Quantum of malice

As the ongoing US-Israel-Iran conflict dragged on and entered the stalemate territory, reports about Pakistan's potential role as a mediator started emerging. One of the earliest reports was from the reputed Financial Times. The headline reads: Pakistan steps up as go-between in Trump's Iran crisis. Notice the pain it takes to avoid words like mediator or even facilitator. Go-betweens usually are servants who shuttle back and forth between two parties, often estranged lovers, and carry messages. Also notice the 'steps up' framing which signals voluntary self-insertion. Simply put the headline is telling you that attention-hungry Pakistan wants the role of a courier to please Trump.

If you think I am reading too much into it, notice how the same story got a different treatment by Irish Times: Pakistan moves into position as mediator in US-Israeli war on Iran. It is plain that the FT editorial staff with an Indophile US editor made the call to diminish the role. Why, you ask? Let India's External Affairs Minister explain it to you.

The established career diplomat and scholar that he is, on March 25, at an all-party meeting of Indian parliamentarians, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was asked to comment on Pakistan's mediatory role. His reply: 'Hum unki tarah d** nahi kar sakte' (we cannot act as d** like them). Now the dictionary will tell you it means a broker. But India's street language and Bollywood-popularised use would indicate that the intended meaning is pretty demeaning and derogatory. With this, the caricature that the Indian media perpetuates about Pakistan has added a new word in addition to bhikari (beggar) nation. I know it is hurtful, but do not stop here. Keep going.

As the Islamabad Talks concluded, after telegraphing constant hate, the Indian media declared the talks a failure and went on to dance the conga. But consider the international media. On April 12, MS Now aired a segment in its Weekend Primetime show titled: Pakistan was hiding Bin Laden. Now they're saving Trump's war. The guest expert was Foreign Policy's editor-in-chief, Ravi Agrawal, the same gentleman who sat through marathon transmissions on CNN during the May war last year and endlessly rationalised the Indian government's policy choices. Like good schoolchildren, the submissive discussion panel asked what looked like pre-approved questions with as much deference as possible and did not interrupt answers once. And Agrawal's answers contained all dog whistles and tropes handpicked to remind you that unworthy Pakistan was the problem. Triggers like nuclear, terrorism, China, America's diminished role were loaded in there. But why use your own guy when the headline, the copy and the hosts can do all the heavy lifting for you? Ask yourself. Why bring up Osama here and why make it sound like he was deliberately sheltered by the authorities in Pakistan? These are Indian talking points from the war last year.

So the narrative so far: an emaciated and beggar terror state which hangs out with authoritarian enemies like China is flattering and bribing a diminished America under Trump to act as a pimp to get back in good graces. Right? But reality on the ground? A country is trying to help you end a war that affects India as badly as anyone else.

Wait, there is more. On March 18, a full three weeks before the Islamabad Talks, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard presented the Annual Threat Assessment to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In her testimony she listed Pakistan alongside Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as states whose missile development 'put our Homeland within range'. India, which possesses the Agni-V with a range exceeding 5,000 kilometres and is actively developing the Agni-VI with a projected range of 12,000 kilometres, was conspicuously absent from the list. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine is India-specific by stated policy. Every serious analyst knows this. Yet the pariah frame was planted in the official US intelligence record weeks before Vance even landed in Islamabad. As the news about the peace process broke and Pakistan's role emerged, CBS' Margaret Brennan tweeted the same talking points about Pakistan again. Just think. So much effort to stigmatise a country which is actively trying to end human and economic loss in a war. Also think of this propaganda muscle and what it must have done during the war on terror. Hating someone is one thing, but this is next level.

Four dimensions of malice, then. The editorial slant of respectable Western outlets like the FT. The open vulgarity of India's political establishment, from Jaishankar's d** down to the bhikari memes on Indian social media. The embedded bias of American liberal media, laundering Indian talking points through Ivy League credentials and prestigious mastheads. And the institutional capture of the US security establishment, where a threat assessment ignores the larger arsenal to frame the smaller one as the danger.

All of this is very inconvenient for me. After twelve years of battling Modi's policies, I have just made peace with the idea of Modi. The highly stratified Indian society which is almost always dominated by the forward castes leaves the majority (the Other Backwards Castes or OBCs) out of the power-sharing formula. For someone like Modi, who is himself an OBC, using all these compromises and disruptions, to get to power makes sense. Unfortunately, all this malice is a byproduct of a history of state-sponsored narcissism and these disruptions.

It is an imperfect world. To dominate you, narcissists in the family, at the office and in the system play mind games on you. The purpose of these mind games is to rob you of your self-worth so that you continuously bleed leverage and remain in a vicious cycle of abuse and exploitation. The only way to break this cycle is to create more leverage for yourself. Pakistan's eastern neighbour has turned this art into an article of faith. And for a long time it worked. But pathological hate is not strategy. It drags down global potential, India's included. The war raging on Pakistan's border affects Indian energy supplies, Indian markets, Indian citizens in the Gulf. Yet the reflex to diminish Pakistan's diplomatic contribution persists even when that contribution serves India's own interests. The pattern holds: just because JD Vance went to Pakistan and did not berate it, the FT's Ed Luce wrote a column diminishing him days later. One nation's silent colonisation of international media, institutions and corporate boardrooms goes unremarked. Another's attempt to broker peace in a burning region is met with the word pimp. If this is not weapons-grade malice, what is?