On 14 December 2025, Bondi Beach in Sydney became a crime scene. A public space associated with leisure and sunlight was punctured by gunfire. Within hours, before Australian police had released confirmed identities, a familiar script began circulating across social media and partisan news outlets. They claimed that the attackers were Pakistanis. Some accounts went further. They hinted at links to Kashmir, to Islamism, to the usual geography of blame.

This narrative did not originate organically. It was amplified by coordinated social media ecosystems linked to Indian and Afghan nationalist networks, many of which have become adept at flooding the information space during moments of uncertainty. Screenshots circulated. Headlines were framed ambiguously. The insinuation was enough.

Within days, the facts dismantled the story. Authorities in the Philippines and later India identified the attackers as Indian nationals. Subsequent reporting revealed that Naveed Akram, one of the attackers, had travelled to Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, for training. There was no Pakistani connection. No Kashmiri trail. No cross-border conspiracy.

The correction travelled quietly. The accusation had already done its work.

Bondi Beach matters not only because of what happened there, but because of how quickly the old narrative reflex misfired. For decades, India benefited from a near-automatic presumption of victimhood in matters of terrorism. That presumption is now eroding. Not because Pakistan has become virtuous, but because the world has become more attentive to evidence.

To understand why, one must look beyond individual attacks and examine the political and ideological shifts of the past two decades.

Pakistan’s internal transformation did not begin with the Financial Action Task Force, nor was it a sudden moral awakening. It began amid exhaustion. Between 2007 and 2014, Pakistan absorbed a level of internal violence that made ideological justifications untenable. Markets were bombed. Schools were attacked. Military installations were breached. The victims were overwhelmingly Pakistani civilians.

Bondi Beach Attack: Nationality Focus Overshadows Patterns In Religious........

© The Friday Times