Doctrine of spectacle, optics of defeat

Express Tribune

3 days ago

Narendra Modi may have thought May would bring his finest hour. After successively upping the ante with Pakistan each time militancy revisited Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), his regime had a playbook ready. Pakistan, scapegoated for its own failures in the disputed territory, would be 'taught a lesson'. So what if the last time had brought an Indian jet or two down - for his right-wing constituency, surely lessons had been learnt, 'strategic costs' exacted. Pakistan, wracked with its own issues, political and economic, surely couldn't keep up with the doctrine of disproportionate response that Modi's government had so carefully cultivated.
And so India's military brass was given carte blanche and Operation Sindoor was launched. Within hours, however, or minutes rather, it was clear it would hang like an albatross around the Modi government's neck.
This week, as India's Parliament reconvened for its monsoon session, the government faced its moment of reckoning. Far from a victory lap, the debate on Operation Sindoor unfolded under a cloud of unease. Home Minister Amit Shah doubled down, telling lawmakers that the terrorists responsible for the April 22 Pahalgam attack, which sparked the crisis, had been 'neutralised' in a separate mission dubbed Operation Mahadev. But the timing of the announcement, conspicuously aligned with the parliamentary session, raised eyebrows. Was this a genuine update or political theatre crafted to retake control of the narrative?
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who has shown increasing comfort playing disruptor, wasn't buying it. He demanded transparency about the costs of the operation, questioning why, if the mission had truly succeeded, India had to rely on external mediation to stop hostilities.
Mediating an end to hostilities and saving South Asia from 'nuclear catastrophe' is something US President Donald Trump has relished taking credit for at every visible opportunity in the weeks since Operation Sindoor. To the point that some might wonder if he's deriving some kind of childish pleasure at rubbing the Modi regime's nose in the fact that, despite all the nationalist bluster, it was Washington's call, not Delhi's directive, that drew the curtain on this act of brinkmanship. Trump has crowed about it in back-to-back press conferences, lauded the 'excellent cooperation' from Pakistan, and all but issued a mid-crisis scorecard where Modi's government came off as the reckless actor in need of supervision.
That narrative hasn't gone unnoticed by India's commentariat either, many of whom are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions about the costs of strategic adventurism in a multipolar world. This wasn't how Modi's third term was supposed to begin. The BJP's electoral dominance had promised continuity, certainty and a no-apologies foreign policy. Instead, barely two months into the new term, the headlines are saturated with words like 'escalation,' 'de-escalation,' 'backchannel,' and 'restraint.' And while New Delhi insists Operation Sindoor was a "necessary corrective" to Pakistan's "intransigence," the emerging consensus — even among India's own national security elite — is that the operation failed to deliver anything close to a strategic reset.
More telling is the emerging discourse in Indian op-eds. Writers sympathetic to the BJP have pivoted from triumphalism to tactical justification. The more independent-minded, however, are not pulling punches. In The Wire, author and analyst Pushparaj Deshpande laid bare the contradictions in the government's own account.
'Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed in Parliament that 'Indian armed forces were given full freedom (operationally to attack Pakistan)'. Yet, this assertion was contradicted by a former Defence Attaché who revealed that the Indian Air Force suffered avoidable losses due to political instructions barring strikes on Pakistani military installations and air defence systems,' he wrote. Likewise, Deshpande pointed out, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's claim in the Rajya Sabha that 'Pakistan could not cause any damage on the Indian side' was directly contradicted by India's Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), who confirmed the loss of IAF fighter jets during clashes with Pakistan. 'These collectively suggest a deliberate attempt by the BJP government to obfuscate the true costs of the operation, presumably to protect Prime Minister Modi's strongman image,' he concluded.
An editorial in The Hindu struck a similar note: 'The Narendra Modi government's strident approach seeks to change [what India claims is] the behaviour of Pakistan and reassure its domestic audience… A demonstrated willingness to use force against Pakistan in the event of a terrorism incident is a definitive turn in India's strategy… But there is no evidence yet that it is working, though there has been chest-thumping around it by the ruling party… The success of this approach is debatable.'
The piece went further, interrogating the government's conflicting claims: 'The government claimed success in meeting its objectives of launching a military operation and denied that it had acted under pressure in ending the war. Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi demanded a pointed response to repeated claims by US President Donald Trump that he mediated the ceasefire but the Prime Minister evaded a direct response on it.'
The editorial didn't mince words in its closing assessment: 'The [Indian] government contradicts itself when it says that the operation was a success, and that it is continuing… There was little self-reflection regarding the lapses that led to the terrorism incident, and whether and how the government plans to address them.'
Outside India's borders and increasingly within them, the perception right now is this: India gambled on a quick, decisive action to reassert regional dominance and instead found itself walking back under international supervision, explaining away unverified kill counts and avoiding questions about the downing of its own aircraft. And it's not just editorial writers raising the alarm. Retired military officials and policy analysts — many once aligned with the strategic assertiveness of Modi's vision — are now questioning the long-term viability of what they call 'performance deterrence': the idea that visible, punitive strikes can substitute for sustainable strategy.
This course correction seems to be taking place even as official channels try to project confidence. India's External Affairs Ministry insists that Operation Sindoor sent an 'unmistakable message,' and BJP-aligned commentators have tried to reframe the operation as a success precisely because it avoided wider war. But that sleight of hand is unlikely to hold for long.
The unanswered question — why initiate an escalatory doctrine if it must be abandoned mid-act under diplomatic pressure — is now echoing not just through think tanks and newsrooms, but also among voters who expected their government to dictate terms, not negotiate ceasefires via foreign capitals.
The irony is bitter. Modi's strongest claim to geopolitical heft had always been his ability to align nationalist sentiment with realpolitik calculation. But this time, Washington and Beijing — both eager to preserve regional stability — appeared more in control of the crisis calendar than Delhi did. And Islamabad, far from being 'taught a lesson,' emerged with diplomatic points scored and international credibility strengthened by its restraint and readiness to engage.
Whether Modi's government will learn from this episode remains to be seen. But one thing is already clear: the playbook that brought him to this moment may not carry him much further. Not without reckoning with the limits of spectacle, and the growing costs of overreach.