When India launched Operation Sindoor and Pakistan replied with Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos, the world braced for escalation. Analysts held their breath. Twitter exploded. The Line of Management – that jagged scar between two unfinished imaginations of nationhood – lit up once more.
However should you assume what occurred earlier this month was merely a army alternate, you’ve missed the true story.
This was a battle, sure, however not simply of missiles. It was a battle of narratives, orchestrated in headlines, hashtags, and nightly newsrooms. The battlefield was the media. The ammunition was discourse. And the casualties had been nuance, complexity, and fact.
What we witnessed was the end result of what students name discursive warfare — the deliberate development of identification, legitimacy, and energy via language. Within the arms of Indian and Pakistani media, each act of violence was scripted, each picture curated, each casualty politicised. This wasn’t protection. It was choreography.
Scene one: The righteous strike
On Could 6, India struck first. Or, as Indian media framed it, India defended first.
Operation Sindoor was introduced with theatrical pomp. Twenty-four strikes in twenty-five minutes. 9 “terror hubs” destroyed. Zero civilian casualties. The villains — Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, “terror factories” throughout Bahawalpur and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan – had been mentioned to be diminished to mud.
The headlines had been triumphalist: “Surgical Strikes 2.0”, “The Roar of Indian Forces Reaches Rawalpindi”, “Justice Delivered”. Authorities spokespeople known as it a “proportionate response” to the Pahalgam bloodbath that had left 26 Indian vacationers useless. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh declared: “They attacked India’s brow, we wounded their chest”. Cinematic? Completely. Deliberate? Much more so.
Indian media constructed a nationwide identification of ethical energy: a state compelled into motion, responding not with rage however with restraint, armed not simply with BrahMos missiles however with dharma – righteous responsibility and ethical order. The enemy wasn’t Pakistan, the narrative insisted — it was terror. And who might object to that?
That is the genius of framing. Constructivist concept tells us that states act based mostly on identities, not simply pursuits. And identification is solid via language. In India’s case, the media crafted a narrative the place army may was tethered to ethical readability. The strikes weren’t aggression — they had been catharsis. They weren’t battle — they had been remedy.
However right here’s the factor: remedy for whom?
Scene two: The sacred defence
Three days later, Pakistan struck again. Operation Bunyan Marsoos — Arabic for “iron wall” — was declared. The identify alone tells you the whole lot. This wasn’t only a retaliatory strike; it was a theological assertion, a nationwide sermon. The enemy had dared to trespass. The response could be divine.
Pakistani missiles reportedly rained down on Indian army websites: brigade headquarters, an S-400 system, and army installations in Punjab and Jammu. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif proclaimed that Pakistan had “avenged the 1971 battle”, by which it had capitulated and allowed Bangladesh to secede. That’s not battlefield technique. That’s myth-making.
The media in Pakistan amplified this narrative with patriotic zeal. Indian strikes had been framed as battle crimes, mosques hit, civilians killed. Pictures of rubble and blood had been paired with captions about martyrdom. The response, against this, was exact, ethical, and inevitable.
Pakistan’s nationwide identification, as constructed on this second, was one in every of righteous victimhood: we’re peaceable, however provoked; restrained, however resolute. We don’t search battle, however we don’t worry it both.
The symmetry is uncanny. Each states noticed themselves as defenders, by no means aggressors. Each claimed ethical superiority. Each insisted the enemy fired first. Each mentioned they’d no selection.
Setting up the enemy and the sufferer
The symmetry was additionally obvious within the constructed picture of the enemy and the delcared victims.
India portrayed Pakistan as a terror manufacturing unit: duplicitous, rogue, a nuclear-armed spoiler hooked on jihad. Pakistani identification was diminished to its worst stereotype, misleading and harmful. Peace, on this worldview, is unimaginable as a result of the Different is irrational.
Pakistan, in flip, forged India as a fascist state: led by a majoritarian regime, obsessive about humiliation, desperate to erase Muslims from historical past. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the aggressor. India was the occupier. Their strikes had been framed not as counterterrorism however as non secular battle.
In every case, the enemy wasn’t only a risk. The enemy was an concept — and an concept can’t be reasoned with.
That is the hazard of media-driven identification development. As soon as the Different turns into a caricature, dialogue dies. Diplomacy turns into weak spot. Compromise turns into betrayal. And battle turns into not simply attainable, however fascinating.
The picture of the Different additionally decided who was thought of a sufferer and who was not.
Whereas missiles flew, folks died. Civilians in Kashmir, on either side, had been killed. Border villages had been shelled. Spiritual websites broken. Harmless folks displaced. However these tales, the human tales, had been buried beneath the rubble of rhetoric.
In each nations, the media didn’t mourn equally. Victims had been grieved in the event that they had been ours. Theirs? Collateral. Or fabricated. Or forgotten.
This selective mourning is an ethical indictment. As a result of once we solely care about our useless, we grow to be numb to justice. And in that numbness, violence turns into simpler the subsequent time.
The battle for legitimacy
What was at stake throughout the India-Pakistan confrontation wasn’t simply territory or tactical benefit. It was legitimacy. Each states wanted to persuade their very own residents, and the world, that they had been on the appropriate aspect of historical past.
Indian media leaned on the worldwide “battle on terror” body. By concentrating on Pakistan-based militants, India positioned itself as a associate in world safety. Sound acquainted? It ought to. It’s the identical playbook utilized by the US in Iraq and Israel in Gaza. Language like “surgical”, “precision”, and “pre-emptive” doesn’t simply describe, it absolves.
In the meantime, Pakistan’s media leaned on the ethical weight of sovereignty. India’s strikes had been framed as an assault not simply on land, however on izzat, honour. By invoking sacred areas, by publicising civilian casualties, Pakistan constructed India not as a counterterrorist actor however as a bully and a blasphemer.
This discursive tug-of-war prolonged even to info. When India claimed to have killed 80 militants, Pakistan known as it fiction. When Pakistan claimed to have shot down Indian jets, India known as it propaganda. Every accused the opposite of misinformation. Every media ecosystem grew to become a corridor of mirrors, reflecting solely what it needed to see.
Ceasefire, silence and a name to hear otherwise
The weapons fell silent on Could 13, due to a US-brokered ceasefire. Each governments claimed victory. Media retailers moved on. Cricket resumed. Hashtags light.
However what lingers is the story both sides now tells about itself: We had been proper. They had been improper. We confirmed power. They backed down.
That is the story that may form textbooks, elections, army budgets. It can inform the subsequent standoff, the subsequent skirmish, the subsequent battle.
And till the story modifications, nothing will. And it will probably change.
Narratives constructed on competing truths, solid in newsrooms and battlefields, carried out in rallies and funerals, will not be everlasting.
Simply as they had been constructed, they are often deconstructed. And that may occur provided that we begin listening to not the loudest voice, however to the one we’ve discovered to disregard.
So the subsequent time battle drums beat, ask not simply who fired first, however who spoke final. And ask what story that speech was making an attempt to inform.
As a result of in South Asia, probably the most harmful weapon isn’t nuclear.
It’s narrative.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.