There was no need to strike Pakistan to begin with. Let’s not even pretend there were options without our armed forces attacking in civilian areas. But say the government had intel that made it necessary (hard to see how they could know the locations of dozens of terrorists to target with a single run), once we had attacked, we should have committed to it and taken it to some logical conclusion.
The goal can’t be to take those bases out – it could have been done far more quietly without the incitement to war. Whatever additional goals there were – say for example, forcing Pakistan to concede defeat and impose punishing consequences, or isolate Pakistan in the eyes of the world, etc failed miserably, and not for lack of results from the armed forces.
The government that has become so accustomed to managing public relations with brute force failed miserably to gain the trust of the world. Some reasons:
A successful strike turned into a losing war
There was no real way to win this conflict. Pakistan is a nuclear state, and there would be intervention before it escalated even remotely to the point where Pakistan was cornered. One possibility was to drag it on without winning it with military might till the bite of the economy delivered a defeat, but our aggressive messaging kept pushing for escalation, and it wouldn’t deliver spectacular political optics. This government cannot do something like this, because its messaging has long been broken and out of control. For something like that, you’d need a functioning media publishing analysis, contextualizing the actions, pointing out consequences, and so on. Like the spread of decay, anything with notable access to the government ends up being compromised and turned into a puppet, whether institutions or media. Any media with significant access to the state has been reduced to stenographers incapable of independent thought.
Censorship and media relations
The move to censor news from Pakistan, independent Indian media, as well as credible foreign media backfired horrendously. It instantly painted India as country with something to hide. It doesn’t help that India has already alienated foreign media by banning journalists entry, blocking news we don’t like, Indian trolls attacking criticism with massive numbers and unmatched vitriol. So the number of foreign journalists to count on for sympathetic coverage was very low. Whether it is because Pakistan doesn’t have the economic reach of India or because the West has extensive reach and familiarity due to the Afghan War, Pakistan did not face this hurdle. On the world stage, Modi’s media management was decimated.
Within India, the lack of information prevented independent Indian media from operating optimally. Beyond the hysterical puppets of the state, nobody knew enough to understand and project the Indian perspective. Even attempts by independent media to provide analysis were hindered by an insecure government blocking access to them. It is mind-boggling that India did not trust its own veterans to comment on the actions of its own armed forces favorably. This definitely creates a perception that India knew it was in the wrong, hiding something much worse or losing and was now blocking visibility for political reasons. Much of the energy of Indian voices invested in the war was spent on challenging blocks and lack of access. Ironically, avoiding it would be dead easy. The government had to do NOTHING. Let media do its job.
This lack of visibility was a huge problem. Personally, I think this was to protect the BJP government and Modi in particular from the public knowing that the Rafales purchased at such great cost had gifted India an avidly watched defeat at the hands of Pakistan. This is not national interest. It is BJP’s personal interest in defending the bloated deal it gifted its cronies. And for this, BJP gave India its first defeat at the hands of Pakistan. Whether you call it a ceasefire or an understanding is immaterial. The fact is that the war of perceptions is already lost when Trump basically announced that we’d stand down and the fair-weather Prime Minister hasn’t showed his face since.
India’s massive army means there is no shortage of extremely competent, analytical commentators among our retired officers who could easily have contextualized the mission, explained conditions and defined how success or defeat is estimated.
But without clear information on an already problematic mission on civilian targets, with images of civilian casualties flooding social media, Pakistan, and military commentators around the world were able to present this strike as a resounding defeat for India, even though the targets had been achieved and the only losses were to equipment, which is to be expected at such times. All the downing of the Rafales was, was a victory in air to air combat, AFTER the mission had already accomplished its goals. This, in most situations would be called a successful mission, except the politics to protect the Rafale deal silenced information on our success and turned it into a defeat for India in global opinion.
By treating media it cannot control as the enemy, Modi effectively eliminated any chance at being seen favorably, and what little curiosity value he had has been thoroughly squandered with grandiose posturing and claims of Indian greatness without speaking anything of substance.
Unpatriotic government
The political leadership of the country, so quick to proclaim machoism and how Operation Sindoor will teach Pakistan a lesson and claiming great willingness to escalate unless Pakistan just shut up and took it, vanished in the middle of the operation, leaving “sources”, media, and assorted bureaucrats to handle the fallout once they were thoroughly discredited was the warmongering opportunists they are. The last two leaders of nations India has heard on the subject of the ceasefire are the Pakistani Prime Minister and the President of the United States. Let that sink in.
Quick to take personal credit for any achievement of India, Modi is nowhere to be seen now that his chunavi jumla has bombed. As usual. And as usual, I’m pretty sure he’s willing to wait out any objections till his troll armies fatigue dissent into silence and expects no consequences worth mentioning, in spite of almost having dragged India into a catastrophic war.
