Editorial By Advocatetanmoy
From war talk to cricket diplomacy, Modi’s regime thrives on empty theatrics, betraying victims of terror for global optics.
India’s Pakistan policy under Modi has descended into a grotesque theatre of contradictions—boastful in tone, cowardly in action, and dripping with sanctimony masquerading as strategy. What began as “Operation Sindoor,” trumpeted with the thunder of war, fizzled out into a cheap sleight of hand: the government declaring it was still “ongoing,” even as the Indian Cricket Board (BCCI) was permitted to fraternize with Pakistan on the cricket field. Nothing could better symbolize the Modi regime’s hollow chest-thumping than this duplicitous farce—banning Pakistani players from setting foot on Indian soil, yet rolling out red carpets at international venues when optics demanded it. It reeks of hypocrisy served with a garnish of cowardice.
The suspension of the Indus Water Treaty was advertised as a masterstroke of “decisive leadership,” but like every other Modi-era spectacle, it turned out to be political theatre staged for television studios, not the battlefield. Meanwhile, the blood of 24 Hindu pilgrims, slaughtered in Pahalgam by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in April 2025, has barely dried, yet the government thought it fitting to let its cricket board clasp hands with the very nation accused of orchestrating their deaths. This is not diplomacy; it is degradation—a mockery of the dead, a desecration of the grief-stricken. The bereaved families have every right to spit on the government’s bombast, for the ruling party has reduced “national security” to a campaign slogan and “patriotism” to a WhatsApp forward.
The so-called sports policy that emerged amid the uproar is an exercise in bureaucratic gymnastics, crafted not for clarity but for plausible deniability. India shall not play in Pakistan, nor Pakistan in India, yet both may cavort freely on neutral ground if the International Cricket Council (ICC), a private limited company—headed, conveniently, by the defence minister’s own son—so ordains. This is not policy; it is parody. And it confirms what the critics long suspected: the BJP’s foreign and domestic agendas are stitched not with principle but with threadbare opportunism.
At the heart of this charade is Narendra Modi himself, a man addicted to the narcotic of attention. His foreign policy is not anchored in conviction but blown about by the winds of ego. He poses with Putin and Xi in China to signal his global relevance, then scurries after Trump’s every online belch as though divine revelation had arrived on Twitter. His stance shifts faster than sand in a desert storm—against Israel today, for Palestine tomorrow—each turn dictated not by statesmanship but by the calculus of Hindu vote-banks and the need to appear “tough” before a credulous domestic audience.
Even America’s punitive 50% tariff on Indian goods, a crushing blow to the economy, has been met not with firm resistance but with the whimpering hope that Modi’s grinning selfies with world leaders will somehow soften the blow. He struts upon the stage of geopolitics like a self-crowned titan, but beneath the choreographed bombast is a provincial showman, desperate for applause, incapable of genuine defiance.
In the end, Modi’s India has become a land of hollow lectures and empty gestures. It roars against Pakistan in slogans, then extends its hand in cricket. It parades Hindu martyrdom to inflame passions, then squanders their memory on diplomatic charades. It strangles Kashmir with Article 370’s removal, yet trembles to take a real stand when blood is spilled by Pakistani hands. What remains is not strategy, but spectacle—not leadership, but vanity politics of the most corrosive kind.
Sunday, September 14, 2025
