On Friday, 9 May, at a time when India and Pakistan were waging an escalating armed conflict during Operation Sindoor, and citizens endured anxious nights wondering what new calamity lay ahead, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party put out a promotional video on its X handle.
The video focused on the so-called muscular nationalist persona of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It showed Modi the “strongman” glowering at the camera, with captions promising retribution, accompanied by warlike, emotional music.
The video was, frankly, appalling. It was insensitive and crude, and at a time when lives were being lost, and given that terrorists who gunned down innocents in Pahalgam had still not been caught, could not have been more ill-timed. The BJP had exhorted the Opposition not to play politics during Operation Sindoor—but its own video was openly and nastily political. Through its imagery, it painted the previous Manmohan Singh-led UPA government as weak and suggested it lacked the resolve to take on Pakistan.
