In the early hours of Wednesday, the Indian army launched a series of air raids on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The air strikes hit mosques and madrassas as well as residential complexes, leaving 31 civilians dead, including several children, the Pakistani government said.
Islamabad responded by reportedly downing at least three Indian fighter jets and killing around 15 civilians, including several children, in Indian-controlled Kashmir in tit-for-tat shelling that kicked off on the de facto border areas that separate the two parts of the disputed territory.
On Thursday, India launched several Israeli-made combat drones into Pakistan, some of which were shot down by the Pakistani army, according to Islamabad.
The Indian government described its actions as retribution for an attack on tourists in Pahalgam, a hill station in Indian-controlled Kashmir, that saw 26 visitors, mostly Indian tourists, killed on 22 April.
India claimed the attack was orchestrated by Pakistan.
Pakistan immediately denied responsibility and instead called for an international investigation, which Delhi swiftly rebuffed.
When India launched the air strikes on Wednesday, it did so without providing any evidence to substantiate its claims.
Instead, it appeared to rely on the bluster generated by the Indian mainstream media and political leadership to drive home the conclusion that India had once again fallen victim to a terror attack by a country and people allegedly committed to undermining its purported economic prowess, democratic stability and religious and societal harmony.
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In the hours following the Pahalgam attacks, influential Indian media outlets waxed lyrical about the need for zero “red lines” and a “disproportionate response” and a “final solution” against Islamabad.
The calls for revenge were injected with talking points very similar to those used by Israel following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 to communicate the existential urgency for India to tame this rabid neighbour.
This triggered a wave of hate crimes against Muslims, including beatings, property damage and harassment.
When India launched the air strikes on Wednesday, it did so without providing any evidence to substantiate its claims
Kashmiri Muslims working or studying in India faced vigilante violence in their homes and on campuses. Many were forced to return to Kashmir for safety.
In Kashmir, the Indian government used the attacks to further suppress Kashmiris – nearly 2000 people were detained, more than 10 homes belonging to alleged militants were demolished without any warning to their families, and a number of Kashmiris were killed extrajudicially.
The incidents of public vigilantism against Muslims dovetailed with heightened state surveillance across social media, as several people in Delhi and then in Indian-controlled Kashmir were summoned to explain their “anti-national” posts.
For days, the world sat on edge as news pundits speculated over the prospect of two nuclear powers gambling with our collective future.
And then India bombed Pakistan.
‘Operation Sindoor’
With so much disinformation and exaggerated claims of successful strikes circulating on both sides, the extent of the damage each inflicted on the other will likely remain unclear for some time.
Beneath the genocidal bluster in India, the zany memes in Pakistan, and the horrific deaths in both Pakistan-administered and Indian-controlled Kashmir lies a deeper story: India is staking its claim as a rising military superpower on the world stage.
Despite the nature of the assault and its ambiguous success, India’s decision to unilaterally bomb Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir without attempting to provide even a semblance of proof of Islamabad’s culpability was a slap in the face of international conventions and international law.
In this case, Delhi made little to no attempt at diplomacy to resolve the crisis sparked by Pahalgam. It appeared to have used the attack merely as a pretext.
Delhi made little to no attempt at diplomacy to resolve the crisis sparked by Pahalgam. It appeared to have used the attack merely as a pretext
Its willingness to fire missiles at civilian structures like mosques, residential complexes and neighbourhoods – claiming to have neutralised terrorists without naming them or providing proof of their crimes – signalled a country intent on testing the world’s tolerance for its excesses.
Then came the decision to call the attack “Operation Sindoor”.
Sindoor is the red dye that a Hindu groom applies to his bride to solemnise their marriage.
Those taken in by India’s state narrative believe it was named to signal revenge against those who killed the Hindu men at Pahalgam in front of their wives.
According to reports, the unidentified gunmen in Pahalgam selected the men for execution based on their religion, sparing the women so they could relay what they had witnessed to Modi.
