The versions put forth by both countries have been lapped up by their respective media: Pakistan insists no strikes were conducted and that the Indians were up to their usual cross-border shelling; But New Delhi is sure of what it’s done. This is not the first time we have seen the media react like this. “During the Mumbai crisis, both Pakistan and India behaved fairly responsibly but it was the media that was on a warpath,” says Moeed Yusuf, a foreign policy expert based in Washington DC. “For all the conversation about media freedom and independence, media on both sides have fallen in line with the state narrative without any challenge and this makes the situation that much more difficult to defuse.”
The Pakistani media is unable to challenge the state narrative because of its rampant expansion in the last decade, explains military scientist Ayesha Siddiqa. “A poorly trained media, compromised due to the interests of its owners, has turned into a tool for the state,” she says. On the other side of the border, it seems much the same forces are at play. Sushil Aaron, an opinion writer with Hindustan Times, also points to a variation of this theme. “Market pressures within the media landscape and political incentives for both sides to keep relations fraught (but perhaps within manageable limits) will keep poisoning our public sphere,” he told The Friday Times. “The media takes its cues from establishment preferences—and the latter will not change unless political actors reckon with the social and economic costs of hardline nationalism. We are far away from such considerations now.”
But at this point in time, both these narratives suit the respective governments. “Modi had staked his claim that if terrorism happens [on] his watch, he’ll do something, so he had to do something,” adds Yusuf. And Pakistan for its part, had it accepted the Indian claim, would have been forced to reply, which it didn’t. “Strategically, nothing has changed.”
For any semblance of normalcy to return, the rhetoric being spun on TV screens both sides of the border needs to be dialed back. “Journalists have to stop being in-your-face nationalists and go back to reporting and analyzing matters professionally,” says Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire. “Questions need to be asked of both governments—in Pakistan, about the permissive atmosphere for anti-India terrorist groups and in India, about the nature of the action the government took and about the many flip flops in Pakistani policy that we have seen over the past two years.”
So far, there are no signs that these questions will be asked, neither in Islamabad nor in New Delhi. And this acceptance of the state narratives, will usher in a new phase of Pak-India relations, in which, according to Yusuf, the covert space will remain hot and contested. This means perpetual instability bordering on the brink of crises happening more often than in the past. If one asks how one were to scale back, Sushil Aaron simply says that it depends on what India and Pakistan want to scale back to. “Rapprochement is no longer an attainable objective,” he says. “Scaling back from daily hostilities would entail a recognition of the new status quo—that India will not countenance cross-LoC infiltration and attacks anymore but also that New Delhi would strive not to escalate matters beyond a point, judging by its messaging that the strikes were pre-emptive in nature aimed only at terrorists not the Pakistan Army.” It remains to be seen if Delhi persists with the strategy of making limited claims about the strike. He adds that whether Islamabad will accept the new status quo remains unclear as India’s strikes will have generated pressures within Pakistan to respond. “Once there is a tacit bilateral recognition that we are in a new situation, India needs to pacify Kashmir to forestall militant blowback in the future.”
Perpetual instability means perpetual worry because of the nuclear assets on both sides of the border. But to most analysts, the nuclear weapons are more of an equalizer than a worry. Apart from the covert conflict which is underway, India has also embarked on an isolate Pakistan campaign, starting with the SAARC summit. Other countries have also followed suit, most significantly Afghanistan.
The way Sushil Aaron sees it, India has already exerted pressure on Islamabad following the Uri attack. “Getting other nations in South Asia to pull out of the SAARC summit was symbolically useful to highlight Pakistan’s standing in the region,” he says. “Also India-US joint messaging that Pakistan take effective action on Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad also speaks to Delhi’s influence in Washington. But in Delhi’s current reckoning these only go so far, hence the strikes in reaction to Uri.”
Yusuf believes this strategy of making countries pick a side in the Pak-India conflict is a “very high risk proposition for the Modi government”, given Islamabad’s current relationship with Beijing and the fact that even the United States doesn’t see cutting Pakistan loose as in its interest. “If the policy fails, there is the chance of further rhetoric and escalation.”
This analysis is challenged across the border. “Pressure is being brought to bear by the acceptance of India’s right to respond in a calibrated fashion to terrorist threats,” says Varadarajan. “Neither the United States nor China see this as an escalation, while Russia has positively reaffirmed the correctness of the Indian action.”
The question now, is what happens next? Continued shelling across the line of control can only make matters worse, not only between the two countries but also for the hapless citizens who are unfortunate enough to be living in the area. “The rhetoric needs to be brought down,” says Varadarajan. But that’s easier said than done with the battle lines drawn on TV.
The writer is a journalist based in Lahore