EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Round Table Discussion on “Winning the Narrative Warfare”, organised by Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) on 15th January 2026, highlighted that modern conflicts are increasingly fought in the narrative domain, where emotions, perception, and information control often outweigh battlefield success. It underscored India’s systemic weaknesses in proactive, unified, and timely narrative management, stressing the urgent need to build institutional capabilities to counter misinformation and shape strategic narratives continuously in peace and conflict. The Roundtable brought together a distinguished panel including Mr Anshuman Tripathi, Former NSAB, Air Marshal S K Ghotia, PVSM, VSM (Retd) and Maj Gen Sanjay Meston, AVSM, SM, VSM (Retd).
Mr Anshuman Tripathi explained how modern “narrative warfare” operates in a post-truth world where emotions outweigh facts, and how social media algorithms, persuasive technology, and cognitive biases shape and amplify narratives. He highlighted psychological mechanisms such as confirmation bias and false memory, showing how misinformation can become accepted truth. Through detailed case studies of a recent movie “Ikkis” and Operation Sindoor, he demonstrated how subtle misrepresentation, poor contextual understanding, and media framing can distort national memory, offend collective sentiment, and ultimately cause a narrative to fail.
Air Marshal Ghotia highlighted that while operational objectives and damage inflicted were achieved, India failed to proactively communicate and amplify these outcomes to shape the global narrative. He contrasted this with the 1971 war, where despite losses, the dominant narrative of decisive victory prevailed due to effective messaging. He emphasised that post-operation reflections revealed missed opportunities in strategic communication and acknowledged the institutional gap in narrative management expertise, underscoring the need to build stronger capabilities to win the narrative war.
Maj Gen Meston emphasised that India underperformed in narrative warfare due to delayed, fragmented, and poorly coordinated information dissemination, allowing misinformation and enemy disinformation to dominate media space. He highlighted how real-time intelligence gaps, dependence on external satellite and communication systems, and lack of timely official updates enabled false narratives to spread, even diverting operational focus. Drawing lessons from Pakistan’s sustained perception management and Israel’s failure to counter adverse global narratives, he stressed that narrative warfare must be continuous, unified, and strategically driven across peace and conflict. He concluded by urging India to adopt proactive, historically grounded, and offensive narrative strategies rather than remaining reactive on core issues like Kashmir.