But using sindoor as a gesture to honour the widows is an insufficient explanation.
A closer reading of the name cuts deep into the ideological makeup of the Indian state, where a Hindu nationalist agenda, which has for decades projected itself as militaristic, masculine and modelled on European fascist movements, seeks to mark Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir as its territory.
This is a state that envisions India as Akhund Bharat – or undivided India – an expansionist vision of India from Afghanistan to Myanmar, rooted in a mythological reading of history.
“Operation Sindoor” – the double meaning notwithstanding – was India’s declaration of an Israel-style vision of expansion.
The Indian occupation
While much of the world has fixated on the West’s abandonment of any pretence of principle as it arms and shields Israel in its genocide in Gaza, India has watched in awe as Israel tore apart all conventions to impose itself as the rightful owner of Palestine.
India has also been a willing participant in the US-sponsored genocide in Gaza.
Delhi has supplied weapons – including combat drones and components for bombs – during the genocide in Gaza. It has sent upwards of 12,000 caregivers and construction workers to replace Palestinian labourers barred from working in Israel; it has refused to support an arms embargo backed by hundreds of countries; and it has ignored calls to endorse the International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel at The Hague.
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Indian universities have signed a raft of deals with Israeli institutions and weapons manufacturers, even as American universities continue to struggle to justify their entanglement with the military-industrial complex to students.
Israel, eyeing India’s vast pool of tech and AI workers, envisions it as the future factory for its weapons industry.
These developments have largely flown under the radar – and have been wilfully ignored by a liberal western intelligentsia willing to sacrifice the rest of us to contain China’s economic rise.
For South Asians watching closely, the Indian state is as frightening as they come: Indian Muslims are being crushed under bulldozers in the name of development and modernisation.
But even economically, India is a country producing billionaires – not billions of jobs for ordinary people.
Modi’s so-called “Gujarat model” is a failure.
Though anti-Muslim and anti-Sikh pogroms predate his rise to power, it is under Modi’s tenure that India has moved decisively towards a Hindu Rashtra – a Hindu state – where legal measures have been introduced to codify Muslims as second-class citizens in India.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), for instance, carries shades of Israel’s Law of Return.
While ties between Hindutva and Zionism go back decades, it is under Modi that Hindutva has reached the upper echelons of the Indian state, enabling Delhi to cultivate ever closer ties with Israel.
Israel as a model for India
Modi sees Israel as a model for an ethno-nationalist state with a rigid religious identity.
As in Zionism, a central logic of Hindutva is that there is no contradiction in projecting oneself as both oppressed and under threat, as well as superior and domineering.
Under Modi, Indian Muslims have been lynched for merely being suspected of carrying meat; entire Muslim-majority neighbourhoods have been razed; and Muslim businesses have been boycotted, as state-backed vigilantes promote nativist entrepreneurship and the isolation of Muslims.
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At the same time, Hindu leaders openly called for genocide against Muslims in public processions – often in full view of the police and judiciary.
Under Modi, Delhi revoked Articles 370 and 35A in 2019 and issued more than 80,000 residency certificates to Indian citizens, allowing these new residents to vote, buy land and property, and secure government jobs in Kashmir.
Delhi has approved the construction of Hindu-only settlements in Kashmir, described even by Indian officials as mirroring the Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Just as it was designed to do in Palestine, the aim is demographic transformation – turning native Kashmiris into a minority on their own land.
And yet, when this story is told, India is never cast as the aggressor. It is always the democracy under attack from “outsiders”.
But as Kashmiris will tell you – living in the most militarised zone on the planet, where Indian troops operate with impunity under special laws, where police can detain and disappear at will, and where Israeli tactics of surveillance, censorship, and weaponry define the occupation – this is the true face of the Indian state.
With India deploying Israeli drones into Pakistan, firing missiles indiscriminately at mosques and schools, and refusing to pursue a diplomatic resolution to a crisis that has already cost so many civilian lives, perhaps the rest of the world will finally see it too.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
