IAF annihilated terror camps 100 KMs inside Pakistan, destroyed 11 air bases, yet Pakistanis are celebrating: What feeds this delusion of Pakistanis
“Dil ke khush rakhne ko, Ghalib, ye khayal acha hai”. This line by legendary poet Mirza Ghalib perfectly sums up the situation of Pakistani people who are living in “Delusionistan”, which they created to escape the grim reality.
Under the Operation Sindoor, the Indian Air Force (IAF) destroyed terror camps 100 kilometres inside Pakistan, damaged 11 Pakistani air bases, killed dozens of terrorists, yet Pakistanis are celebrating. What are they celebrating? A ceasefire. While India is not a warmonger, yet the larger public sentiment in India was against the ceasefire, as people wanted complete destruction of Pakistani terror and military establishments after the hostile neighbour displayed the audacity to attack Indian civilians and religious sites, while also attempting to target military establishments.
On one hand, the Indian Armed Forces carried out precision strikes deep inside Pakistan, achieving all their military, political and psychological objectives; on the other hand, the Indian Air Defence System effectively thwarted all the nefarious designs of the enemy as the latter launched drone and missile strikes on Indian cities in the border areas. Unlike Pakistan, India has provided ample evidence to substantiate the claims of the damage inflicted on Pakistani terror and military establishments, as well as the terrorists slain.
Pakistan, on the other hand, has only offered communally charged Jihadist rhetoric and heavily edited and superimposed images to lend some credence to its falsehoods. However juvenile the attempt Pakistani Armed Forces and ISPR have made, it was enough to make its populace believe that somehow, despite India penetrating deep inside Pakistan, destroying its air bases, terror camps with pinpoint accuracy and killing jihadis associated with LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad as well as relatives of Masood Azhar, Pakistan has ‘won’.
In modern warfare, propaganda is a great tool. Pakistani establishment knows that the best way to hide its incompetence is to dress pleasant lies as truth and the people will celebrate their defeat as a victory while turning oblivious to the obvious questions they would otherwise have asked.
Pakistan celebrating a pummeling: Peak shamelessness even by Pakistani ‘standards’
Soon after a ceasefire understanding was announced on 10th May 2025, Pakistani propaganda machinery came into action to claim that somehow it was the victory of Pakistan’s Operation Bunyan-al-Maroos. In many areas of Pakistan, people burst firecrackers apparently to forget the chagrin caused by the Diwali Indian Armed Forces celebrated in Pakistan with their precision strikes in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, wherein Pakistan-sponsored terrorists killed tourists after religious profiling.
Scenes of jubilation replaced ‘Paijaan Endia ne attack kar dia hay’ cries, and firecrackers lit up the night sky in Pakistani cities. Former cricketer and forever jihadi Shahid Afridi took out a rally in Karachi, and there emerged a collective chest-thumping narrative of ‘victory’. Other than Shahid Afridi taking out a cringeworthy rally, videos surfaced on social media showing crowds waving Pakistani flags, distributing sweets, and an overall celebratory atmosphere in cities like Hyderabad and Multan. In Sindh, sweets were distributed on the orders of the province’s governor to celebrate the fictional victory of Operation Bunyan-al-Maroos.
Right after India successfully carried out Operation Sindoor and its phase two, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif was yearning for a PR win to assuage the surmounting anger of the Pakistani people against the failure of his government and armed forces in thwarting India’s anti-terror strikes. The Pakistani Armed Forces monumentally failed in not only preventing Indian attacks despite having Chinese ADS at hand, but also inflicting any major damage on Indian cities, religious sites and military establishments with its Turkish drones. This failure on all fronts compelled Pakistan to rush to the United States to seek a ceasefire, although Pakistan, being a master of lying through its teeth, now claims that it never sought a ceasefire. India, being a responsible state, decided to give peace a chance. Then what, Shahbaz Sharif declared a ceasefire as a Pakistan victory, and genuflected (figuratively) before Donald Trump, writing eulogies lauding the US President for mediating the ceasefire.
Pakistani forces are spinning this as a ‘smart, patient response’ that ‘pushed India back’. Beyond the hollow rhetoric, Pakistani ISPR continues to prevaricate on the question Pakistani forces pushed India back from what, reducing Pakistan’s airbases to rubble or from hitting Rawalpindi’s Nur Khan airbase? It is like a boxer claiming victory just because he is still standing after a knockout punch.
For Indians, ceasefire was nothing short of a disappointment as Indians largely wanted Operation Sindoor to conclude with a decisive outcome, perhaps more damage to Pakistani terror and military infrastructure, which going by the Jihadist rhetoric unleashed by DG ISPR Ahmed Sharif Chaudhary, makes one believe that there’s hardly any difference in Pakistani Armed Forces and the terror outfits thriving under its patronage, or merger Pak-occupied Jammu and Kashmir into India. India, though not completely opposed to a ceasefire, did not burst into celebrations like Pakistan, while the hostile neighbour began celebrating a self-declared victory, defying all the facts indicating its crushing defeat.
Why Pakistan celebrated its humiliation as victory? The answer lies in history
Divorced from reality, many Pakistanis, including their all bluster, no brains media and celebrities, have convinced themselves that the response of Pakistani forces was so fierce and measured that it compelled India into seeking a ceasefire. This absurdity warrants an analysis of why Pakistanis are celebrating their own humiliating defeat. Well, the answer to this lies in what could be called a toxic cocktail of denial, shallow national pride and a belief system that doesn’t allow Pakistanis to accept loss, especially to its bête noire—India.
