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“Yaachna nahi, ab rann hoga,” the Bharatiya Janata Party posted on its official X profile on May 9 alongside a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi dressed in an air force jumpsuit. “It is time for war, not appeals.”
The BJP invoked lines from a famous Hindi poem by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, as India and Pakistan appeared to be headed for a full-scale war. On May 7, India had launched missile strikes on alleged terrorist infrastructure within Pakistan, as a response to the terrorist attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 persons.
However, a little over 24 hours after the BJP’s post on X, American officials claimed to have brokered a ceasefire between the two countries, bringing the hostilities to an abrupt halt.
While many citizens, especially those living in the border states, expressed relief at the end of military action that has claimed over 20 civilian lives, the Hindu right wing reacted with disappointment and anger.
Hindutva activists, pro-government media personalities and even BJP leaders took to social media to express their dismay at what they interpreted as a surrender by India from a position of might.
“It feels a bit anticlimactic to quit when you are clearly ahead,” Shefali Vaidya, a prominent supporter of the party, wrote on X. But she also added that she trusted decisions made by the country’s leaders.
Others were less sparing in their questioning of the government’s thinking. Shakti Singh, who is with the students’ wing of the BJP, tagged Prime Minister Modi in an X post complaining about India not being able to do to Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed what the US did to Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. “As long as these terrorists are alive, a ceasefire makes no sense,” he wrote.
Guwahati-based businessman Moon Talukdar, a former Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leader and now a BJP member, said the abrupt ceasefire would not stop Pakistan from pushing terrorists into India.
“India should have annexed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,” the 30-year-old said. “Until and unless we take over PoK, the war will continue. If the ceasefire had not taken place and PoK was annexed, India would have established that we are not a weak country and would be on the same level of world powers like Russia and the US.”
American ‘overstepping’
What has angered the BJP’s supporters are the American fingerprints all over the decision – the ceasefire was announced by US president Donald Trump.
Journalist-turned-politician Swapan Dasgupta, who is a member of the BJP’s national executive, explained the discomfort in a post on X. “This ceasefire/‘understanding’ hasn’t gone down well in India as … it was peremptorily announced by Trump who suddenly appeared out of nowhere & pronounced his verdict,” he wrote.
India has not acknowledged any American role in mediating the agreement to cease military action against Pakistan.
Nevertheless, Trump went on to claim on Sunday that he would try to work with both India and Pakistan to come up with a “solution” for Kashmir next. The president’s comments upset many Indians concerned about America’s purportedly growing involvement in the region.
Republic Media Network editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami lashed out at Trump for “overstepping”. “He [Trump] has no idea about the ground situation, he has no idea what is happening here,” a charged-up Goswami told a reporter. “I think this is beyond him. This is typical Trump overreach. I don’t buy this. We will finish this.”
Some of the anger over what many viewed as the government backtracking from its earlier aggressive posture was directed at the Indian Foreign Service officer Vikram Misri, who has led the press conferences about Operation Sindoor over the past week.
Social media users dug up old pictures of him with his family and circulated them with details about his daughter’s professional life. The trolling and the insinuations about his daughter’s supposed political leaning got so nasty that Misri had to change the privacy settings on his X profile.
‘Erase Pakistan from the world map’
The anger among the Hindu right-wing stemmed from their expectations that the “strong” Narendra Modi government was best placed to deliver a “final solution” to the Pakistan problem.
“I am absolutely unhappy because general Hindu society wanted something simple – a final solution to eradicate jihadism,” Kolkata-based activist Sayan Lahiri told Scroll.
Lahiri is a convener of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-linked students organisation Paschim Banga Chhatra Samaj.
Backed by the BJP and RSS, the Samaj had led a violent protest march to the West Bengal state secretariat to protest against the rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital last August.
On Saturday, the 31-year-old Lahiri railed against the ruling party for succumbing to “pressure from the US”. “The demand from patriotic Sanatani Hindus was to erase Pakistan from the world map,” he said. “We have still not been able to find those responsible for the Pahalgam massacre.”
A member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Guwahati, who did not want to be identified, told Scroll that many ground-level workers were not satisfied. “We could have used our full capacity to show our strength,” he said.
“Yeh dil maange more,” he added. ‘The heart wants more.”
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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