The Troll Tax

Operation Sindoor wasn't just a military episode—it was a mirror held up to the nation, in which it saw trolls

- Pragya Singh

WHEN people woke up on May 7 after Operation Sindoor unfolded during the night, the reality was starkly different from the drama that had been building up on television until then. Islamabad hadn’t been captured, Karachi Port was intact, and the anticipated escalation along the border with Pakistan had failed to materialise.

No intensification of the conflict. No ‘annihilation’ of the western neighbour. What was written into the next chapter also wasn’t escalation—it was a ceasefire, announced early in the evening of May 10.

It was an unexpected letdown for trolls and hyper-nationalists, after viral posts and TV broadcasts had continuously fuelled war rhetoric. They now demanded their first victim: unsuspecting Foreign Secretary, Vikram Misri. Late on the same evening, the moment he announced violations by Pakistan of the ceasefire agreement, online trolls unleashed a barrage of invectives on him and his family, forcing him to protect his tweets and retreat from public view.

Ever since the terrorist attack that killed 26 Indian tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir on April 22, social media had become a parallel warfront. It was flooded with viral posts, aggressive hashtags and doctored footage that amplified war rhetoric and fanned public outrage. Even after the ceasefire was declared, the digital noise grew louder, exerting pressure on the government to act and dragging the narrative back towards escalation.

“With some TV channels whipping up emotions based on events that never happened—and with trolls and other online influencers spreading those sort of untruths—we're not far from a time when fake information outweighs the real,” cautions Pavan Duggal, a cyberlaw expert and Supreme Court advocate.