It was September 23rd, 1965, when the two post-partition adversaries ended another adventurous, yet decisive face-off in South Asia’s military history. Following the series of warfighting manoeuvres after Operation Gibraltar and Grand Slam, South Asia sensed an environment of anxiety and aggression, which later became a decisive trigger in shaping national identities, strategic cultures, and war narratives. This period of war came as a result of latent hostilities, originating from a disputed piece of geography, Kashmir. To pinpoint what exactly the war aims were would require a dissection of the military history into several frames of reference. The prevalence of multiple anecdotes in the collective commemoration of the disputed territory for Pakistan left it with layers of outlooks or concerns, nonetheless, unanswered. Were the historical motives hydro-political, geostrategic, retributive, prestige-driven, or an act of protective interventionism? In all the earlier-mentioned scenarios, the common element of restructuring the remembrance of war memory, narratives, and identity in Pakistan’s strategic culture remained a national priority, which directly translated into the May 2025 crisis.
In strategic parlance, strategic culture refers to the Cold War concept of a comprehensive set of historical episodes, emotional responses, and patterns of habitual behaviour adopted by a state’s national security and social architecture. The redemptive imperative of the strategic culture to free Kashmir from the chains of coercion was constituting a foundation, based on the collective psychology of the nation. Those semantics of war, blended with an inconsistent mix of multiple political objectives, signalled a contestation between the tangent of war aims and public sentiments vis-à-vis the national psyche over the geography. The generality of anecdotes apropos to the constructed or constructive interpretations of the 1965 military adventure formed several perceptions as to how identity, memory, and adversarial footprint in the region are linked. It constructed what we call ‘collective commemoration’ in strategic cultures. Rethinking the national defensive psyche post-1965 and the military history of adventures to escape the meltdown of national security requires a strong intergenerational transmission of historical events to preserve national connectivity. It also asserts on the scale of commemoration required to facilitate the state’s national narrative, military objectives, and war memorials as a ‘political memory’.
In Psycholinguistics, semantic satiation is the phenomenon of repeating a phrase or a word to the point where it loses its definitional weight, becoming meaningless. With limited emotional resonance, younger generations are unable to subscribe to the historical narratives echoed by their elders, making commemoration a cliché; it cannot bridge the intergenerational divide with a sense of collective identity. Memory politics brings us two repository ideas to understand the collective psychology: Memory of and for politics. The entire exercise of the former is by instituting divergent historical narratives through political and societal contestation to formulate a ‘collective memory’ of the populace. This practice requires selective narratives, writings, or anecdotes to tap into the public’s sense of identity, wartime remembrance, and sentimentality of war victory over adversaries. Whereas the latter is about preserving the national narrative to approach recovery, reflection, and reconciliation with the past through the construction of monuments, museums, and other war memorials. These sites serve as historical relics of the saga of vanquish and victory. The Lahore Museum and Army Museums in Pakistan serve as a historical recollection of the state’s military history, honouring the sacrifices with national remembrance. Nonetheless, generational connection with the politics of monumental activism and war objects or memories is distant in reality, practice, and theory. This Generation of Post memory has inherited war memories, but it cannot relate directly to the post-1965 peacetime sentiments of their elders; therefore, it broke the historical transmission in the 21st century. This sociopolitical struggle to acknowledge historical responsibility and understand the military objectives of the past or present is exhausting, yet necessary. The systematic breakdown of national disconnection with the state’s political or military narratives had a biblical moment, the May 2025 crisis. With the younger generation becoming the frontlines in cyber and physical spheres, the sense of national connectivity erased the abject culture of downplaying the object of victory. The prevalence of debatable inquiries over strategic wins was countered by the wrongly labelled ‘unsociable’ generation, commanding narrative deterrence actively for 87 hours.
