So, India pulled off the action phase of Operation Sindoor turning nine Pakistani terror camps into smoking craters. Indian missiles destroyed the defence shields of Lahore, and went on spraying around suicide drones here and there in the fabled “military city” of Rawalpindi with gay abandon. That aside, India hit Pakistani air bases across 11 locations – cratering their runways with holes the size of the entry point of Atal Tunnel, and even hit something close to Kirana Hills nuclear storage that caused a mini-earthquake (I am not guessing here, but American National Nuclear Safety Administration aircraft B350AMS is now in Pakistan as we speak) .
Pakistan, right after the first bunch of their favourite terrorists vaporised, flew their planes, drones, and missiles. They thought India, being a huge target and all, would be an easy score – if not the military zones, at least the civilian ones. But a heady mix of Russian S400 and our indigenous missile defence systems effortlessly zapped those irritants, averaging about 6-700 hits per day. X kept buzzing with pride; India’s domestic tech was the belle of the ball! And rightly so.
But there is something more out there that I feel compelled to share: if India doesn’t win the propaganda war every time there is this cage match with Pakistan, all that brilliant accomplishment of the Indian Air Force would continue to remain just expensive fireworks.
Pakistan is old in the narrative game
Yes, the narrative game isn’t a sideshow — it’s the main event. India had better learn to play dirty, fast. Because Pakistan’s been at this forever. Their PR machine is a well-oiled beast. They are the world champions in churning out tales of victimhood, of Indian aggression, and their glorious victories. Give them a couple of inches and they’ll spin Operation Sindoor as a war crime, a Hindu nationalist expansionist rampage against poor Pakistani which they defended like lions. Their posts will flood the social media with doctored videos, hashtags like #IndianTerrorism. They have already begun vlogging their “victory” rallies – just watched one by Shahid Sweet-16 Afridi.
This system is well integrated with international pimps like Al Jazeera or BBC who will amplify it as if on cue – no questions asked, no fact-checks required. All along, India would remain stuck with grainy DRDO clips, very neutral sounding press releases. And soon afterwards, a bunch of officials would keep sprinting through international conferences trying to clear the air, wasting an awful lot of time and money for countering fake videos that costs Pakistan nothing.
Control perceptions & you control results
Why is propaganda so important? The core reason is that perception is power. You lose the narrative, and you lose international weightage. Trade deals slow down. Resolutions begin piling up here and there. Why is it so important now? Because we are living in the era of social media and the democratization of information. Perception shaping is no more restricted within your TV and your morning daily. In fact, these TV and media houses are secondary, or even tertiary now.
Pakistan, tutored primarily by the inventors of propaganda – the USA, knows this game all too well. That is why they’ve got bots and “journalists” on speed dial. No issues in admitting that we are stuck at the poker table of last century busy trying to mask our emotions, while they are playing nine pins using a big wrecker ball.
Challenges for India
Internationally, especially with the primacy of the Soros type open borders and illegal immigrant loving people, a win in this kind of a narrative – painting poor Pakistani “Muslims” as victims – would go miles in reducing India’s room to manoeuvre. And… from the time we lose that, every missile strike, no matter how precise, would look like bullying.
Ditto for the domestic front. Remember that comment on Owaisi? “Jo bhi hai, humara mullah hai”? Following that spirit, now is probably the time when we need the maximum number of Indians across religion or ethnicity to remain as a single unit. Pakistani sound-bytes have already begun to crack that: sow doubts, paint one community as a marauder, insinuate that New Delhi is super reckless. Social Media handles would amplify that. There is already a homegrown #DeEscalate gang. They are working as Indian mouthpieces of Pakistan.
What should you do
The advice is, smash them. Wherever you see them, show absolutely no mercy. If public support for defence investments begin to falter, then you all can happily say goodbye to those hundreds of drone startups, those superb indigenous defence systems – the rockstars of Operation Sindoor, or the nearly INR 1 lakh crore defence budget, and hundreds of thousands of jobs that could very well be in the offing (maybe an article on that later). Propaganda is not just about optics; it is also about sustainability and about business prospects. It is what cements your position today to determine your options for the future.
What can we do? How can we win this? Here is an elementary approach:
Get ruthless. If you are at an institutional level of planning, hire a street-smart PR firm. Best avoid PPT guys who look like bureaucrats, even if they appear wise. The need is slick, oil-salesmen, not an Albus Dumbledore who struggles with practical application of his large pool of wisdom.
Flood X and Meta with hi-def footage of anything to do with the precision of Operation Sindoor. Anything. Flood the internet with terror camp coordinates and internet chatters that were intercepted. Use the same product for hundred different storylines – no problems.
Charm the hell out of the Global South; we already have a good thing going in Africa. Do not, I repeat, do not, neglect SE Asia and the GCC.
Get your PR guys to work on a brand story where Operation Sindoor typifies “precision”. There could be other images out there as well: like Operation Sindoor as the handbook of counterterrorism on foreign soil.
Unleash the meme-warriors. Pay them well and they would get you cosmic levels of dry humour, wit, and sarcasm. Target Pakistani hypocrisy and their begging through victimhood; get even the uninitiated to raise an eyebrow about the ‘very Pakistani love-affair’ with all the Islamist terrorist groups. Don’t underestimate humour. It is way sharper than self-importance.
Do all of this to vaporise the “oh what a glorious victory for Pakistan” story that ISPR is trying to sell. Because make no mistake, the stakes are high. Pakistan’s PR ecosystem has earlier turned India’s wins into stalemates. That have resulted in major losses afterwards. And today, with India’s economy doing well (remember our export dreams? INR 21 thousand crores. Yes.), the best news that could come is a defence boom – something that could entirely change India’s geopolitical approach in the region.
Remember…
Lose this narrative and its game over. Operation Sindoor – at its core remains a limited exercise; it was a flex. What it needs now is a series of damn good stories to propel it into a brand. Miss that, and it remains just noise. India has the troops, the gadgets, and the talent. But she needs you all. So all those with social media presence – your country is banking on you to help her win the dirtiest war: the one for the world’s ear.
Go out there and unleash your inner monster!
