Hostage to narrative

It’s interesting and instructive how modern communication technologies – twitter feed, real time video – just fail to cut through the fog that keeps the most relevant information from reaching the people most directly affected by wars; especially early on.

Just like human progress that enabled space travel and artificial intelligence could do nothing to curb man’s ancient urge to fight and kill over flag and fiction, the information superhighway, too, has only flooded the world with more misinformation than information; made it easier to dress propaganda as truth.

That is why even the clearest assessments of how the new Pak-India war is unfolding must be presented with lots of ifs and buts, and still read with a lot of caution.

So, if it is true that India suffered disproportionate damage in first exchange, then you can be sure that it wasn’t the last and talk of quick de-escalation is also misinformation. The idea that both sides can claim victory and wrap it up like last time is also unlikely because Modi Ji promised the Shaswat Rashtra a lot more than gutting two mosques and killing two dozen civilians when he waved his fist in Bihar.

“We will punish every terrorist and their backers,” he thundered, and “we will pursue them to the ends of the earth”. Then Indian media, frenzied in the best of times, howled for blood. So, Indian analysts calling the “measured strike” a “success” because it “conveyed the right message” might find a ready international audience, but they’ll only make the fire at home worse.

Also, if it is true that Operation Sindoor has cost the Indian military 5-6 fighter jets, drones and a Brigade HQ so far, then the Pakistani analysis that the Indian government over-reached, despite the snub from the international community, because domestic political survival demanded putting its muscle where its mouth was, is also true.

And that is why things will, most likely, get worse. The Modi government is now hostage to its own narrative, which makes escalation as inevitable as the operation itself.

How ironic that the majority and later coalition government that catapulted India into the stratosphere of international finance and information technology was built on the kind of combustible, extremist religious-political ideology that feeds on hate and blood. Now Modi and his Hindutva brigade have whipped up this bloodlust to the point that feeding it requires more war in the subcontinent.

And it doesn’t help at all that – according to the Pakistani narrative, at least – the operation Sindoor returned from its first outing with its tail between its legs.

The fog is thickest not on the battlefield, but in the minds of those fed a daily diet of half-truths and patriotic delusions. What’s most dangerous now is not that the aggressor might miscalculate — that’s happened — but that both sides are locked in stories they’ve written for themselves, with no way to rewrite them without looking weak.

Going by what is considered genuine information on this side, it seems Modi rolled the dice and lost in his attempt to substantially alter the Indo-Pak status quo. If he doesn’t make up for it quickly, the extremist Hindutva headlock over once secular India will itself begin to implode.

So he’s bound to try harder. And that’s bad news for ordinary people on both sides, who meet the missiles on the ground and pay in blood for the nation’s pride in this theatre of illusions.

De-escalation is still possible, of course, but it’ll take a much bigger if.

If India admits it punched above its weight, miscalculating that muscle alone could justify unilateral action without evidence or international buy-in. If it admits it lacks the military superiority to “teach Pakistan a lesson.”

But that would unravel more than the Hindutva grip on Delhi — because it’s the story India tells itself that now limits its choices.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025