Losing the media war: Indian diplomacy has handled the Balakot strike aftermath in an awfully ham-handed manner

Here is a puzzle. India’s all-volunteer military is highly professional and competent and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling BJP are social media and tech-savvy. Why then is India’s public diplomacy abysmal? Is it due to official ignorance about and neglect of the importance of public diplomacy in today’s networked age, obscured in part by the army of bhakts who will bully and shame any dissenting voices in the domestic discourse into silence by aggressively questioning their nationalism? The tactic is counterproductive internationally.

After the Pulwama massacre of 40 CRPF soldiers, India attacked Jaish-e-Muhammed targets in Balakot on February 26. The next day, one Indian MiG-21 was brought down, its pilot captured and then released. Retired ambassador KC Singh said PM Imran Khan’s ‘diplomatic reverse swing’ left Indian diplomacy ‘stranded’. Modi compounded the problem with an off-colour remark: the ‘pilot project had been completed’ and ‘now we have to make it real’.

India lost the battle of perceptions on statesmanship versus warmongering and lost control of the narrative on the Balakot airstrikes as official statements veered all over the place. A New York Times analysis concluded that Pakistan had bested Indian diplomacy in the fight for global credibility of its narrative; the BBC’s analysis, although more measured, was in substantial agreement.

In the competing national accounts of the unfolding crisis, Pakistan was fleet-footed, agile and nimble while India was ponderous, arrogant and inflexible. Hours before India officially confirmed the loss of a jet and capture of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, a video of him in Pakistani custody had gone viral. India’s claims of terrorists killed in the Balakot strikes are yet to be corroborated while Pakistan provided immediate access to essentially uninhabited sites with bomb craters and eyewitnesses. However, it is very telling that international observers were taken on a carefully guided tour of the actual training camp only six weeks after the fact.

There has been no independent corroboration of Pakistan’s claim to have shot a Sukhoi SU-30 also, nor of India’s claim to have destroyed an F-16. Writing in Foreign Policy recently, Lara Seligman quoted two senior US defence officials as saying an audit of Pakistan’s F-16s had established that none is missing. The Pentagon denies knowledge of any such audit.

The Indian case has faltered in world opinion because ministers have conflated two separate issues. Based on electronic signatures, radio intercepts and the spent wreckage of an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile, which only F-16s use, that fell on the Indian side of the LoC, it seems almost certain that F-16s were used. Washington has past form in ignoring inconvenient facts about Pakistan’s violations of the conditions on which arms are sold. But the missile wreckage does not prove an F-16 was brought down, as some Indian ministers have argued using demonstrably fallacious reasoning.

Without corroborating evidence, domestic critics will not be cowed forever by charges of being Pakistan or terrorism apologists, and foreign sceptics will not suspend their disbelief. India is making the mistake of asking sceptics to trust the military and impugning the motives of those who question the Indian Air Force. The world media has no interest or stake in the integrity and valour of India’s military forces, only in the provable veracity of their claims.

In order not to dishonour the actions of India’s soldiers by losing the war of perceptions, India must urgently address the quality of its public diplomacy through lateral recruitment of experienced and skilled media management professionals in the MEA, MoD and armed forces. They must be given the rank, resources and authority to speak with relative candour during the immediacy of any crisis. Photographic, audio and video recordings should be released without compromising sources of information. The IAF delayed presenting its ‘irrefutable’ evidence of radar imagery proving an F-16 kill until April 8; this should have been done on February 27 itself. To earn the world’s respect, the government must respect people’s intelligence instead of treating them like sheeple.