The smell of smoke in Pahalgam, the cries of grieving families, and the frenzy of television news anchors screaming vengeance are not mere symptoms of chaos. They are orchestrated notes in a symphony of political power. In South Asia, war is no longer the tragic consequence of failed diplomacy. It is the main event, planned, packaged, and performed with the precision of a stage play. And like all theatre, it relies on an audience—distracted, angry, and hungry for meaning. The Pahalgam incident has landed with chilling familiarity. It does not emerge as an isolated act of terror, but as a continuation of a calculated tradition. The 2002 Godhra train burning, the 2019 Pulwama bombing, and now this new attack on the cusp of Bihar’s elections—each of these events follows a script where bloodshed preludes ballots. This isn’t merely strategic opportunism.
It is the reshaping of political legitimacy through violence, where nationalism is brewed in the fire of death, and leaders walk over the ashes toward electoral victory. Narendra Modi, more than any other post-liberalization Indian prime minister, has perfected this dance. Violence does not threaten his appeal—it sharpens it. Fear becomes a campaign message. Hatred is repurposed into heroic slogans. Those who question the timing of such attacks are labelled traitors. And so the war narrative advances, not in the battlefields of actual conflict, but in the living rooms of ordinary Indians, who are told that safety lies not in dialogue but in dominance. Across the border, in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi, the generals do not blink. They have seen this play before. They know its rhythm.
With Islamabad’s elected leadership floundering—paralyzed by economic collapse, internal discord, and institutional fatigue—the military believes it must steer the state through this storm. But not towards peace. Peace, after all, is bad business. Instead, they prepare to craft a government that speaks with the language of discipline and moves in sync with strategic imperatives. What they want is not democracy, but manageability. The irony that cannot be lost is that Indian extremism helps Pakistan’s military elite stay relevant. Leaders of India’s past—Desai, Gandhi, Rao, Vajpayee, Singh—posed no convenient threat. They had the capacity to unsettle the enemy narrative. But Modi is different. He provides a full-length mirror of everything the Pakistani military needs to justify its own omnipresence: communalism, aggression, anti-Muslim hysteria, and a disdain for diplomacy.
In this co-dependency, South Asia’s tragedy deepens. Enemies are not merely feared; they are needed. This is why, when both nations move toward their annual budget seasons, they do so not in an atmosphere of policy debate or fiscal prudence, but amid sirens and songs of war. The common citizen—in Delhi’s dusty alleys or Karachi’s crowded colonies—is told to forget inflation, joblessness, and hunger. National pride demands sacrifice. Empty pockets are reframed as patriotism. In India, a mother skipping meals for her child is a soldier. In Pakistan, a power outage is a war tactic. And while real life is suspended in this illusion, the media steps in to fill the void. Indian news channels will thunder with self-righteous rage.
General Bakshi, with his bloodthirsty monologues, will cheer on destruction. Major Gaurav Arya will smirk through misinformation, while Arnab Goswami will turn news into a nightly assault. Meanwhile, graphic montages of missiles and warplanes will flicker across screens, intoxicating the nation with manufactured might. Behind the noise, real pain is invisible. Dead soldiers are numbers. Civilians are statistics. The soul of a society is lost beneath hashtags and soundbites. Pakistan, too, rehearses its lines. The DG ISPR will issue menacing declarations beside visibly uncomfortable finance ministers. Teeth will be promised to be broken. Talk shows will indulge in fantasies of victory against a nuclear-armed neighbor, while failing to explain how the same state cannot guarantee clean water or functioning hospitals.
Patriotic ads will be aired. Artists will be summoned to sing. But none of it can mask the economic decay, the social despair, the tragic collapse of civic dignity. Eventually, the curtain will fall. There will be no war—just the ritual of preparing for it. There will be no real peace—only the absence of immediate disaster. Under the gentle prodding of American diplomats or Gulf intermediaries, the drums will soften, the channels will pivot, and the headlines will change. The budget will be announced. The speeches will celebrate restraint. And everything will go back to the same fragile normal—until the next provocation. The real question remains unanswered: who profits? In India, the answer is more straightforward. The violence boosts Modi’s appeal among hardline voters. Bihar’s electoral arithmetic will tilt in his favor.
Modi will emerge once again as the strongman who takes no nonsense from Pakistan. That the lives lost in Pahalgam were Indian lives seems irrelevant in this calculus. Sacrifice, after all, is always demanded from others. In Pakistan, the benefits are more opaque. With no elections in sight, the rewards are institutional, not electoral. The idea of war justifies continued military dominance. The narrative of permanent threat ensures that questions of governance, development, and justice remain unanswered. The only extension under discussion is not a public mandate—but the extension of power, tenure, and silence.
At its heart, this is a story not of India versus Pakistan, but of the people of both nations versus those who rule them through fear. It is about the rural mother in Muzaffarpur and the out-of-work father in Multan. It is about students who want jobs, not jeeps. It is about citizens who are desperate for health care, not high-pitched heroics. And it is about the devastating simplicity of a lie repeated so often that it becomes the truth. The fixed war—like a fixed match—depends on the complicity of those who know better but remain silent. It is a spectacle that mocks democracy while pretending to protect it. As long as we mistake this choreography of crisis for genuine conflict, we remain part of the audience, clapping at our own misfortune. How long, then, will we play along? How many more acts must unfold before we tear up the script and walk offstage?
