Pai jii. I agree.
But we still shouldn't use bad language.
Pakistan-India Conflict 2025: News Updates and Discussion
- Thread starter Ali_Baba
- Start date
But we still shouldn't use bad language.
gamaji
Registered Member
Most of Indians are sex-deprived psychopath predators. That fact is quite obvious from their social and political behavior.
gamaji
Registered Member
If anything, this malicious Indian campaign will alienate Americans, especially Trump administration, even more.
Now that Indian arrogance has been defeated and dusted by Pakistan, the time for Indian abuses, bullying, and malicious media campaigns is over now.
Their fascist and expansionist Indian policies have also been exposed. The west was making them stronger to balance an increasingly more assertive China. These idiots started fulfilling their Akhand Bharat dreams rather than directly confronting China.
That_Guy
THINK TANK: CONSULTANT
JF-17 destroyed the radar and CC of the S-400, which I'm 90% sure is what led to an increased order from Azerbaijan (16 -->40).
Pradotlc
Trusted Member
I could not find a less inappropriate language to describe india
think of this way
India accuses you of some thing.. but provides no proof
attacks civil targets with no evidence of being "terrorist" pad etc
gets is arse handed on a plate and then begs Americans to save their sorry arse
and then go on to say oh we won, Americans didnt do any thing etc etc
most indian dont reconize the folies of their nation because they mostly are asssholes them selves..
Jango007
Registered Member
Sad , comical and shocking....How Modi Media fooled Indians into thinking the disastrous loss was actually a victory for them....
This article gives a reality check to Indians.....How world looks at you and thinks your country and government is one big lying and deceiving backward dictatorship.
June 4, 2025
8 min
s)
By Karishma Mehrotra
NEW DELHI — Shortly after midnight on May 9, an Indian journalist received a WhatsApp message from Prasar Bharati, the state-owned public broadcaster. Pakistan’s army chief had been arrested, the message read, and a coup was underway.
Within minutes, the journalist posted the information on X, and others followed suit. Soon enough, it was splashed across major Indian news networks and went viral on social media.
The “breaking news” was entirely false. There had been no coup in Pakistan. Gen. Asim Munir, far from being behind bars, would soon be elevated to the rank of field marshal.
It was the most glaring — but far from the only — example of how misinformation swept through Indian newsrooms last month during several of the most violent nights between the nuclear-armed neighbors in decades.
Advertisement
The Washington Post spoke to more than two dozen journalists from some of India’s most influential news networks, as well as to current and former Indian officials, about how the country’s information ecosystem became inundated with falsehoods — and how it warped the public’s understanding of a crucial moment. The journalists spoke on the condition that their names and employers remain anonymous, fearing professional reprisals. Most of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
As the fighting escalated night after night, few Indian officials were put forward to explain what was happening, said Nirupama Rao, India’s former foreign secretary. The vacuum was filled on television newscasts by “hypernationalism” and “abnormal triumphalism,” Rao said, creating what she called a “parallel reality.”
Times Now Navbharat reported that Indian forces had entered Pakistan; TV9 Bharatvarsh told viewers that Pakistan’s prime minister had surrendered; Bharat Samachar said he was hiding in a bunker. All of them, along with some of the country’s largest channels — including Zee News, ABP News and NDTV — repeatedly proclaimed that major Pakistani cities had been destroyed.
Advertisement
To support the false claims, networks aired unrelated visuals from conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, from a plane crash in Philadelphia — and even scenes from video games.
Zee News, NDTV, ABP News, Bharat Samachar, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Times Now and Prasar Bharati did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s the most dangerous version of what a section of TV news channels have been doing for a decade, completely unchecked,” said Manisha Pande, media critic and managing editor of Newslaundry, an independent news outlet. “At this point, they’re like Frankenstein’s monsters — completely out of control.”
Television screens at an electronics store in Kolkata on May 12 show a live telecast of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation for the first time since the recent escalations in the India-Pakistan conflict. (Piyal Adhikary/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Advertisement
Over many decades, the country’s independent press has played a critical role in exposing government corruption and holding power to account. In the past decade, however, particularly in television news, that independence has been eroded.
