Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the head of the Pakistani military’s media wing, has questioned why Indian military officers were speaking in English while briefing on Operation Sindoor on its first anniversary. Pakistanis trolled Chaudhry, questioning English usage in Pakistani military documents instead of Urdu.
On the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor on May 7, Pakistani Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the DG of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), had an interesting question for his Indian counterparts. Chaudhry, the son of the UN-sanctioned terrorist, Mahmood Sultan Bashir-Ud-Din, asked why Indian military officers were using English for briefing on the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor.
The DG ISPR was referring to a press conference on Thursday where a trio of senior officers from the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force laid out the strategic impact and lessons learnt a year after the deadly Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives. Chaudhry enquired why the senior Indian officers were speaking in English.
“Who asked you to speak in English? Is it because you want to tell the world your version of events?” asked Chaudhry. Chaudhry seemingly thought Indian military officers were using English, the global lingua franca, for wider reach, or perhaps he considers their use of the language unacceptable.
One would expect an officer of such high rank to know that in India, English serves as a common link language because of the country’s vast linguistic diversity.
In any case, the DG ISPR’s question to his Indian counterparts opened the usual tidal wave of trolling from social media users, including Pakistanis.
“When you live in a glass house, do not throw stones at others,” said Major Adil Farooq Raja (Retd) in response to the DG. Farooq Raja is a former Pakistan Army officer-turned-journalist who has been hounded by his former employers on dubious sedition charges.
Reacting to the clip, Raja first highlighted the hypocrisy in Chaudhry’s disdain for English, when it was still the main medium of communication within the Pakistan Armed Forces. “From the highest to the lowest level, all instructions in the Pakistan Army are issued in English,” said Raja.
He also claimed that the Pakistani officers only used their native language, Urdu, as a propaganda tool to fool their own compatriots, and even then most of the propaganda and misinformation peddled by the ISPR was in English. Notably, ISPR, the media wing of the Pakistan armed forces, is well known for peddling misinformation en masse.
But the most important point raised by Raja was this, instead of debating whether officers of a country’s armed forces should speak in English or not, why hasn’t Pakistan’s Armed Forces admitted to their citizens the full scale of the damage India had inflicted on the country’s 11 airbases during Operation Sindoor. “Why don’t you admit your losses? Why are you only telling us a one-sided story? Why don’t you tell us stories from both sides so we know whats the true story,” asked Raja.
Raja was of course not the only Pakistani to troll the ISPR and its DG.
“The impure army is a factory of deceit and lies,” one user wrote on X.
“After the lies of DG ISPR, the public has blackened their face; now just the bit of seating them on a donkey and parading them around remains,” wrote another user, sharing an AI manipulated image of Chaudhry with his face completely black.
“He really thinks we’re just illiterate duffers and dumbasses who’ll believe anything he says,” another user posted on Reddit.
Regardless of the lies the DG ISPR sees fit to peddle, the truth remains that the Indian Armed Forces struck Pakistan hard, and penetrated its air defences like hot knife through butter. Asking why Indians speak English will not change that reality.
