Post-Op Sindoor: Time to Deploy INS Tharoor & ICBM Owaisi

India Today

11-05-2025

In 1971, as India grappled with the East Pakistan crisis, PM Indira Gandhi sent her fiercest rival, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to the United Nations. The Jana Sangh titan's oratory gave India's cause unassailable global heft, proving a fractious democracy could unite against external threats. Today, in 2025, with a fragile ceasefire halting the latest India-Pakistan war, the battlefield has shifted from airbases to airwaves. And, India is losing ground.advertisementThe ceasefire, announced yesterday, paused hostilities sparked by the horrific Pahalgam massacre, where 26 tourists were massacred by Pakistan-backed jihadis. India's response: hitting the known terrorist bases in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan proper's Punjab. Pakistan escalated and sent barrages of missiles and swarms of drones into India. India retaliated by obliterating Pakistan's main airbases, pounding their military into paralysis.Yet, Pakistani PM Shahbaz Sharif, with audacious gall, claims victory. His narrative -- amplified by Pakistan's slick PR machine -- paints India as the aggressor, conveniently sidestepping the terrorist bloodbath that ignited the war. The world, it seems, is buying it. Pakistan, despite its crippled defences, is winning the narrative war.
Before the ceasefire, the international media -- CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera -- barely blinked when Pakistan shelled Indian villages or sent drone swarms across our borders nightly. India's precise strikes on terrorist hubs like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, however, were framed as escalations. Now, post-ceasefire, the same outlets laud Pakistan's "restraint" while scrutinising India's "militarism".advertisementPakistani "experts" with polished Western accents dominate global panels, peddling victimhood in the face of a "hegemon". The Pahalgam atrocity fades into a footnote, while Pakistan's well-funded US lobbyists and dual-citizenship brigade spin tales of a plucky underdog. Even the grotesque spectacle of Pakistani Army officers showering rose petals at terrorists' funerals hasn't dented their narrative. As Daniel Pearl's father poignantly asked, "Who is Pakistan mourning?" India's envoys tried, flashing these shameful images on global TV. The world shrugged.India's military dominance is undisputed, but narrative wars demand sharper weapons. Enter Shashi Tharoor and Asaduddin Owaisi -- Gravitas and Serendipitas.Tharoor, the former UN diplomat, is a rhetorical colossus whose global stature and literary fame can outmatch any Pakistani apologist on international airwaves. His Oxford-honed eloquence can dismantle Pakistan's post-ceasefire mirage, exposing their terrorist patronage with surgical precision. He's the suave, cosmopolitan face India needs to reclaim the narrative, reminding the world that ceasefire or not, Pakistan's military-jihad complex remains a global menace.Owaisi, the Cambridge-trained barrister, is the wildcard. Often divisive domestically, he's proven to be a fierce unifier against external threats. When Pakistan tried to exploit India's fault lines, Owaisi's impassioned calls for communal peace kept the nation steady. As a Muslim leader and ideological foil to the BJP, his voice carries unique weight. Deploy him on a global blitz -- Washington, Brussels, London, and so on -- where he can argue with diplomats, school media, and confront influential world leaders with Pakistan's grim reality: a state hijacked by jihad-obsessed generals who've spilt innocent blood for a delusional expansionist fantasy, only to claim victory when battered into a ceasefire. This would also send a signal to the warring fringes at home.advertisementUnleashing Tharoor and Owaisi wouldn't be just strategic; it would be a masterstroke of optics. It would signal to Pakistan -- and the world -- that India's political spectrum, from saffron to green, stands united. It's a defiant strike at Western narrative mills, proving India isn't just a military juggernaut but a cohesive democracy, impossible to caricature as the bully just because Pakistan is a smaller, stunted stature state.Some BJP stalwarts might baulk at sharing the stage, but national interest trumps party egos. If Indira Gandhi could trust Vajpayee, Narendra Modi can bank on Tharoor's finesse and Owaisi's fire.The ceasefire hasn't ended the war; it's merely shifted the terrain. Pakistan's narrative, polished by decades of duplicity, threatens to overshadow India's truth. If Operation Sindoor has taken Kashmir out of the centre of any India-Pakistan hostility, the ceasefire has brought the hyphen back into the world's imagination of the subcontinent. India had moved leagues ahead, but after May 10, 2025, the world will see us as sparring equals who need a third party to sit down.Tharoor and Owaisi can flip the script, forcing the world to see Pakistan's terrorist pageants and drone swarms, not just India's righteous might. Prime Minister Modi should make the call: draft Shashi Tharoor and Asaduddin Owaisi for national duty, while they remain on opposition benches. A ceasefire is just a pause in a long war. That's for the sharpest minds in the military to prepare for and execute. The narrative war too needs our sharpest minds leading the charge.Tune InMust Watch