didn’t explain how. Take for example the following X post by the official Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) account when India launched its second attack: “Pakistan is under attack. Release Imran Khan now!” To do what? Hold a rally? Organise a dharna? What?
Nevertheless, the Indian government’s reading of present-day Pakistan was exposed as one-dimensional. This understanding became trapped in its own exaggerations and formulations. Even these realities changed with the aggression against Pakistan, surprising the Indians.
Published in Dawn, EOS, May 18th, 2025
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