Some of India’s largest channels now routinely echo government talking points, analysts say — out of ideological alignment with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or as a result of pressure from the state, which has prosecuted journalists under terrorism, sedition and defamation laws, and has used regulatory threats and tax probes to silence critical voices.
Pande also attributes the shift to opportunism. “For most of these anchors, aligning with power is a calculated career move,” she said.
Advertisement
Journalists in these newsrooms were dismayed by the lack of fact-checking during the conflict. “Journalism has just become anything that lands on your WhatsApp from whoever,” said one journalist with a leading English-language news channel. “You realize the cost of that at times like this.”
Just before midnight on May 8, in a WhatsApp message exchange seen by The Post, a journalist with a major Hindi-language network messaged colleagues: “Indian navy can carry out an attack imminently,” citing unnamed sources. Another staffer responded simply, “Karachi,” but gave no details on sourcing. Within minutes, the channel was falsely reporting that the Indian navy had struck the port in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.
“The channels were taken over by bad fiction writers,” a network employee said.
Advertisement
A journalist in a different newsroom said their channel ran the story after confirmation from the Indian navy and air force. India’s military did not respond to a request for comment.
Others admitted to airing the story based on claims from social media influencers closely aligned with the ruling party, or posts from open-source intelligence accounts.
Sweta Singh, a popular anchor on India Today, declared on air that “Karachi is seeing its worst nightmare after 1971,” referring to the most devastating war between the two countries. “It completely finishes Pakistan,” she added. Singh did not respond to requests for comment.
Around 8 a.m. on May 9, the Karachi Port Trust posted on X that no attack had occurred. But some Hindi newspapers had already published the news on their front pages.
As erroneous reports ricocheted across Indian channels, retired military officials gave them credence in freewheeling panel discussions. Breaking-news banners were accompanied by the swoosh of illustrated fighter jets. At one point, the government issued a public advisory urging broadcasters to refrain from using air raid sirens in their graphics, warning it could desensitize the public to real emergencies.
Across the border, Pakistani media outlets pushed their own falsehoods — that India had bombed Afghanistan and that Pakistan had destroyed India’s army brigade headquarters. Some of the false claims came directly from Pakistani military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry during live news conferences; in one, Chaudhry showed a clip from an Indian news conference that had been misleadingly edited to remove a phrase, giving the false impression that India hadn’t accused Pakistan of hitting civilian infrastructure.
“We stand by the information shared and press releases issued based on verified intelligence and digital evidence available to us,” the media wing of the Pakistani army said in a statement to The Post.
Competition drove much of the chaos in India. On NDTV, the country’s most-watched news channel according to the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, a hot mic caught a reporter in the field venting his frustration to the control room: “First you keep saying, ‘Give an update, give an update,’ and then later you say, ‘Why did you give something fake?’”
During a talk show on the Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, a young man in the audience askedabout “the embarrassment we have faced from the international community when our news channels were spreading unverified information.” The reporter swung the microphone away before he could finish the question.
A head of public relations for TV Today, which runs Aaj Tak and India Today, did not respond to requests for comment.
“I felt depressed at the state of affairs,” an anchor at a leading English-language news channel told The Post. “It’s time to introspect.”
Information war
As strikes between the countries intensified each night, Indian officials, led by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, would generally wait until morning to brief the press.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first public remarks on the conflict came two days after the May 10 ceasefire; Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar shared only a one-line post on X during the clashes.
The vacuum was filled by television anchors. “We’ve lost the information war to these characters,” said a former Indian navy admiral.
But one senior Indian national security official said the misinformation played to India’s advantage. If lower-level government sources deliberately spread false claims, it was to “take advantage of the information space” and create “as much confusion as possible because they know the enemy is watching,” the official said.
“Sometimes the collateral is your own audience, but that is how it is,” the official added. “That is how war has evolved.”
The problem, said Rao, the former foreign secretary, is that “television channels were using a megaphone. We need to use a microphone with a voice that is obviously viewed as credible.”