What little credibility we have left is because of the Air Force presentation on the achievements of the mission. A briefing that truly deserves applause, because it was done at a time when all the media outside India was convinced of PAF’s air superiority and completely oblivious to the facts of the utterly disproportionate impact India had on Pakistan on the ground, while Pakistan had barely been able to penetrate our defenses. It takes a lot of courage to come forth and speak at a time when the leadership of the country is speaking through unnamed “sources”. They saved the day.
This is after the Air Force Chief had been forced to go public over an aircraft shortage. Both the Air Force and the Navy have raised concerns regarding staff shortages as well. The government hasn’t bothered to upgrade crucial equipment for ages, the ever greedy machinery strangling those not allowed to go public with their protest. The last time we bought planes were the highly expensive Rafales and that was in 2015. Ten years ago. Still, our Air Force lived up to expectations and were still made to look incompetent by a government that cares for nothing but its own political advantage. INS Vikrant provided crucial support ensuring the success of missions.
Though I suppose Modi will now pop up to take credit again.
The liability of Hindutva extremists
If there is a single element that defeated India worse than the government, it is it’s flying monkeys. The hysterical news coverage obfuscated real messaging and concrete achievements, making all news coming out of India to be seen as suspect. When Pakistani media uses fake news from Indian channels in its official briefing, you know Indian news channels have nothing to do with news and are basically profiteers dealing with sensationalism, no matter the cost. First they came for minorities. Now they came for the whole country.
India has already been facing a massive dislikeability crisis in recent years, with Hindu nationalists disliked globally. We can pretend it is because the world is jealous of India’s rise, etc but it will take an exceptional moron to believe it. Pakistan being jealous I can understand, but countries with GDPs in multiples of ours and the living standards of their poorest something our middle class might aspire to are really not jealous. Indians are fleeing India in droves. This isn’t because India is a great place to be in by global standards. We love it sure – it is the only place we know. Or at least I don’t have a passport. Our living standards are pathetic. Nobody is jealous of India. There are far better targets to be jealous of.
The dislikeability is because of BJP’s influence on the public. A hatred for a growing list of iidentities – Muslim, secular, Congressi, presstitute, AAPtard… anybody who isn’t a fan of Modi gets a label and instant hate. A public told that Hindus are the best, Hindu culture is the best, and that they are victimized and to be alert for anybody who doesn’t agree, because they are traitors… taught how other religions are bad… They believe it, because voices they trust are raping their brains for political profit, but get out of those social cocoons, and they are stunned that forget being liked and respected, they are actively disliked. Forget abroad, Indian tourists are not even liked in Indian tourist destinations frequented by foreign tourists, because they simply cannot meet different thinking and respect it. Indian tourists will often behave in ways that make foreign tourists feel intimidated and unsafe and they look down on hotel staff, so it can lead to extremely difficult situations. It is not uncommon for hotels to simply claim they are full, particularly if a large group of loud Indian men tries to check in. This includes Hindu religious tourist destinations. Surely religious Hindu Indians are not jealous of India.
This, combined with the growing use of the internet has dumped vast quantities of half-literate, fully arrogant and doubly crude Indians everywhere. You’ll find them in YouTube comments on cooking videos that have nothing to do with culture. You’ll find them in the mentions of respected journalists, hurling profanity at their mothers. You see them rejoicing in photos of dead infants to support a genocidal Israel – their only interest in the matter? Muslims being killed. They adore Hitler for the exact same reason they love Israel – state-sanctioned genocides. You’ll find them trolling your own foreign secretary’s daughter till a public figure representing India has to protect his account. This is great for thumping chests at anything Hindu and going “Modi, Modi, Modi”, but it is useless for anything practical for the citizens or country. It is unpleasant, and it simply doesn’t make anybody want to see such people thrive.
The hatred Hindu nationalists have for Muslims is so notorious, that it is like the boy who called wolf. If we say Pakistan is a terror sponsoring state, how do we get anybody to believe it? Because our TV channels are also showing the Saudi flag trampled and an Iranian diplomat – an ally on a diplomatic visit – being called the son of a pig. If you ignore a few educated Indians getting jobs abroad, our image as a nation is one of rabid Islamophobia and extreme hostility to all disagreement. Why would anybody believe anything bad we say about Pakistan isn’t because they are Muslim and been in conflict with us for ages? Meticulous proofs would have helped, but we aren’t in the business of proofs, just flinging accusations and driving angry hordes at targets to ram them through. But Indians get intimidated by these tactics, not because a few trolls are angry, but because of a well-established pattern of impunity for everything from assassinations to mob attacks if they piss off the angry hordes. Non-Indians have no such fear. They simply think Indians are nasty, filthy and usually dead wrong, and get on with their lives. And they aren’t interested in digging deeper and finding out that they might be wrong this one time.
And thus, Modi and BJP have gifted India it’s first humiliation by Pakistan – in spite of our forces having done everything right. If this is not gaddari to the nation to protect cronies, I don’t know what is.
Modi and BJP are a curse on India. Parasites sucking the money out of India to give their cronies, risking India for political posturing, making it look bad to protect their cronies and finally abandoning it when the going gets tough. Parasites, the lot of them.