Soundly Thrashed, Yet Pakistanis Convince Themselves Of Victory

News18

08-06-2025

Last Updated:
Operation Sindoor was a resounding success for India, resulting in considerable damage to Pakistan's air defence system and air bases. Yet, Pakistan claims that it won
Deceiving others is bad, but deceiving oneself is worse. Having acquired consummate skills in lying to the world about anything, Pakistan's immersion into mendacity is complete. It can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction—and between defeat and triumph. It got smacked in the four-day skirmish with India last month; there is a mountain of evidence (including videos by Pakistani social media) to prove that Operation Sindoor was a resounding success, resulting in considerable damage to Pakistan's air defence system and air bases. And Pakistan's reaction? It claimed that it won! Never was a lie as blatant.
Six days after the cessation of hostilities, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement, 'This is a victory of the Armed Forces of Pakistan as well as the self-reliant, proud, and dignified Pakistani nation. The entire nation is standing by the armed forces like a wall made of lead." The Army chief, Gen Syed Asim Munir, was made Field Marshal.
It is not just the Pakistani government and military that claimed to have emerged victorious in a skirmish in which they were soundly thrashed; people believed in the lie. A Gallup Pakistan survey conducted between May 11 and 15 showed that 96 per cent of more than 500 respondents believed Pakistan had won the conflict," Al Jazeera reported. 'Initial data and survey trends shared exclusively with Al Jazeera showed 82 per cent rated the military's performance as 'very good,' with fewer than 1 per cent expressing disapproval. Most significantly, 92 per cent said their opinion of the military improved as a result of the conflict."
Pakistanis, however, don't need a Copperfield to create a new reality; they themselves do it—and fall in love with it. Conspicuously, the Pakistani people did not fall prey to the propaganda by Rawalpindi and Islamabad; they chose to ignore the zillion social media videos they themselves had made and circulated showing attacks on their air bases and other places. Rejecting the sanctity of sensory perception, commonsense, and reason, and refusing to accept the unmistakable weaknesses of their military, they found refuge in the Islamist fantasy of the invincibility of the ghazi, the jihadist soldier.
It needs to be mentioned here that the Western mainstream media and the Trump administration underpinned Pakistanis' self-deception. It took foreign journalists several days to realize that India had licked Pakistan. So, the New York Times reported on May 14, 'Where India appears to have had a clear edge is in its targeting of Pakistan's military facilities and airfields, as the latter stretch of fighting shifted from symbolic strikes and shows of force to attacks on each other's defense capabilities."
Yet, Pakistan keeps celebrating its 'victory.' Most Pakistanis genuinely believe that they have won the military conflict with India. Pakistan may be a military dictatorship, but its state, deep state, and society are symbiotically intertwined. It is a weird totalitarianism.
George Orwell, Rightists' favourite Leftist, is often quoted in describing and explaining totalitarianism, the ruthless exercise of power, the abuse of language, and so on. But even his genius will not be able to fully explain the monstrosity that Pakistan is.
O'brien, the party commissar who tricks the protagonist Winston of 1984 into believing in him, tells him, 'We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation—anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature."
Winston rightly finds all this utter nonsense; though not philosophically sophisticated, he even knows that there is a word to describe this stupid theory. O'brien helps him: 'I told you, Winston," he says, 'that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism."
Then the commissar goes on to explain, 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men." He continues: 'Obedience is not enough… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."
Orwell's narrative beautifully describes the evil of a communist state, but Pakistan is even worse. It doesn't have a party; it has an army—and it has radical Islam. Radical Islam tears human minds to pieces, bestialises hearts, and coarsens sensibilities. And it makes the adherents see what they want to see. So, they see defeat as victory.
Location :
New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
June 08, 2025, 19:47 IST
News opinion Opinion | Soundly Thrashed, Yet Pakistanis Convince Themselves Of Victory