The Monsoon Session of the Indian parliament turned into a political earthquake, with an emboldened opposition – led by Congress and TMC – mounting a fierce offensive that left the usually combative BJP government visibly cornered.
Silence from the treasury benches was more telling than the opposition’s uproar. Three issues dominated: Pahalgam, Rafale and Operation Mahadev – each puncturing holes in the BJP’s narrative of control. The Pahalgam attack, in a tightly policed tourist area of Kashmir, exposed a grave security lapse.
Priyanka Gandhi’s sharp questions – about the lack of protection, accountability and absent resignations – cut through the BJP’s usual deflections. Her remarks challenged a Kashmir policy built more on optics than substance.
The Indian government’s attempt to blame Pakistan fell flat when ‘evidence’ amounted to Pakistani chocolates, drawing public ridicule. Once dominant, the BJP leadership now sat silent as the opposition tore into its narrative, shifting the power dynamic in a parliament where it once appeared untouchable.
While the Pahalgam incident ignited political outrage, the crash of India’s flagship Rafale jet poured aviation fuel on an already blazing fire. Congress MP Francis George thundered across the Lok Sabha floor, claiming Pakistan had taken down not one, but at least three Rafales alongside an SU-30 and MIG-29. The official response? Deafening silence and a bizarre statement from the defence minister urging people not to count the jets lost but to instead ask whether ‘objectives were met’.
Amarinder Singh Raja’s revelation of the Rafale crash near Bathinda, which killed one and injured nine, dismantled the government’s last hope of burying the incident under bureaucratic jargon. The aircraft, tail number BS001, represented India’s high-tech pride, but it was reduced to a smouldering wreck, hidden under the flimsy label of an ‘unidentified event’. The public backlash was immediate and the media, uncharacteristically defiant in some corners, amplified what the BJP wanted buried. It was no longer about one crash; it was about a pattern of cover-ups, of misleading the nation in matters of defence and sovereignty.
Operation Mahadev, an alleged intelligence offensive intended to redeem India’s military credibility, instead revealed institutional incompetence and strategic desperation. If anything, it became a distraction mechanism that failed to distract. The names of suspects changed mysteriously from ‘Abu Hamza’ and ‘Zakir’ to ‘Afghan’ and ‘Jabir’, all without logical coherence or credible forensic trail. Even the NIA, already discredited internationally after its flawed probe into the Mumbai attacks, was brought back into the picture despite its investigations being dismissed by both Canadian courts and Indian judges.
The most damning question remains: how can a state expect its citizens, let alone the global community, to take seriously an investigation that includes sweets as terror evidence? The situation became more absurd when political commentators mockingly compared the BJP’s posturing to a bad film script, one riddled with plot holes, poor casting and desperate climaxes. In short, the very tools the BJP once used to dominate public discourse – fear, nationalism, and information warfare – began to boomerang.
The opposition capitalised on this rare moment when the government’s usual narrative machine malfunctioned. Kalyan Banerjee’s jibe about Modi’s hesitation to confront Trump became emblematic of the larger problem: the Indian government’s foreign policy, especially concerning the US, has become so transactional that even the idea of defending national pride is secondary to global optics.
Why, Banerjee asked, could the prime minister not muster the courage to refute Trump’s premature ceasefire claim? Why such diplomatic submissiveness? The government's quick acceptance of the ceasefire further signaled its unpreparedness for a protracted engagement and reflected panic, not strategic calculation.
The bigger issue, as the opposition repeatedly pointed out, is the Modi administration’s refusal to accept a neutral investigation because neutrality threatens to expose the deep fissures within the state's security and intelligence apparatus. It also calls into question the central pillar of the BJP’s political project, its monopoly on patriotism and national defence.
India’s ruling party finds itself besieged not by external enemies but by internal accountability. What began as sporadic criticisms in the media and scattered protests by the opposition has evolved into a sustained, articulate and informed campaign against the state’s manufactured truths.
From Pahalgam to Rafale and Operation Mahadev, every question left unanswered is not merely a bureaucratic oversight but a ‘knockout punch’, as political analysts describe. The BJP’s silence speaks volumes not just about the party’s internal paralysis, but also about the collapse of its larger-than-life image.
In the end, governance is not about Twitter bravado, cinematic war speeches or flags planted on foreign soil. It’s about answering to the people when things go wrong. And when a government starts offering chocolates instead of truth, silence instead of accountability, and cover-ups instead of answers, then even the loudest slogans of nationalism can’t mask the sound of credibility crumbling.
The writer is a freelance contributor and writes on issues concerning national and regional security. She can be reached at: [email protected]