The frenzy of falsehoods has led to private soul-searching in many newsrooms, journalists said, but few public apologies. In a rare admission on Aaj Tak, an anchor said in Hindi that “despite our vigilance,” there had been “incomplete” reporting. “For this, we seek your forgiveness,” she said.
Other journalists have doubled down. Sushant Sinha, an anchor for Times Now Navbharat who declared on air that Indian tanks had entered Pakistan, posted an eight-minute monologue defending his coverage. “Every channel did make at least one mistake, but not one of our mistakes was against this country,” he said.
Niha Masih in New Delhi and Rick Noak in Bangkok contributed to this report.
This article gives a reality check to Indians.....How world looks at you and thinks your country and government is one big lying and deceiving backward dictatorship.
How misinformation overtook Indian newsrooms amid conflict with Pakistan
Journalists from some of India’s largest news networks spoke to The Post about why falsehoods filled the airwaves during a crucial and dangerous moment.June 4, 2025
8 min
s)
By Karishma Mehrotra
NEW DELHI — Shortly after midnight on May 9, an Indian journalist received a WhatsApp message from Prasar Bharati, the state-owned public broadcaster. Pakistan’s army chief had been arrested, the message read, and a coup was underway.
Within minutes, the journalist posted the information on X, and others followed suit. Soon enough, it was splashed across major Indian news networks and went viral on social media.
The “breaking news” was entirely false. There had been no coup in Pakistan. Gen. Asim Munir, far from being behind bars, would soon be elevated to the rank of field marshal.
It was the most glaring — but far from the only — example of how misinformation swept through Indian newsrooms last month during several of the most violent nights between the nuclear-armed neighbors in decades.
Advertisement
The Washington Post spoke to more than two dozen journalists from some of India’s most influential news networks, as well as to current and former Indian officials, about how the country’s information ecosystem became inundated with falsehoods — and how it warped the public’s understanding of a crucial moment. The journalists spoke on the condition that their names and employers remain anonymous, fearing professional reprisals. Most of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
As the fighting escalated night after night, few Indian officials were put forward to explain what was happening, said Nirupama Rao, India’s former foreign secretary. The vacuum was filled on television newscasts by “hypernationalism” and “abnormal triumphalism,” Rao said, creating what she called a “parallel reality.”
Times Now Navbharat reported that Indian forces had entered Pakistan; TV9 Bharatvarsh told viewers that Pakistan’s prime minister had surrendered; Bharat Samachar said he was hiding in a bunker. All of them, along with some of the country’s largest channels — including Zee News, ABP News and NDTV — repeatedly proclaimed that major Pakistani cities had been destroyed.
Advertisement
To support the false claims, networks aired unrelated visuals from conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, from a plane crash in Philadelphia — and even scenes from video games.
Zee News, NDTV, ABP News, Bharat Samachar, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Times Now and Prasar Bharati did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s the most dangerous version of what a section of TV news channels have been doing for a decade, completely unchecked,” said Manisha Pande, media critic and managing editor of Newslaundry, an independent news outlet. “At this point, they’re like Frankenstein’s monsters — completely out of control.”
Television screens at an electronics store in Kolkata on May 12 show a live telecast of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation for the first time since the recent escalations in the India-Pakistan conflict. (Piyal Adhikary/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
‘Bad fiction writers’
India has one of the most expansive and linguistically diverse media landscapes in the world. Nine hundred television channels attract millions of viewers each evening across Indian towns and cities; newspapers still have a wide reach in rural areas.Advertisement
Over many decades, the country’s independent press has played a critical role in exposing government corruption and holding power to account. In the past decade, however, particularly in television news, that independence has been eroded.
Some of India’s largest channels now routinely echo government talking points, analysts say — out of ideological alignment with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or as a result of pressure from the state, which has prosecuted journalists under terrorism, sedition and defamation laws, and has used regulatory threats and tax probes to silence critical voices.
Pande also attributes the shift to opportunism. “For most of these anchors, aligning with power is a calculated career move,” she said.
