PUBLISHED
April 27, 2025
KARACHI:
It’s the yr 2018. India prepares to move to ballot subsequent yr. “Narendra Modi is going through an surprising picture downside: he’s beginning to look weak,” writes Nikhil Kumar in an evaluation for CNN. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Occasion misplaced a lot of key state-level elections in December 2018, with the Congress vanquishing the BJP in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh. The charisma of Modi, who has portrayed himself because the champion of the poor, is waning amid rising unemployment, rising inflation, agrarian disaster, rampant corruption, and the Rafale deal controversy.
After which Pulwama occurs.
On Feb 14, 2019, 40 Indian reserve police personnel are killed in a suicide assault on their convoy within the Pulwama district of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir state. As if the BJP was ready for this godsend; the Modi authorities rapidly dumps blame on Pakistan, dial up tensions with its neighbour, and begins drumming up battle hysteria at dwelling. Modi and his cupboard aides make sombre public appearances with the coffins of the lifeless police personnel draped within the nationwide flag. Nationwide safety and jingoism change into the one agenda of BJP’s election marketing campaign as social gathering leaders set off a raucous refrain of requires revenge. Instantly, the problems that haunted Modi are drowned within the cacophony of jingoistic frenzy.
After which Balakot occurs.
On Feb 26, 2019, Indian jets violate Pakistan’s airspace, fly over the densely-wooded Balakot space of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and bomb a purported militant coaching camp. Pakistan delivers “Swift Retort” inside hours, finishing up air raids deep inside disputed Kashmir state and taking pictures down two Indian warplanes in dogfights. Modi’s PR workforce, aided by a pliant media, portrays the inconsequential incursion as an incredible navy feat. “What Narendra Modi’s workforce designed was a basic dodge, distract, derail scheme,” wrote famous political scientist Yogendra Yadav.
The scheme works – and Modi will get his ballot mojo again.
The 2019 polls defied all projections. The BJP emerged as the one largest social gathering, clinching 303 seats towards 282 within the 2014 elections. The social gathering and its Nationwide Democratic Alliance strengthened their electoral wins in states like West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, and Karnataka, the place their efficiency within the 2014 election was lacklustre. This shocking electoral victory was made doable by a 67% turnout as Indians imbued with jingoistic euphoria turned out in large numbers to vote for BJP.
Tellingly, many of the police personnel killed in Pulwama had been low-caste Hindus, who had been apparently used as cannon fodder for the revival of BJP’s political fortunes. “The 40 jawans had been primarily from lower-caste communities – 19 from the Backward Lessons, seven from Scheduled Castes, 5 from Scheduled Tribes, 4 from Higher-Caste backgrounds, one Excessive-Caste Bengali, three Jat Sikhs, and one Muslim. Solely 5 out of the 40 jawans, or 12.5%, got here from Hindu Higher-Caste backgrounds,” wrote Ajaz Ashraf in his analysis article for “The Caravan,” a journal of politics and tradition.
Modi managed to kill a number of birds with one stone. He efficiently bought the Balakot “navy feat” to the nation to quell the controversy surrounding the acquisition of Rafale jets at an escalated value. “India’s airstrike by Mirage 2000 planes in Balakot might have introduced higher outcomes had the Rafale planes been used,” he later stated on the India At present conclave. Modi blamed the rival Congress for delaying the Rafale deal for “vested pursuits.”
Turned out Pulwama was a drama!
Years later, Indian politicians started to doubt Modi’s narrative. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee known as the Pulwama assault “faux and staged”, whereas former IIOJK governor Satya Pal Malik concluded that it was a “systemic failure involving gross safety and intelligence lapses.” Equally, Shiv Sena chief Sanjay Raut and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha suspected that it was a “conspiracy hatched by the BJP to win the 2019 elections.”
Quick-forward to 2025. India is caught in a diplomatic tight spot.
Delhi has lengthy been finishing up “pre-emptive assassination” of dissidents and critics it perceived as disloyal to the federal government. Nonetheless, such extrajudicial killings sharply escalated throughout Modi’s tenure – maybe as a result of he thought his nation is an rising energy within the new geopolitical competitors which the US can’t afford to alienate. RAW turned so emboldened in the usage of Israeli intelligence’s playbook that its hitmen assassinated a dissident Canadian Sikh chief, Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a brazen violation of Canada’s sovereignty.
India was incorrect. It might be a darling of the West, however India is just not Israel. It can’t count on the identical stage of Western safety as Tel Aviv. Canada’s then prime minister Justin Trudeau publicly blamed “the federal government of India” for Nijjar’s homicide. As if this wasn’t sufficient, the FBI additionally thwarted an Indian plot to assassinate one other Sikh chief on American soil.
