It is not easy being a legacy media TV journalist today. One day you are upping the ante on traitors within the nation, along with baying for Pakistan’s blood. The next day, you have to say that starving Pakistan of water is a much better form of revenge than any military action. The third day, you have to do an about turn on the caste census – which you hitherto called divisive – and call it a masterstroke. Then, you wake up to Operation Sindoor, ready to go back to hate mongering, only to find a Muslim officer being chosen to brief the press about it. Suddenly, you have to switch gears and say that India will always be united as a multi-religious nation.
But, to be fair, it is no less confusing for journalists who stand outside the mainstream space – those who identify themselves as speaking truth to power. If they had backed the caste census call when it came from the opposition, they find themselves in a quandary about how to react, when the Modi government implements it. Some had seen the caste census announcement as a sign that the government was too weak to avenge Pahalgam. This argument was amplified as the days rolled by, without any ‘kinetic’ action against Pakistan. Now, they are unsure about how to react to the retaliatory missile strikes.
I would argue that the confusion that Modi sarkar has created in the past two weeks, is a messaging experiment that has significant implications for the nature of politics in India. It goes against much of what the commentariat expected, and it has left them bemused.
I will start with Operation Sindoor, even though it came after the caste census announcement. After the terror attack in Pahalgam, most in the media expected the Modi government to strike back immediately, by hitting terror camps in Pakistan. But almost everyone said it will happen in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, like it did last time. This would make it a limited action, since we could morally claim that PoK belongs to us, and has been illegally occupied by Pakistan.
When the government announced that ‘mock’ drills will be held across India, some analysts spoke about the possibility that India was preparing for a conventional war. Some made fun of it on social media, saying that modern warfare, with its night-vision tech, makes blackouts meaningless.
No one expected the missiles to strike inside Pakistan’s Punjab. In fact, one American expert, who has written on the Pakistani army and the terror outfits it spawns, expressly ruled out such a strike. They said that, unlike Pulwama, there was no ‘smoking gun’ this time, to prove Pakistan’s complicity in the Pahalgam terror operation. So, they believed India’s options were limited.
By striking inside Punjab, the Modi government has repositioned India on the world stage. While such comparisons are odious, in a sense India is acting like Israel, effectively saying that it has the right to hit any target, anywhere, if it is aimed at harming India’s national security.
The second, related, aspect to this positioning is that India has not tried to build any significant international consensus around Operation Sindoor. While Pakistani ministers are appearing on international TV shows to put across Pakistan’s point of view, the Indian government has made no such effort, till now. It is quite possible that interview requests from the CNNs and BBCs of the world have gone unheeded. The message being sent out – for good or bad – is that we do not need international support for taking action against terrorists.
Everyone has noticed the messaging in the first press briefing after the missile strikes. The focus, understandably, has been on Col Sophia Qureshi, and her religion. People have seen her presence as a negation of the very idea of Pakistan. Especially so since the Pakistani army chief, Asim Munir, had harped on the two-nation theory right before, and after, the Pahalgam attack.
The trouble for the voices in our TV studios is that they would have had to quickly rework their approach. Their majoritarian rhetoric would have had to be edited, even if slightly, to accommodate Col Qureshi. More so because the foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, said that the Pahalgam attack was aimed at “provoking communal discord” in India.
An equally important part of the message is that the two representatives of the armed forces were both women. It was of a piece with the naming of the military action – Operation Sindoor. There is a complex, composite, iconography here. Sindoor, as a symbol, has great meaning in popular imagination. There, it exists as a sign of the happily married, and hence ‘complete,’ woman. When it is ‘snatched’ away – like it was done when Hindu men were systematically killed by the terrorists in Pahalgam – it has to be avenged.
But who better to do it than women in uniform? Once again, this reasserts a growing theme within ‘mainstream’ right wing discourse in India. The right has called this ‘true’ feminism – women who uphold conservative ideals, without being relegated to traditional roles. It might not suit those at the extreme right, who believe that the woman’s natural place is in the home, as a nurturing wife and mother. Yet, even they will find it very tough to counter this theme.
Operation Sindoor has also left the current lot of TV journalists feeling a tad exposed. They have virtually no inside information to give about what happened. While the ‘fog of war’ is a universal phenomenon, modern governments have operated by ‘embedding’ journalists with the military, as part of the information war. Now, even powerful journalists who have emerged out of the national security beat, have no clue about what is happening. Several of them have posted information, then deleted their tweets, or retracted what they had said. Some have even, unwittingly, amplified fake news coming out of Pakistan.
But the confusion in legacy media about Operation Sindoor is nothing compared to the bewilderment about the caste census. The current crop of mainstream journalists has overwhelmingly been opposed to reservations, and caste-based identity politics. The fact that the PM, who had called it ‘urban naxal’ thinking last year, should himself implement it, was not just a source of confusion, but would have caused heartburn as well. In fact, the initial reaction from TV anchors was hostile, and it took them some time to curb their emotions and fall in line.
Again, the question is, why would the BJP government, which has seen the caste census as an attack on the social coalition it has built, do such a 180 degree turn on it? The only possible answer is that the Modi-Shah BJP does not need an upper-caste consensus any longer. It feels confident that its core base will remain intact even if a section of upper-caste voters turns against the party.
The message is not just to voters at large, but the Sangh Parivar as well. The party’s apex leadership is effectively saying that it can live without the castes which are most opposed to reservation – mostly the ‘knowledge working’ castes, who depend on salaried employment. This, I submit, is another clear sign that the BJP is now going to largely depend on political alliance between the ‘business-mercantile’ caste communities, OBCs and non-dominant Dalits. This is bad news for the second rung of upper-caste leaders in the BJP, who were hoping to be next in line for the party’s top leadership.
Either way, these are dizzying times for everyone who makes a living out of commenting on politics, and policy. The Modi government has shown that no one can predict what it will do next – whether externally or within the domestic arena.
Whether this new messaging will yield political dividends or not, is another matter altogether.
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