Advertisement
Journalists in these newsrooms were dismayed by the lack of fact-checking during the conflict. “Journalism has just become anything that lands on your WhatsApp from whoever,” said one journalist with a leading English-language news channel. “You realize the cost of that at times like this.”
Just before midnight on May 8, in a WhatsApp message exchange seen by The Post, a journalist with a major Hindi-language network messaged colleagues: “Indian navy can carry out an attack imminently,” citing unnamed sources. Another staffer responded simply, “Karachi,” but gave no details on sourcing. Within minutes, the channel was falsely reporting that the Indian navy had struck the port in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.
“The channels were taken over by bad fiction writers,” a network employee said.
Advertisement
A journalist in a different newsroom said their channel ran the story after confirmation from the Indian navy and air force. India’s military did not respond to a request for comment.
Others admitted to airing the story based on claims from social media influencers closely aligned with the ruling party, or posts from open-source intelligence accounts.
Sweta Singh, a popular anchor on India Today, declared on air that “Karachi is seeing its worst nightmare after 1971,” referring to the most devastating war between the two countries. “It completely finishes Pakistan,” she added. Singh did not respond to requests for comment.
Around 8 a.m. on May 9, the Karachi Port Trust posted on X that no attack had occurred. But some Hindi newspapers had already published the news on their front pages.
As erroneous reports ricocheted across Indian channels, retired military officials gave them credence in freewheeling panel discussions. Breaking-news banners were accompanied by the swoosh of illustrated fighter jets. At one point, the government issued a public advisory urging broadcasters to refrain from using air raid sirens in their graphics, warning it could desensitize the public to real emergencies.
Across the border, Pakistani media outlets pushed their own falsehoods — that India had bombed Afghanistan and that Pakistan had destroyed India’s army brigade headquarters. Some of the false claims came directly from Pakistani military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry during live news conferences; in one, Chaudhry showed a clip from an Indian news conference that had been misleadingly edited to remove a phrase, giving the false impression that India hadn’t accused Pakistan of hitting civilian infrastructure.
“We stand by the information shared and press releases issued based on verified intelligence and digital evidence available to us,” the media wing of the Pakistani army said in a statement to The Post.
Competition drove much of the chaos in India. On NDTV, the country’s most-watched news channel according to the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, a hot mic caught a reporter in the field venting his frustration to the control room: “First you keep saying, ‘Give an update, give an update,’ and then later you say, ‘Why did you give something fake?’”
During a talk show on the Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, a young man in the audience askedabout “the embarrassment we have faced from the international community when our news channels were spreading unverified information.” The reporter swung the microphone away before he could finish the question.
A head of public relations for TV Today, which runs Aaj Tak and India Today, did not respond to requests for comment.
“I felt depressed at the state of affairs,” an anchor at a leading English-language news channel told The Post. “It’s time to introspect.”
Information war
As strikes between the countries intensified each night, Indian officials, led by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, would generally wait until morning to brief the press.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first public remarks on the conflict came two days after the May 10 ceasefire; Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar shared only a one-line post on X during the clashes.
The vacuum was filled by television anchors. “We’ve lost the information war to these characters,” said a former Indian navy admiral.
But one senior Indian national security official said the misinformation played to India’s advantage. If lower-level government sources deliberately spread false claims, it was to “take advantage of the information space” and create “as much confusion as possible because they know the enemy is watching,” the official said.
“Sometimes the collateral is your own audience, but that is how it is,” the official added. “That is how war has evolved.”
The problem, said Rao, the former foreign secretary, is that “television channels were using a megaphone. We need to use a microphone with a voice that is obviously viewed as credible.”
The frenzy of falsehoods has led to private soul-searching in many newsrooms, journalists said, but few public apologies. In a rare admission on Aaj Tak, an anchor said in Hindi that “despite our vigilance,” there had been “incomplete” reporting. “For this, we seek your forgiveness,” she said.
Other journalists have doubled down. Sushant Sinha, an anchor for Times Now Navbharat who declared on air that Indian tanks had entered Pakistan, posted an eight-minute monologue defending his coverage. “Every channel did make at least one mistake, but not one of our mistakes was against this country,” he said.
