Balakot: Success Out of Failure in Four Episodes

The below write-up is based on Sushant Singh article in Caravan Magazine. "The Balakot Misdirection How the Modi government drew political mileage out of a military failure"

Balakot: Success Out of Failure in Four Episodes

If the 2019 Indo-Pak crisis were a television series in Narendra Modi’s India, it would unfold in four dramatic episodes—a volatile mix of tragedy, bravado, chaos, and political triumph. Dubbed "Balakot: Success Out of Failure," the series would showcase how a military stumble was spun into a nationalist victory, securing Modi’s second term. Six years later, in March 2025, the gap between the chest-thumping propaganda and the sobering reality remains a stark lesson in perception trumping facts—and its echoes still shape India’s trajectory.

Episode One: The Pulwama Trigger

The curtain rises on 14 February 2019, with a suicide bombing in Pulwama, Kashmir. A vehicle laden with explosives slams into a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy, killing 40 personnel. Claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based militant group, the attack ignites national outrage. It’s a pivotal moment—both for the 2019 election campaign, just months away, and for India’s fraught relationship with Pakistan. The emotional weight sets the stage for retaliation, with mournful montages and a rising patriotic score.

Episode Two: Balakot’s Bold Gambit

Cut to 26 February: Indian Air Force jets cross into Balakot, Pakistan, targeting what New Delhi calls a terrorist seminary. Regime-friendly channels trumpet a surgical triumph—hundreds of militants wiped out in their stronghold. The series might depict sleek warplanes and night-vision explosions, with triumphant pilots saluted on return. But the reality, as Sushant Singh notes in this month’s cover essay, is less glamorous. Satellite imagery showed minimal damage, and Pakistan denied significant casualties. The strikes missed their targets, yet the narrative of Modi striking back at terrorism took root, rallying electoral support.

Episode Three: Skirmish and Setbacks

The plot escalates on 27 February as Pakistan retaliates with an aerial riposte over Kashmir. A dogfight downs an Indian MiG-21, and its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, is captured after ejecting over Pakistani soil. India claims a Pakistani F-16 fell, though evidence is shaky. Operational blunders compound the chaos: friendly fire downs an Indian helicopter in Kashmir, killing six, while a near-miss incident rattles Rajasthan. Diplomatically, Pakistan’s swift release of the pilot—under global pressure from the U.S. and others—hands India a chance to claim resolve. Relations with Pakistan crater, still unrecovered by 2025, while the series milks the tension for all its worth.

Episode Four: Nationalist Triumph

The finale is pure optics. Flag-waving rallies flood the screen, Modi’s speeches dominate, and Pakistan’s establishment appears humbled—at least in India’s telling. The messy military outcome fades as nationalist fervor peaks. The Balakot episode, for all its failures, delivers Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a landslide in the 2019 election. As Singh writes, “The strikes were meant to project Modi’s strong stance against terrorism and rally electoral support… making the prime minister seem like a leader who would keep the country safe.” The real victory wasn’t on the battlefield but at the ballot box.

Propaganda’s Playbook

This arc mirrors how India’s ruling establishment and its media cheerleaders—think Republic TV or Times Now—framed the crisis. Hyper-nationalism drowned out inconvenient truths: missed targets, a lost jet, friendly fire debacles. Singh highlights the brazenness: “The Indian government’s ‘sources’ and mainstream media insisted… that the IAF’s operations had killed Pakistani terrorists and hit its intended targets, that India possessed superior technology causing invisible damage, and that it had shot down a Pakistani F-16. No credible proof was provided.” By 2025, this media landscape has only hardened, with partisan channels doubling down as nationalist megaphones, amplifying Modi’s agenda over evidence.

A Legacy of Wilful Lying

Singh’s writeup situates Balakot in historical context: “The operation and its aftermath marked the first time since the 1971 India-Pakistan war that both countries conducted airstrikes on each other’s territory.” Unlike 1971, when Indira Gandhi’s offensive birthed Bangladesh, no decisive victory emerged in 2019—only dueling narratives. “Neither India nor Pakistan signed a document of surrender, and both have largely stuck to radically different accounts,” he notes. Yet, never has such warfare been so steeped in “wilful lying by politicians and television channels, and with so much brazen disregard for evidence.” Internationally, the episode drew muted reactions then—concern from the U.S., China’s balancing act—but by 2025, analysts see it as a cautionary tale of escalation unchecked by accountability.

The strikes also fueled Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda. Singh observes, “His vitriol against [Pakistan] let Hindutva’s foot soldiers turn their malevolence against Indian Muslims.” Domestically, the chest-thumping unified support; diplomatically, it deepened the Indo-Pak rift. But was Balakot the grand success it was sold as? Singh’s answer is clear: militarily, no. Politically, emphatically yes.

Perception Over Reality, Six Years On

Six years on, declassified accounts reveal Balakot’s limits—an operation that projected strength but faltered in execution. Its true success lay in how Modi’s government drew mileage from failure, turning a military misadventure into a mandate. By 2025, the episode’s legacy lingers in India’s approach: bolder cross-border rhetoric persists, but military modernization has quietly accelerated, hinting at lessons absorbed behind the bravado. Globally, it’s a footnote in great-power jostling, yet domestically, it cemented a template—narrative can outshine facts. Has this emboldened riskier gambits, or forced a reckoning beneath the surface? In Modi’s India, Balakot remains a masterclass in winning wars not with bombs, but with belief.