A parade in Guwahati in support of Operation Sindoor, India’s strikes against Pakistan after the Pahalgam attack. Indian public discourse has narrowed to where it can envisage an end to terrorism only via the elimination of every last terrorist, even as the meaning of that term is indiscriminately expanded.
A parade in Guwahati in support of Operation Sindoor, India’s strikes against Pakistan after the Pahalgam attack. Indian public discourse has narrowed to where it can envisage an end to terrorism only via the elimination of every last terrorist, even as the meaning of that term is indiscriminately expanded.IMAGO / Middle East Images
Politics

India’s complete surrender to war lust after Pahalgam

Operation Sindoor, India’s strikes on Pakistan after the Pahalgam attack, set off unprecedented warmongering, with the media, the Hindu Right and even the opposition baying for an India–Pakistan war
Rahul Rao

Rahul Rao is a Reader in International Political Thought at the University of St Andrews. He is the author, most recently, of ‘The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire’ published by Pluto Press in 2025.

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HOW MUCH SPACE is there in India for citizens to question and dissent from the actions of their government in a time of war or near-war? Today the answer is not very much, or maybe none at all. 

In the wake of the terrorist attack on 22 April in Pahalgam, in India-administered Kashmir, with India blaming Pakistan and hostilities erupting between the two states, Indian television news channels have further lowered even their already dismal standards, with anchors and guest panellists alike baying for blood and calling for vengeance. Not content with simply reporting the facts – a task that is admittedly not simple in the fog of war – they have vied with one another to up the ante.

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India
pakistan
Kashmir
nationalism
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