Niha Masih in New Delhi and Rick Noak in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Jango007
Registered Member
Yet another political disaster......No one is buying Indian version and claims of the war...
But in New Delhi, analysts and critics say the outreach underscores a sobering reality: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government did not receive the support it expected from the international community for its military campaign. India and Pakistan were effectively hyphenated, or treated as equals — a dynamic New Delhi has long tried to avoid — and the violence between them has unsettled a delicate regional balance in ways that no charm offensive can easily fix.
It is “first and foremost an acknowledgment that Mr. Modi’s diplomacy and foreign policy has failed,” said Sushant Singh, who teaches South Asian Studies at Yale University.
The fighting in early May was the most serious between India and Pakistan since they developed nuclear weapons, and brought the countries perilously close to all-out war. Two dozen civilians were killed on both sides. India lost at least two fighter jets and six Pakistani airfields were damaged in Indian strikes, The Washington Post found."
"
June 1, 2025
By Niha Masih
NEW DELHI — India is deploying dozens of lawmakers and former ambassadors to more than 20 global capitals in a hastily organized diplomatic blitz aimed at reclaiming the narrative after its recent clash with Pakistan — and at building international support for a more muscular military approach to its archrival.
India framed its strikes inside Pakistan, the deepest in more than half a century, as retaliation for a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. Now, it is working to convince its allies that the operation represents a new front in the global fight against terrorism.
“We want them to understand what happened, how we reached the stage of the new normal,” said Shashi Tharoor, an opposition leader and former U.N. diplomat who is heading a delegation to Washington in early June. “To show our determination and resolution that we won’t let this happen again.”
But in New Delhi, analysts and critics say the outreach underscores a sobering reality: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government did not receive the support it expected from the international community for its military campaign. India and Pakistan were effectively hyphenated, or treated as equals — a dynamic New Delhi has long tried to avoid — and the violence between them has unsettled a delicate regional balance in ways that no charm offensive can easily fix.
It is “first and foremost an acknowledgment that Mr. Modi’s diplomacy and foreign policy has failed,” said Sushant Singh, who teaches South Asian Studies at Yale University.
The fighting in early May was the most serious between India and Pakistan since they developed nuclear weapons, and brought the countries perilously close to all-out war. Two dozen civilians were killed on both sides. India lost at least two fighter jets and six Pakistani airfields were damaged in Indian strikes, The Washington Post found.
The Indian delegations are made up of members of various political parties, Singh said, in an attempt “to create a consensus within India to show that everybody’s involved.”
But while billed as a show of unity, the effort has not transcended the country’s fractious politics. Opposition parties criticized the Modi government for skipping a parliamentary session on the broader strategic impact of the conflict and for picking delegation memberswithout their input.
As Indian representatives set out for foreign capitals — ranging from Seoul to Doha, Qatar, to Washington — critics say the Modi government remains narrowly focused on domestic politics, to the detriment of its foreign policy.
“We have serious issues to contend with — the China-Pakistan nexus … Kashmir is being raised internationally,” said Jairam Ramesh, a spokesman for the opposition Congress party. “But like everything the prime minister does, this is about optics.”
Students, social activists and Congress party members rally in Bangalore on May 9 in support of the Indian military. (Jagadeesh Nv/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
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Washington’s initial ambiguity over its role as mediator — exemplified by Vice President JD Vance’s remark that the conflict was “fundamentally none of our business” — shifted quickly as the fighting escalated. Intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy spearheaded by Rubio and Vance culminated in Trump’s ceasefire announcement on May 10. But differences persisted, with India insisting the truce was negotiated bilaterally and rejecting Rubio’s assertion that it had agreed to broader talks with Pakistan.
New Delhi, which has long accused Islamabad of supporting militancy in Indian-administered Kashmir, blamed Pakistan for the April attack that killed 26 civilians. Pakistan denied involvement and called for an international investigation.
India’s handling of the attack has made its position weaker, said an opposition lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their party to comment. Indian authorities failed to prevent the assault despite a heavy military presence in Kashmir and, more than a month later, the perpetrators remain at large.