“The foiled assassination was a part of an escalating marketing campaign of aggression by RAW towards the Indian diaspora in Asia, Europe and North America,” The Washington Put up reported in April 2024. “RAW officers and brokers have confronted arrest, expulsion and reprimand in nations, together with Australia, Germany and Britain,” in keeping with officers who offered particulars to The Put up that haven’t beforehand been made public.
After the RAW extrajudicial killing spree was uncovered, the US Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedoms advisable in its 2025 report that sanctions be imposed on the Indian company.
In additional damning proof of RAW’s rogue actions, Britain’s Guardian newspaper printed an exposé of how the Modi authorities had orchestrated as many as 20 extrajudicial killings of Kashmiri and Sikh leaders by a fancy community of spies, arms sellers, and assassins in Pakistan since 2020.
Turned out that India – which accuses Pakistan of exporting terrorism – was itself perpetrating transnational terrorism. Modi, who has vowed to make Pakistan a pariah state, ended up isolating India globally. International Minister Jayshanker, who known as former Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto “spokesperson of terrorism business”, deserved that label himself. Going through rising worldwide scrutiny and diplomatic warmth over RAW’s transnational terror marketing campaign, India desperately wished to shift the highlight.
And Pahalgam occurs.
On April 22, 26 vacationers had been killed in a gun assault at Pahalgam’s Baisaran space, dubbed “mini Switzerland” for its mist-veiled meadows. The Indian media, as if studying from the post-Pulwama script, rapidly skilled their weapons on Pakistan and whipped up battle hysteria. Just a little-know group, The Resistance Entrance, was recognized because the perpetrator which Delhi claims is an affiliate of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group.
Pahalgam is deep contained in the disputed Kashmir state and the closest distance to the Line of Management is greater than 100 kilometres (because the crow flies), whereas Baisaran is closely guarded resulting from frequent VIP motion within the idyllic resort. This raises a number of questions: 1) how might the attackers cross the heavily-militarised and surveilled LoC, evade a number of layers of safety, trek to Baisaran unnoticed, segregate non-Muslim male vacationers, and bloodbath them earlier than disappearing in a area the place India has over 700,000 troops deployed? 2) Why safety forces didn’t reply to the 30-minute-long rampage though a safety submit is situated simply 10 kilometres away from the crime scene? How come the FIR was registered inside 10 minutes after the assault and the way come it named the perpetrator group with none particulars? And three) Why RAW-affiliated social media accounts began pointing finger at Pakistan inside 5 minutes of the incident?
All day lengthy, Indian media rattled all sabres in its arsenal with hyperventilating anchors and analysts baying for revenge. Within the night, India’s prime diplomat made a TV look to share the official model. And it wasn’t completely different from what the media had spun all through the day. International Secretary Vikram Misri formally blamed Pakistan and spelled out a number of punitive measures, together with suspension of the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan, closure of the Wagah-Attari border crossing, and downgrade of diplomatic ties.
The timing of the Pahalgam incident was important as US Vice President JD Vance was in India on a non-public tour, whereas Modi was in Saudi Arabia signaling a necessity to regulate diplomatic optics. The episode seems to be a choreographed try by India to as soon as once more painting itself as a “sufferer of terrorism” and quash the worldwide portrayal of its prime spy company as a “perpetrator of transnational terrorism.”
Nevertheless it wasn’t the one hen Modi wished to kill with one stone. The Pahalgam victims belonged to a number of main cities – together with Mumbai, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Indore, Kanpur, Bihar, Bangalore, Pune, Bhavnagar, Tamil Naido, and Gujarat – the place the incident stirred up anger towards Muslims. The Modi authorities could money in on this nationwide outrage to snub widespread opposition to the controversial Waqf Modification Invoice which critics consider is a part of the hardline Hindu nationalist authorities’s plan to reshape the nation’s socio-political panorama, notably that of the Muslim group.
India has lengthy sought to scrap the World Financial institution-brokered Indus Waters Treaty of 1960. The need stems from its strategic plans to construct hydroelectric and storage initiatives alongside the western rivers – together with Pakal Dul, Ratle, Kiru, and Sawalkot – which have lengthy been delayed resulting from objections from Pakistan. Within the Pahalgam incident, Modi discovered an excuse to execute these plans. There’s additionally a sinister facet to it. By turning off the faucet, India plans to undermine crop yield to trigger meals insecurity, which it believes will set off social unrest in Pakistan.
Pakistan, nonetheless, has warned that such a transfer will probably be thought of “an act of battle” as a result of water is a “very important nationwide curiosity.” Rightly so, as a result of water is a matter of life and loss of life for hundreds of thousands of individuals in Pakistan, the place agriculture is 90% depending on the Indus drainage system. There’s a robust risk that if and when India tries to construct any dam by stopping or diverting river water, Pakistan will militarily take out that facility.
Proper now, India is popping up the warmth on Pakistan. However as soon as the mud settles and the battle hysteria fades, what if Pahalgam seems to be one other Pulwama?
