Dangerous fallout of Op Sindoor: Social media warriors join ranks of useful idiots

Unhinged and toxic digital and social media warriors are a menace. Worse, they are unwittingly pushing the agenda of India’s adversaries. The barbaric terror attack at Pahalgam on April 22, 2025 when 26 people, including 25 tourists, were slaughtered in front of their families, the media has gone ballistic with incendiary rhetoric. The outrage and the anger has been genuine. The reaction of citizens in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor has been cathartic.

But in the entire process, the authors were reminded of two things as they saw madness unfold on social media platforms. The first relates to the “enemy within". In almost all democracies, there is a fifth column that abuses free speech rights to undermine national interests. The second is the category of “useful idiots", a term coined by early 20th century Marxists to describe naïve and brainwashed people who undermine national interest while chasing utopia.

Normally, it is quite easy to identify both the enemy within and the useful idiots. The enemy within habitually blames the Indian state for every problem that confronts India as a nation and society. Many in this category detest India for reasons best known to them. The enemy within blames India and largely absolves Pakistan after every horrific terror attack.

The useful idiots spring to life every time India exercises its legitimate right to retaliate and punish, as it did with Operation Sindoor. The moment precision strikes destroyed nine terror camps on May 7, these useful idiots (along with the enemy within) started chanting “De-escalate."

Democracies have to live with this. And most citizens have enough common sense not to be swayed by this nonsense.

But Operation Sindoor has revealed yet another category of people who have unwittingly joined the ranks of the enemy within and useful idiots. They are social media warriors who flaunt patriotism and nationalism at the drop of a hat. In their minds, their job is to expose the enemy within and the useful idiots and protect “Bharat Mata". But they themselves have become useful idiots and the enemy within.

What our adversaries want is a divided and fractured society, rife with mistrust, hate and bigotry. The so-called nationalist social media warriors are doing exactly that.

Nothing illustrates this better than how this unhinged gang has treated Himanshi Narwal (widow of Lieutenant Vinay Narwal who was killed by terrorists at Pahalgam) and Vikram Misri, Foreign Secretary of India. So disgraceful has been the manner in which social media Frankenstein monsters have trolled and abused the two is that it is beyond the pale of any civilised society.

All that Himanshi Narwal, a 22-year-old newly married woman who was tragically widowed, did was ask fellow Indians not to target entire communities in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. Till she said this, Himanshi had been elevated by these nationalistic social media warriors to the status of Mother India. Suddenly, they started abusing her, questioned her loyalty to India and even spun crazy conspiracy theories about how she had been indoctrinated during her days as a student in JNU.

People in charge of psychological and information warfare in Islamabad and Beijing must have been chortling with glee with the behaviour of these ‘patriots’. They would have been even more pleased when the same bunch pounced upon Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and his family for no rhyme or reason.

Some useful idiot made an “earth-shaking" discovery that the daughter of Vikram Misri was a ‘liberal’; and worse, had advocated for Rohingyas in London. That Vikram Misri is a Kashmiri Pandit triggered these unhinged social media warriors even more. His entire family was trashed; his loyalty to India was questioned and the abuses hurled at him and his daughter were sickening.

All this was happening when Misri was working round the clock behind the scenes and also briefing the media on the positions adopted by India and the actions taken by it. Imagine what he must be going through. Here, he is working round the clock handling the fallout of Operation Sindoor as India’s top diplomat and there he is being swamped by vile abuse, coming in torrents.

The blokes at the ISI must be praying that more such ‘nationalist’ social media warriors emerge in India.

This breed has now truly become a Frankenstein monster. There is no way of knowing how many ISI and Chinese intelligence bots have infiltrated these nationalistic groups. There is no way of knowing who the next target will be. All that is known for sure is that such behaviour is deepening the fault lines in the Indian society. And, that the only beneficiaries will be adversaries of India.

The worst part is the herd mentality of these groups and their complete blindness and inability to even consider common sense as an option.

About a decade and a half ago, these nationalists did play a positive role in exposing the enemy within and the useful idiots on social media when the narrative in India was overwhelmingly dominated by the deracinated “Left-Liberal" ecosystem.

But that era is gone and the political parties ,which created these ‘IT Cells’ and amassed this army of social media warriors, must urgently do a rethink. This kind of behaviour doesn’t help them politically even as it damages India.

India is on its way to becoming a $5-trillion economy by 2027 and a $10-trillion one by 2034. The most important factor that could derail this process is a potential collapse of trust between the Hindu and Muslim communities. And, this is where the ‘nationalist’ warriors pose the biggest menace.

Almost all Indians, including Muslims, unhesitatingly blamed Pakistan and its Islamist terrorist after Pahalgam. But our social media warriors were busy blaming Indian Muslims. Sure, there are bigoted Muslims, just as there are bigoted Hindus. But they don’t represent the communities. And, there is no way for India to reach the $10-trillion economy without the active participation of 250 million Muslims.

How can one be so dangerously and foolishly blind?

Yashwant Deshmukh is Founder-Director, CVoter research foundation and Sutanu Guru is the Executive Director.

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