Advertisement
“This is a serious intelligence failure,” the lawmaker said. “But nobody is asking questions because they will get dubbed anti-national.”
On May 7, India’s Foreign Ministry said investigators had “developed an accurate picture of the planners and backers,” but has provided no further update.
A Western diplomat based in New Delhi, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said there are concerns over India’s lack of transparency, citing its reluctance to share evidence purportedly implicating Pakistan in the Kashmir attack or divulge information about its fighter jets lost in combat. If Indian officials are not more forthcoming, the diplomat said, their foreign charm offensive may prove fruitless.
Advertisement
Tharoor, who has emerged as the face of the outreach initiative, said India provided incontrovertible proof after the 2008 Mumbai attacks — which killed over 160 people — that the gunmen belonged to a militant group based in Pakistan. Yet Islamabad continued to receive international assistance.
“Us presenting proof doesn’t make a difference anymore,” Tharoor said.
Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya shakes hands with Aparajita Sarangi as he welcomes a group of Indian lawmakers to Tokyo on May 22. (Richard A. Brooks/AFP/Getty Images)
In Doha, the delegation met with a junior minister for foreign affairs; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lawmakers had an audience with the deputy prime minister; in Japan, they held a short meeting with the foreign minister. Delegates also addressed Indian diaspora gatherings and dined with think tank experts.
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The prospect of nuclear escalation and India’s suspension of a key water treaty are among the issues that have been raised in the meetings, according to people familiar with the visits who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door interactions.
The emissaries have also embraced cultural diplomacy. In Kuwait, delegates visited the Grand Mosque. The delegation to the U.S. began its tour by visiting the 9/11 Memorial in New York. And in Seoul, the leader of the group filmed an Instagram reel with a Korean influencer popular in India for his fluent Hindi.
The delegation to the U.S. is expected to meet with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The State Department had no comment on whether meetings were planned there. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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Pakistan has signaled it is embarking on its own outreach campaign to counter Indian messaging. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a former foreign minister, said on social media he would lead a group “to present Pakistan’s case for peace on the international stage.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee and was blocked from visiting Indian-administered Kashmir during a security crackdown in 2019, said it is critical for India and Pakistan to resolve their differences. “Kashmir remains a combustible flashpoint for conflict and will remain so until there is a willingness among all the parties to develop a sustainable political settlement,” he wrote in an email.
In Washington, India’s delegation may have to contend with uncomfortable questions over the role of the Trump administration in brokering the ceasefire, which India maintains was achieved without third-party intervention.
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“India sees itself as an emerging great power,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It has long held the view that whatever challenges it might face, it has the capabilities to resolve them itself.”
While Trump’s rhetoric during the conflict may have unsettled officials in New Delhi, Vaishnav said, India is still on more solid footing than Pakistan, which has developed no new strategic partnership with the U.S. since the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Strengthening ties with India, meanwhile, remains a long-term, bipartisan priority in Washington.
Ultimately, the Indian outreach reflects an assumption by the Modi government that its domestic playbook of controlling the narrative — through a pliant media and choreographed government messaging — can be exported abroad, said Singh, the lecturer at Yale.
“Western capitals, for reasons of geopolitics and China, have been very lenient toward Mr. Modi and his brand of politics in India,” he added. “So it creates a kind of incentivized thinking that we can get away with this as well.”
Adam Taylor in Washington contributed to this report. Sent from my iPhone
But in New Delhi, analysts and critics say the outreach underscores a sobering reality: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government did not receive the support it expected from the international community for its military campaign. India and Pakistan were effectively hyphenated, or treated as equals — a dynamic New Delhi has long tried to avoid — and the violence between them has unsettled a delicate regional balance in ways that no charm offensive can easily fix.
It is “first and foremost an acknowledgment that Mr. Modi’s diplomacy and foreign policy has failed,” said Sushant Singh, who teaches South Asian Studies at Yale University.
The fighting in early May was the most serious between India and Pakistan since they developed nuclear weapons, and brought the countries perilously close to all-out war. Two dozen civilians were killed on both sides. India lost at least two fighter jets and six Pakistani airfields were damaged in Indian strikes, The Washington Post found."
