Narrative as Weapon: The Design Politics of Modern Conflict

Empathy, Symbolism, Storytelling. These aren’t accessories in communication; they are its foundation. They shape how we interpret power, identity, grief, and pride. In wartime, they aren’t cast aside. They are intensified, deployed strategically to frame violence as virtue, to conceal intention behind emotion.

In May 2025, as India and Pakistan engaged in a brief but volatile military exchange, the first strikes weren’t physical. They were narrative. Crafted with care. Delivered with precision.

India launched Operation Sindoor. Pakistan replied with Bunyan Marsous.

Both names carried symbolic weight. Both were designed to stir emotion, not just explain action. These were not just military operations — they were performances staged for public memory and mass media.

Naming the War: Sindoor and Bunyan Marsous

India’s Sindoor drew from Hindu tradition. The red powder, applied by married women, symbolises devotion, life, and continuity. Sacred and intimate, it softened the optics of war with the sentiment of care. This was pinkwashing, a feminine veneer over masculine violence. The message was reinforced visually: two women officers, one Muslim, one Sikh, led the press briefing. Diversity was on display, and inclusion was performed.

But behind the symbols were airstrikes. The choreography faltered under scrutiny.

Media coverage quickly distorted the message. Sindoor became shorthand for retaliation. Television debates grew louder. News graphics leaned into triumphalism. What began as soft symbolism was overwhelmed by nationalist spectacle. And on social media, the narrative spun again — into hashtags, memes, and jingoistic slogans. Dissenters, including a widow calling for peace, were harassed. The state’s narrative unravelled as it passed from podium to prime time to public feed.

Pakistan’s Bunyan Marsous , “a wall of lead,” was drawn from the Quran. It presented defence as a divine duty, embedding religion into the national response. In a country often navigating a civic vacuum, where shared secular narratives are fragile, scripture became the scaffolding.

Pakistani media upheld the script. It emphasised restraint, civilian suffering, and moral legitimacy. But online, the story fractured. Humour took over. Memes about the economy, energy outages, and the absurdity of war went viral. It wasn’t rebellion, but quiet subversion. Satire served as survival. The public softened the narrative, not with sacred language, but with sarcasm.

In both nations, the state named the story, but could not hold onto it. Once released, the meaning shifted. Pinkwashing in India and religious framing in Pakistan were both undone by public reinterpretation. What the state designed, the people reauthored.

Narratives Travel, and Rarely Stay Intact

Both governments tried to script a singular story. But in the age of 24/7 media and digital commentary, control is fleeting. Once outside the official frame, narratives pass through layers that reshape them: newsrooms, influencers, meme pages, private chats.

In India, the symbolic tenderness of Sindoor couldn’t withstand the aggression it masked. The message blurred in the noise of television and timelines.

In Pakistan, the religious clarity of Bunyan Marsous left little room for multiplicity. So the public created their own space through humour and critique, working around the rigidity of official messaging.

These fractures reveal a core truth: stories don’t stay loyal to their origin. They mutate. They circulate. They contradict. And each retelling carries consequences.

Design is Political

Design matters. Language matters. Symbolism matters.

When war is wrapped in sacred imagery or emotional aesthetics, it is not accidental. It is strategic. It is meant to soften moral scrutiny, to make violence seem virtuous, to frame destruction as necessary and even beautiful.

This is where communication ethics become unavoidable. Naming something gently does not make it just. The branding war does not cleanse it. A red powder cannot absorb the impact of a missile. A wall of scripture cannot protect civilians from harm. Modern warfare is not just waged on the ground, but on-screen, in headlines, hashtags, and images. It is designed as much as it is fought. And that design must be questioned.

If war today is framed through headlines, hashtags, and curated symbolism, then those who shape the narrative, designers, communicators, strategists, and even meme-makers, are not merely observers. They are participants. They are architects of meaning.

This is where design’s power becomes deeply political. Not just in the colours we choose or the words we deploy, but in the frameworks we reinforce or refuse. Symbols like Sindoor or Bunyan Marsous do not exist in isolation. They are part of broader design systems, ideological scaffolds that attempt to make conflict feel moral, justified, even beautiful.

But what if design didn’t just frame power, but questioned it? What if instead of branding conflict, we used design to surface its human cost? What if storytelling didn’t soften the strike but made visible the silences around it?

This is where transdisciplinarity offers an urgent lens. It asks us to cross boundaries between politics and aesthetics, military and media, state and citizen. It refuses to let communication design remain neutral or cosmetic. It demands that we bring together perspectives from ethics, history, cultural studies, technology, and lived experience, not to simplify complexity, but to honour it and enter the conversation: the design of the design process itself. It asks who gets to frame the story, who gets to speak, and how power circulates through symbols. Design helps us see not just the narrative, but the machinery behind it, the decisions, omissions, and choreographies that produce meaning.

To reimagine how we communicate conflict, we need to reimagine the systems behind that communication. We need a design that is not in the service of authority, but in the service of understanding.

Design that;

doesn’t just aestheticise violence, but destabilises it.

doesn’t perform unity, but invites dissent.

can hold grief, contradiction, and hope, all at once.

Because if we have the tools to brand war, we also have the responsibility to design peace, not as propaganda, but as a possibility.

And that is where the real work begins.