Pakistan’s short and opprobrious history is littered with examples of rewriting defeats as victories. Take the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War for example. In this war, Pakistan lost East Pakistan, and Bangladesh came into existence with India playing a decisive role inflicting a humiliating defeat on Pakistan. This war was initially spun as a heroic stand until the scale of surrender (93,000 Pakistani troops) was deniable.
Amusingly, another example of Pakistan celebrating imaginary victories to hide the agony of real defeats is the celebration of Defence Day on 6th September every year. Pakistan, being “Delusionistan,” still believes and wants its younger generations to believe that it won the 1965 Indo-Pak War, even though Pakistan lost it. The country sees the 1965 war as a win simply because of their belief that Pakistani forces had frustrated India’s attempt to capture Lahore and Sialkot, even though India had the upper hand. Remember the Kargil War of 1999? Pakistan essentially denied involvement of its troops until bodies of its soldiers killed in action began to pile up. This ongoing celebration of ceasefire by Pakistan is yet another chapter in a long and disgraceful tradition of dodging reality to keep going with the hope that one day, these imaginary wins would become reality. Since the announcement of the ceasefire understanding, Pakistanis are not celebrating facts, they don’t even care about facts; they are simply celebrating a fantasy where their forces somehow outsmarted India’s overwhelming military might.
For Pakistanis, accepting defeat is like acknowledging the superiority of the enemy. This, however, is unacceptable for the Pakistani establishment and the Pakistani populace, brainwashed into hating India. This denial is rooted in an imaginary religious and cultural superiority complex that makes defeat at the hands of Kafir India unthinkable. Pakistani Muslims live in the delusion that they ruled India for thousand years, even though the reality, which again they do not accept because it hurts, is that they are nothing but fourth or max to max fifth generation converted descendants of their Hindu ancestors who were victimised and converted by the very Islamic invaders Pakistanis now name their missiles after.
India’s bloodied partition happened on Islamic lines since the majority of Muslims at that time, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, were adamant that they could not co-exist with Hindus and other non-Muslim communities. Pakistan was created as Islamic homeland for Muslims and its national identity has been steeped in the idea that divine favour or ‘Allah’s favour’ ensures victory and it can never be with Kafirs. You see, this isn’t just a childish rhetoric; it’s a psychological crutch. The very idea that Kafirs or for that matter any secular force could dismantle Pakistani military which runs on the motto of Iman, Taqwa and Jihad-fi-Sabilillah (Faith, fear of Allah, Jihad on the path of Allah), is so dissonant that it is more convenient to reject reality than confront it.
Thus, Pakistani Islamists create a bubble of delusion and live in it as seen in their celebration of a ceasefire they demanded to escape further hammering by Indian forces, as some sort of strategic masterstroke that too no less than a divine intervention. More than a celebration of the military outcomes of the latest conflict, these celebrations are a coping mechanism intended to preserve a fragile ego steeped in religious hatred that cannot digest defeat at the hands of a Hindu-majority yet secular nation they’ve been brainwashed into despising. Thus, they blindly believe the lies Pakistani ISPR is serving them as facts and are even spinning their own ‘manohar kahaniyan’, to cover up their collective incompetence.
Pakistan has lost every war against India, yet the national psyche clings to alternative (read fictional) histories. The hostile neighbour celebrates the 1947-48 Kashmir War as valiant jihad, even though India emerged victorious by successfully gaining the majority of the contested territory. Even as Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar badly collapsed in 1971, and India’s counteroffensive nearly took Lahore, the country celebrates Defence Day to lionise a triumph it never really secured. Kargil’s humiliation was blamed on terrorists initially, Pakistani forces even refused to accept the dead bodies of their deceased soldiers, who were then given proper burial by the Indian Army. The very idea of losing against India is unfathomable for Pakistan. Thus, they perpetually try to salvage pride from the thrashing caused by India.
Indian Army gave proper burial to Pakistani soldiers killed in action after Pakistan Army disowned its martyrs in Kargil 1999 war (Source:NYT)
While in reality, the Pakistani Army has never won a war and never lost an election, in Pakistani history textbooks, they have neither lost an election nor a war.
Even now, the Pakistan Armed Forces and government have invoked high-sounding terms like ‘resilience’ and ‘honour’ and whatnot, to deflect attention from the fact that they have survived a beating by India, but they have not won the fight. Thus, Pakistan’s absurd celebrations of the ceasefire is a mix of religious-psychological coping mechanisms and systemic brainwashing. They fear that admitting India’s victory or even the obvious superiority would unravel the myth of parity that justifies Pakistan’s existence, especially as India’s rival. Due to this, they reframe every defeat as ‘a moral victory’ and every retreat as a ‘strategic pause’. Most importantly, the notion that ‘kafirs’ can’t defeat the army on the mission of Jihad-fi-Sabilillah, comes into the play.
Pakistan, however, has a habit of indulging in premature celebrations. While there is an understanding of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, the Indian Armed Forces remain on high alert to retaliate against any misadventure by the hostile neighbour. Pertinently, punitive measures like the trade bans and the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty, which is literally the lifeline of Pakistan, are still in place.
In the end, all that can be said is that the celebratory rallies and firecrackers, and sweets distribution are both laughable and tragic at the same time. These fireworks and rallies are, in reality, not celebrations of victory but of survival, of dodging a bullet. It’s a repackaging of the fear of Operation Sindoor as a victory of Operation Bunyan-al-Maroos. Pakistan is upholding its belief of superiority against the reality of India’s dominance. However, any further misadventure and Pakistan along with its ‘beliefs’ would become a story of the past, contrary to their assertion that ‘no power on earth can undo Pakistan’, it is India, the very power from Pakistan that came into existence can undo Pakistan and redo undivided India—Akhand Bharat.
News