"
India launches global charm offensive after conflict with Pakistan
Analysts say the outreach underscores concern in India that it did not receive strong international support for its military operations against Pakistan.June 1, 2025
By Niha Masih
NEW DELHI — India is deploying dozens of lawmakers and former ambassadors to more than 20 global capitals in a hastily organized diplomatic blitz aimed at reclaiming the narrative after its recent clash with Pakistan — and at building international support for a more muscular military approach to its archrival.
India framed its strikes inside Pakistan, the deepest in more than half a century, as retaliation for a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. Now, it is working to convince its allies that the operation represents a new front in the global fight against terrorism.
“We want them to understand what happened, how we reached the stage of the new normal,” said Shashi Tharoor, an opposition leader and former U.N. diplomat who is heading a delegation to Washington in early June. “To show our determination and resolution that we won’t let this happen again.”
But in New Delhi, analysts and critics say the outreach underscores a sobering reality: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government did not receive the support it expected from the international community for its military campaign. India and Pakistan were effectively hyphenated, or treated as equals — a dynamic New Delhi has long tried to avoid — and the violence between them has unsettled a delicate regional balance in ways that no charm offensive can easily fix.
It is “first and foremost an acknowledgment that Mr. Modi’s diplomacy and foreign policy has failed,” said Sushant Singh, who teaches South Asian Studies at Yale University.
The fighting in early May was the most serious between India and Pakistan since they developed nuclear weapons, and brought the countries perilously close to all-out war. Two dozen civilians were killed on both sides. India lost at least two fighter jets and six Pakistani airfields were damaged in Indian strikes, The Washington Post found.
The Indian delegations are made up of members of various political parties, Singh said, in an attempt “to create a consensus within India to show that everybody’s involved.”
But while billed as a show of unity, the effort has not transcended the country’s fractious politics. Opposition parties criticized the Modi government for skipping a parliamentary session on the broader strategic impact of the conflict and for picking delegation memberswithout their input.
As Indian representatives set out for foreign capitals — ranging from Seoul to Doha, Qatar, to Washington — critics say the Modi government remains narrowly focused on domestic politics, to the detriment of its foreign policy.
“We have serious issues to contend with — the China-Pakistan nexus … Kashmir is being raised internationally,” said Jairam Ramesh, a spokesman for the opposition Congress party. “But like everything the prime minister does, this is about optics.”
Students, social activists and Congress party members rally in Bangalore on May 9 in support of the Indian military. (Jagadeesh Nv/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Unanswered questions
Though President Donald Trump condemnedthe April 22 attack in Kashmir and expressed solidarity with India, his administration urged immediate de-escalation after India’s first round of strikes on May 7. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would work with the two sides “toward a peaceful resolution.” For New Delhi, this evoked an uncomfortable equivalence with Pakistan, ignoring India’s status as an ascendant global power.Advertisement
Washington’s initial ambiguity over its role as mediator — exemplified by Vice President JD Vance’s remark that the conflict was “fundamentally none of our business” — shifted quickly as the fighting escalated. Intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy spearheaded by Rubio and Vance culminated in Trump’s ceasefire announcement on May 10. But differences persisted, with India insisting the truce was negotiated bilaterally and rejecting Rubio’s assertion that it had agreed to broader talks with Pakistan.
New Delhi, which has long accused Islamabad of supporting militancy in Indian-administered Kashmir, blamed Pakistan for the April attack that killed 26 civilians. Pakistan denied involvement and called for an international investigation.
India’s handling of the attack has made its position weaker, said an opposition lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their party to comment. Indian authorities failed to prevent the assault despite a heavy military presence in Kashmir and, more than a month later, the perpetrators remain at large.
Advertisement
“This is a serious intelligence failure,” the lawmaker said. “But nobody is asking questions because they will get dubbed anti-national.”
On May 7, India’s Foreign Ministry said investigators had “developed an accurate picture of the planners and backers,” but has provided no further update.
