Now that the dust of Operation Sindoor has settled, what can one make out of this event? What is evident in India and not so much to the international media and audience is the undercurrent behind the military operation in the late and early hours of 6th/7th May 2025. Most international media and audiences tend to view such military hostility or skirmishes in a one-dimensional manner. However, such is seldom the case especially when it is about India and Pakistan.
Sparing the repetitive statements on Operation Sindoor, one narrative that is making rounds in national and international media is the role of the United States in brokering the ceasefire. Immediately following the ceasefire, one of India’s leading voices, Prof. Brahma Chellaney, termed it as India “snatching defeat from jaws of victory”. He even went as far as to comment that President Trump is undermining “America’s strategic partnership with India”. The question and remarks are indications of what Prof. Chellaney failed to take into account. To understand this, we must direct our attention to the foundational basis of the whole operation which is based on two goals aimed specifically at two different sets of audiences. One primary and the other is an auxiliary for the main objective, which the international audience may unintentionally miss.
The first goal and the first set of audience the operation was intended for was the government of Pakistan and the terrorist groups it sponsored (such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and Hizbul Mujahideen). By destroying the terrorists’ training facilities in nine different locations within Pakistan and Pakistan-Administered Jammu and Kashmir (PAJK), India sent a strong message to Islamabad that if it cannot handle such groups, New Delhi will hunt the terrorists inside Pakistan. And to the terrorists, New Delhi’s message was to show that India can reach them even inside their assumed haven. India had to respond since there was domestic pressure on the government to do something about the terrorist attack on tourists in Pahalgam.
The second goal and the second set of audience are perhaps the most vital elements, and it is also here that the cracks in the whole framework of the operation begin to emerge. It is here that we see the murky intentions behind goals that should not have been part of the force calculus of Operation Sindoor. The second goal was political. The second set of audience the operation was intended for was the Indian electoral voters. The urgency of the upcoming general election cycle in the states of Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Naidu, Pondicherry, Assam, and Kerala, and how to influence the Indian voters in these states took precedence over all other issues. These states are crucial for the ruling government led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP has been trying for years to wrestle and maintain with great difficulty its grip in these electorally large and important states, with the exclusion of Pondicherry, a small union territory.
Another overwhelming indication of how the BJP is spinning an important military operation for its electoral advantage is the depiction in the various social media platforms and big billboards across India of the country’s Prime Minister in Indian Air Force (IAF) jumpers and Indian Army uniforms with fighter jets behind him. These are images exclusively illustrating to the average Indian voters how Prime Minister Modi is not only single-handedly defending the Bharat Rashtra but also punishing terrorists and Pakistan. There is undeniably a subliminal message to its audience that India is Modiji and Modiji is India, no leader or political party apart from Modi and BJP is fit to govern the country.
Because party interests, electoral votes, and election cycle considerations superseded all other considerations, the mainstream news media in India did the rest. They jumped on the government’s bandwagon and, as usual, succeeded in crowding out and out-voicing all other rational deliberation and sane discussions. The sensationalism, like most of the Bollywood movies, it managed to produce flooded the media space with a plethora of misinformation such as attacks on Karachi and Islamabad by the Indian military. Claims too outlandish, yet a messaging technique that has been the ‘standard operating procedure’ to influence average Indian voters because of its effectiveness, despite its melodramatic elements, in the past decades.
What ultimately matters for the present government is not what the international community thinks, for that is hardly their concern here, but what average Indian voters think of this operation. What matters to them is whether Operation Sindoor succeeded in influencing the voters for the upcoming state general election cycle in the vital states of Bihar, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Naidu, and Kerala. As long as the voters have been influenced and brought under the information bubble of the BJP, the ruling party will internally deem Operation Sindoor a success. And the rest of the mediascape in India can go on to blame President Trump and the United States for taking sides and undermining the relationship with India.
Viewed from this lens, Prof. Chellaney’s remarks seem misplaced since ‘war’ in its conventional sense never was part of Operation Sindoor. And it is also safe to say that no strategic partnership has been undermined. We can only speak of ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ in the context of ‘war’. One can sense an air of frustration on the part of Chellaney because, like many other Indians, we were led to believe by the rhetoric making-machinery (such as the Indian mainstream media and other social media platforms) that India will comprehensively teach Pakistan and terrorists a lesson, not knowing that such saber-rattling jingoisms were distractions for another more sinister goal of attaining electoral advantage.
About the Author: Salikyu Sangtam, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Tetso College, Chümoukedima, Nagaland, and Commissioning Editor at ICNA. View all articles by the author.
Featured Image: Operation Sindoor refers to a series of coordinated missile strikes carried out by the Indian Armed Forces, targeting terrorist infrastructure at nine locations across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir | Image: Business Standard
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