All the while the cricketer across the border is making a pitch to internationalize the Kashmir issue, using “peace” and “prize” as a means to an end. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, after being “nominated” for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Pakistani nation, has now subtly turned the demand Kashmir-specific, tweeting that the Nobel Peace Prize should go to the one “who solves the Kashmir issue.”

India and Indian politicians may not give much thought and time to Imran’s pitch but the global media has noticed the man, and his charisma. They find in him a far more glamourous subject than the Prime Minister of India, who suffers from what might be called “publicity fatigue”, whose face and hugs are now all too familiar to the global audience.

Besides, Imran Khan is blessed with a friendly domestic media to root for him, an advantage which Narendra Modi lost in 2002 and could get sections on his side only after the BJP got a majority in 2014. Even those sections were looking to abandon him post several bypoll and the 5-state election losses in 2018.

Then, Pulwama happened and the rest, as they say, is history. Narendra Modi “preempted” a Mahagathbandan-takeover of electoral fortunes with the Balakote “pre-emptive strikes” and it looks like the tables have been turned. No media has come up with a “mood of the nation survey” post-Pulwama and Balakote, but bets are that Modi’s stock has risen multi-percentage points since February 26 and #WelcomeBackAbhinandan.

Under the circumstances, if anybody is thinking of Modi de-escalating on war-related election rhetoric, he’s living in fool’s paradise. And the opposition parties, they might be anything, but fools! Probably explains why they have chosen to call out the BJP’s Balakote claims at the risk of being labelled “anti-nationals” and “anti-Indian Air Force.”

It’s a high-risk gambit for both camps and while the BJP base and the Opposition base will stay firm, each to their respective sides, it will be the floating electorate which will decide who is anti-national and who isn’t anti-armed forces. Like one anti-Modi anchor said, throw away the television sets for two months and maybe we’ll get a fair election result. He was, of course, being too clever by half; it will take a herd of elephants to prise him away from the front of the camera!

The back and forth may or may not be taking a toll on the morale of the armed forces, but the daily count of body-bags and Modi doing circles around stacked coffins is definitely photo-op which people are getting tired of. Getting a National War Memorial does not mean that engravers and inscribers, sculptors and landscape gardeners, should be burdened with names of fresh martyrs, add to the 25,000-plus names already engraved in gold in the NWM.

No family of Indian soldiers, sailors and aviators would want that, not as long a family member in the armed forces is still among the living.

That being said, what’s going for Modi is that he got the chance to cross redlines in the Pakistan-and-terror context and he grabbed it with both hands. A Vajpayee may not have “retaliated” the way Modi did and maybe neither would have a Congress Prime Minister.

That is the BJP’s electoral card these general elections, which Modi and his allies in the media are drumming day in and day out. It’s war of a different kind but a war, nonetheless. Modi and a jingoistic media have together succeeded in making war the means to an end. That is the story being played out in television studios and drawing rooms, not countrywide but subcontinent-wide. For, Pakistanis are as much invested in Indian General Elections 2019 as are Indians. War and Peace are just two acts of the several-act play, the curtains on which will come down, hopefully – mercifully – mid-2019, June! (IPA Service)