A Western diplomat based in New Delhi, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said there are concerns over India’s lack of transparency, citing its reluctance to share evidence purportedly implicating Pakistan in the Kashmir attack or divulge information about its fighter jets lost in combat. If Indian officials are not more forthcoming, the diplomat said, their foreign charm offensive may prove fruitless.
Advertisement
Tharoor, who has emerged as the face of the outreach initiative, said India provided incontrovertible proof after the 2008 Mumbai attacks — which killed over 160 people — that the gunmen belonged to a militant group based in Pakistan. Yet Islamabad continued to receive international assistance.
“Us presenting proof doesn’t make a difference anymore,” Tharoor said.
Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya shakes hands with Aparajita Sarangi as he welcomes a group of Indian lawmakers to Tokyo on May 22. (Richard A. Brooks/AFP/Getty Images)
A wide-ranging agenda
The seven delegations have fanned out across the world, focusing on nations that are on the U.N. Security Council, or will be in the near future.In Doha, the delegation met with a junior minister for foreign affairs; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lawmakers had an audience with the deputy prime minister; in Japan, they held a short meeting with the foreign minister. Delegates also addressed Indian diaspora gatherings and dined with think tank experts.
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The prospect of nuclear escalation and India’s suspension of a key water treaty are among the issues that have been raised in the meetings, according to people familiar with the visits who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door interactions.
The emissaries have also embraced cultural diplomacy. In Kuwait, delegates visited the Grand Mosque. The delegation to the U.S. began its tour by visiting the 9/11 Memorial in New York. And in Seoul, the leader of the group filmed an Instagram reel with a Korean influencer popular in India for his fluent Hindi.
The delegation to the U.S. is expected to meet with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The State Department had no comment on whether meetings were planned there. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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Pakistan has signaled it is embarking on its own outreach campaign to counter Indian messaging. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a former foreign minister, said on social media he would lead a group “to present Pakistan’s case for peace on the international stage.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee and was blocked from visiting Indian-administered Kashmir during a security crackdown in 2019, said it is critical for India and Pakistan to resolve their differences. “Kashmir remains a combustible flashpoint for conflict and will remain so until there is a willingness among all the parties to develop a sustainable political settlement,” he wrote in an email.
In Washington, India’s delegation may have to contend with uncomfortable questions over the role of the Trump administration in brokering the ceasefire, which India maintains was achieved without third-party intervention.
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“India sees itself as an emerging great power,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It has long held the view that whatever challenges it might face, it has the capabilities to resolve them itself.”
While Trump’s rhetoric during the conflict may have unsettled officials in New Delhi, Vaishnav said, India is still on more solid footing than Pakistan, which has developed no new strategic partnership with the U.S. since the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Strengthening ties with India, meanwhile, remains a long-term, bipartisan priority in Washington.
Ultimately, the Indian outreach reflects an assumption by the Modi government that its domestic playbook of controlling the narrative — through a pliant media and choreographed government messaging — can be exported abroad, said Singh, the lecturer at Yale.
“Western capitals, for reasons of geopolitics and China, have been very lenient toward Mr. Modi and his brand of politics in India,” he added. “So it creates a kind of incentivized thinking that we can get away with this as well.”
Adam Taylor in Washington contributed to this report. Sent from my iPhone
Raj-Hindustani
Elite Member
Akash defence missiles intercession of Pakistani fired missiles
Jango007
Registered Member
There is absolutely no proof of that and no independent confirmation that Akash achievedany success except same India media that I mentioned above which lies and deceits and no one should read or follow.
By the war we have almost intact Scalp cruise missile and large fragments of Brahmos indication of soft kills ....any wreckage Indians can share to show any confirmed kills???
Vapnope
Trusted Member
The guy was in isi and then went to IB
Abdul q
Registered Member
Musings
Administrator
Provide evidence or get ready to make a new ID
Abdul q
Registered Member
gamaji
Registered Member
Do these evils have a capability of soul searching at all? I genuinely have very serious doubts about that.
Indians are habitual liars. It's their second nature. A well known reality is that a liar is the first victim of his/her own lies. That applies to 'nations' too. Indians then lie even more. Simply cannot help themselves.