In Conflict Studies, Spoilers are entities that disrupt social progress and conflict resolutions, fearing that such progressions would hurt their narrative dominion in sociopolitical spheres. From provoking violence to projecting apologetic narratives, spoilers distort contemporary and historical events to avert the reorientation of national narratives. In the presence of such entities, in and outside of the state, reviving wartime memories and nationalistic sentiments becomes a challenge, often leaving one with some footnotes to address. First, is commemoration important? If yes, then how much and in what manner? Second, how does historical amnesia reinforce the domestic culture of apologetic narratives from the populace and distort the idea of collective commemoration? The aforementioned stumpers pose some definitional disruptions, as ‘indoctrination’ is often replaced with ‘commemoration’ as an apt method of reviving nationalism or inculcating war remembrance sensitivity. The former developed negative connotations over time, as Western Writing, post-World War 2, has linked indoctrination of certain ideologies as the driving force behind the rise of ultranationalist ideologies. The European understanding of ‘commemoration’ and ‘nationalism’ became twisted and aggrandized, forcing them to not recontextualize but also rewrite their historical precursors. The antidote of ‘never again’ was used after the Holocaust to prevent identity politics, glorified wartime memories of victory, and the overbearing mix of militarization with ethnonationalism. This lexical rewriting and historical recontextualization became Europe’s major concern post-1945.
This exercise remains significant as newer generations have a twisted understanding of how important Pakistan’s military symbolism has remained in strengthening collective nationalism. The generational issue of losing connectivity with the state’s priorities has made a fine line of cessation, hindering any path to constructing a national narrative; however, the May 2025 crisis emerged with new tangents. This emergence constantly added footnotes as historical events, with a contemporary manifestation, started to sync with the younger generations’ level of connectivity with the emotional linkage of their ancestors’ wartime sentiments and peacetime memories. This missing element of intergenerational connectedness culminated in the rise of apologetic or alienated narratives, translating into Pakistan’s military and political history. Pakistan, like any state, has a foreign policy to govern its external and internal recalibrations, created by a set of goals, strategies, and expected outcomes. Goals in foreign policy manoeuvre in two ways: circumstantial and consequential, likewise strategies, which are either proactive or reactive, syncing with the outcomes required or achieved. The realist idea of achieving peace is attached to the normality rather than the obscurity of warfighting objectives. The accepted culture of self-abasing in Pakistan, while discussing the national narrative, self-interests, or military history, has spread an organized culture of apologetic or conciliatory narratives. Transnational and domestic assumptions believe that Islamabad should apologize for objectives it never had, acts it never committed, or circumstantial and consequential self-interests it had as a state. Neither of the world’s states has apologized for their history, nor for their current policies. However, Pakistan, surrounded by adversaries and insecurities, has faced overbearing assumptions of excessive militarization in the guise of security dilemmas within and outside the state. Its sentimentality of wartime memories is overshadowed by the inordinate domestic and regional focus on Pakistan’s militarization, which is imperative to its national security. People within and outside of Pakistan assert that apologies or justifications on the state’s history should be passed around like peanuts, with the axis of evil feeding on the narratives. This culture has damaged Pakistan’s national narrative, as citizen politics has forgotten its genesis, ideological posture, and relationship with the state’s history.
The collective narrative of the populace on achieving a victory in the May 2025 crisis has signalled a paradigm shift, resulting in the organized breakdown of several preconceived notions associated with the military history of Pakistan. The domestic impressions of the younger generations on the previous military operations were impersonal and contrarian, unplugging every emotional connection or generational transmission. Nonetheless, the 87-hour crisis deconstructed the alienated and apologetic notions in a flash, with 4 days of televised, drone, and information warfare bridging the post-1965 historical gaps. The direct involvement of the public in preserving the 6-0 narrative during cricket matches, information warfare, and diplomatic engagement reinforced the strategic culture of Pakistan. The absence of a generational connection with the previous military operations is now facing the late millennials-driven revolution with the Gen Z: a new twisted wave of historical and political consciousness. This remembrance culture, coupled with cycles of information contestation, makes it challenging for spoilers to twist collective memories and manipulate cycles of commemoration.
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