# India’s Narrative on 2025 Conflict Faces Growing International Scrutiny
**ISLAMABAD:** More than 15 months after India and Pakistan engaged in their most serious military confrontation in decades, New Delhi’s efforts to establish international dominance over its version of the 2025 conflict appear to have gained limited traction.
India’s latest attempt is a documentary titled *Declassified: Operation Sindoor*, which presents a highly dramatized account of the four-day confrontation and seeks to reinforce New Delhi’s narrative of the conflict.
However, assessments by international research institutions and independent analysts, supported by open-source evidence, have challenged several elements of India’s account.
Christopher Clary of the Stimson Center, in his detailed study *Four Days in May: The India-Pakistan Crisis of 2025*, described the confrontation as the most significant crisis between the two nuclear-armed countries in several decades.
The study found evidence of an immediate Pakistani counter-air success on May 7, challenging claims of overwhelming Indian military dominance.
The British American Security Information Council’s 2026 assessment similarly concluded that the fighting ended following a combination of direct military communications and diplomatic engagement, with the United States playing the primary external facilitating role.
The Stimson Center also acknowledged the role of the administration of US President Donald Trump in helping bring the conflict to an end, a finding that complicates India’s portrayal of the ceasefire as essentially a bilateral outcome.
Trump repeatedly claimed that Washington had intervened to halt the hostilities. On May 10, he announced that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire” following what he described as a “long night of talks mediated by the US.”
The US president later said Washington had used trade incentives and the possibility of withholding trade benefits to encourage both sides to end the fighting. India, however, disputed this version and maintained that trade had not been discussed with American officials.
### Pakistan rejects India’s portrayal
Pakistan’s military has strongly rejected the Indian narrative surrounding the conflict, warning that no amount of dramatization would alter the outcome of the confrontation.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) criticised *Declassified: Operation Sindoor*, describing it as a “Bollywood-style” production that allegedly sought to portray a military setback as a successful operation.
The ISPR said that more than a year after *Marka-i-Haq*, India had failed to acknowledge what Pakistan described as the failure of its military campaign.
It accused Indian content creators of producing a highly dramatized and factually inaccurate account featuring senior political and military leaders, arguing that selectively edited interviews, emotional narration and cinematic reconstructions had been used to reshape the operational narrative.
The military’s media wing also rejected India’s claim of “100 per cent mission success”, asserting that Pakistan’s armed forces had thwarted the Indian offensive and shot down eight military aircraft.
According to the ISPR, even the documentary contains references to extensive Pakistani missile, drone and air activity, engagements along the Line of Control (LoC) and the activation of Indian air-defence systems—details that, it argued, contradict the portrayal of complete Indian military dominance.
The ISPR further warned that any future military misadventure by India would be met with a firm, decisive and disproportionate response.
The competing narratives over the 2025 conflict therefore remain sharply divided, with India seeking to reinforce its version through political messaging and media productions, while independent assessments and open-source analysis continue to shape international understanding of what transpired during the four-day confrontation.
Report by Dawn
