Operation Sindoor: Narendra Modi's Image Versus National Interest

The Wire

5 hours ago

Prime minister Narendra Modi should know that seeking the cooperation of opposition parties to project India's case abroad after Operation Sindoor must necessarily be accompanied by showing some respect for the opposition in domestic politics.
You cannot seek opposition cooperation to present a unified foreign policy position abroad and continue to treat opposition parties as "enemies" in domestic politics. After all, it was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat who had advised the Bharatiya Janata Party not to treat the opposition as enemies and also constructive engagement after the BJP's disappointing performance at the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
In this regard has Modi learnt any lessons from the 2024 Lok Sabha results? The basic attitude and approach doesn't seem to have changed. Modi still believes that he can cynically manipulate the opposition through coercive politics without showing any sincerity of purpose. It is common knowledge now that Operation Sindoor, though a limited success, was badly bungled at several levels and mistakes were made which could have been avoided. This is something the government is yet to admit buy responsible Indian military officers have dropped adequate hints in public fora.
When an honest military officer cited " restraint from political leadership" as a reason for some Indian fighter planes going down, he was serving the interest of truth. The Modi government's initial silence on the other hand was meant to protect the prime minister's image.
Modi was clearly on the backfoot after operation Sindoor and was unable to fully convince his own constituency (including the RSS) that it was an unqualified success. He therefore swallowed his ego for the first time and approached the opposition parties to take part in a joint delegation to present India's case abroad as no country had explicitly condemned Pakistan's role in the Pahalgam terror attack.
The Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi has been been raising tough questions around Operation Sindoor and sought a special session of parliament to discuss everything threadbare. Other opposition parties wanted the same. But then the cynical, coercive and manipulative template of politics is embedded in the regime's DNA.
The opening of the parliament session was marked by the unprecedented resignation of vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar. This was the distraction the BJP needed to create chaos and disrupt what might have been a relatively more orderly parliament session with the citizens eager to learn more about the critical issues of national interest such as Operation Sindoor and the stupendous claims by US president Donald Trump on India-Pakistan ceasefire linked to trade talks. The reality is that the president of the world's biggest military power has repeated 25 times that he stopped the India-Pakistan military exchange which was about to spillover to the nuclear domain with the threat of trade.
Whether Modi likes it or not, this issue will have to be discussed in parliament. The people of this country cannot be kept in the dark simply because Modi's personal image is to be kept intact.
This, in fact, is the nub of the issue. Operation Sindoor and the multiple issues it has thrown up demands an open discussion in parliament to further national interests. But the regime's ecosystem is bent upon creating distractions and confusion to protect Modi's image.
So national interest and the ruling ecosystem's attempt to save Modi's image are totally at odds with each other today. This was apparent even during Operation Sindoor. The BJP's media ecosystem projected Modi as a warrior who will not spare Pakistan but the moment the ceasefire happened, Modi's picture was withdrawn and replaced with that of government spokesperson Vikram Misri who announced the ceasefire. This was undisguised manipulation.
Similarly, people noticed how Modi used the opposition's cooperation to burnish his own image with his domestic constituency. Even before the opposition delegation had returned, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar was boasting at a public forum that Modi had achieved with the opposition parties what even Indira Gandhi couldn't have done in the 1970s.
Thus everything is a personal image building exercise for Modi first, and then something else.
One only hopes that Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tiwari have internalised this aspect of Modi's narcissism when they lend unqualified support to Operation Sindoor in "national interest." Don't they see how "national interest" seamlessly converts to Modi's interest in domestic politics? Don't they see how the hyphenation of India with Pakistan, which they speak against in global fora, is paradoxically a key component of Modi's image building politics in the cow belt? They might see more of it in the current parliament session as the ruling party cynically manages everything as it has done in the past.
Indeed how Modi treats the opposition parties in domestic politics, as aptly articulated by Mohan Bhagwat himself, is fundamentally the bane of Indian politics and the primary cause of democratic backsliding today. If this is not fixed nothing is fixed.