India to launch “Door Darshan International” to tarnish Pakistan’s image?

India’s record has been one of propganda against Pakistan

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Eerily, India has decided to launch DoorDarshan International when DD World is already on the air. The underlying reason for yet another channel is the incapacity of the existing channels, and media outlets, overt and covert, to withstand negative post-pandemic international opinion. DisinfoLab has already exposed a variety of India’s fake think tanks and media channels. Already the US-funded Freedom House has downgraded India from ‘free” to “partly free” because of the persecution of the Muslim community and other atrocities.

Through its propaganda India played up Pakistan’s image as a hub of terror. That led to the Financial Action Task Force’s concerns, still not over. Pakistan should take a cue and take countermeasures against the onslaught of Indian propaganda in future.

Modi’s government of India is unhappy with the way pandemic management is being portrayed in international media (floating dead bodies, shortage of beds, vaccines, drugs and even oxygen, cow sheds as COVID19 clinics). To shore up his image, the media-savvy Narendra Modi has decided to launch a new international TV channel “DD International” akin to the BBC (UK), VOA (USA), Al Jazeera (Qatar), Global Times (China) and RT (Russia).

When India abrogated the special status of the disputed Kashmir state the world remained a silent spectator. Kashmir is an unnoticed prison. India’s propaganda portrayed Pakistan as a hub of terror and created FATF difficulties. India wants to hone its already sharp propaganda ploys. Pakistan should take cue, and adopt countermeasures

The declared objectives are: (1) to primarily “project India’s point of view globally on contemporary issues of both global and domestic significance” and to “tell the India Story to a global audience”. (2) To be the “authoritative global media source on India through credible, exhaustive and accurate global news service”. (3) To create a “mindshare for India’s strategic interventions within key stakeholders across the globe from a geopolitics and economy standpoint”. (4) To be a talent hub for global media professionals, involving and engaging media professionals from across the globe and engaging global talent as anchors and reporters and having a global workforce, to be a truly global channel similar to BBC World, ensuring that it is watched by a global audience.

US-funded Freedom House had downgraded India’s democracy from “free” to “partly free”. The reason why it did so is the persecution of the Muslim community and widespread human rights violations in India. India wants to carve out an indigenous freedom score and publicize it in the international media.

Modi’s government believes that the existing DD World could not dispel the impression that India is slipping down on the freedom ladder.

India’s covert fake TV channels were exposed by EU-based non-governmental organisation, EU DisinfoLab, in its first tranche. It uncovered an India-sponsored fake, disinformation network of 265 fake media outlets in 65 countries, including the USA, Canada, Brussels, and Geneva.  The network is run by the Srivastava Group of India. It also ran a think tank called International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies. The Institute paid for the travel and accommodation of an unofficial far-right delegation of 23 European Union parliamentarians to Srinagar on 30 October 2013. The trip was arranged by Indian intelligence surrogate Madi Sharma who posed as a self-styled “international business broker”. The delegation’s shikara  (boat)ride in Kashmir’s Dal Lake pictured Kashmir as a heaven in serene peace. Some members however smelt a rat and abandoned the free joyride.

In its second tranche EU DisinfoLab, revealed India’s fake media outlets resurrected a dead human-rights professor Louis Sohno, who died, aged 92, in 2006, and numerous defunct organisations.  They were used alongside at least 750 fake media outlets in a vast 15-year global disinformation campaign to serve Indian interests. Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a registered Canadian charity, also is an Indian dummy.. It published a Pakistan-bashing report ‘Khalistan—A project of Pakistan’, which found mention in almost all leading Indian newspapers. Another pro-India “think-tank” is the “International Terrorism Observatory” chaired by Roland Jacquard.

Since times immemorial “repetitive lies” have been used to hoodwink masses. Cato, Goebbels, and Napoleon and Hitler used repetition to bring home their lies. Research confirmed the impact of repetition. The Roman statesman Cato, in the 3rd century BC, closed each of his speeches in the Senate, no matter what the subject, with a call to destroy Carthage (“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam“), knowing that the repetition would breed agreement.  Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said, “Repeat a lie often enough and people will eventually come to believe it.” Research validated his belief on what psychology calls the “illusory truth effect.” First described in a 1977 study by Temple University psychologist Dr. Lynn Hasher and her colleagues, the illusory truth effect occurs when repeating a statement increases the belief that it’s true even when the statement is actually false.

Hitler is portrayed as a psychopath with an oyster-shell mind. Yet, he, in his Mein Kampf, praises British propaganda techniques used in World War I. He believed, “The bigger the lie, the better the results”. Napoleon said, “There is only one figure in rhetoric of serious importance, namely, repetition”, whereby a repeated affirmation fixes itself in the mind “in such a way that it is accepted in the end as a demonstrated truth”. Others who distorted truth through repetition include Quintilian, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Marcus Antonius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Susan Sontag, in her The Benefactor points out, “The truth is always something that is told, and not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”

Fake news could influence even independent-minded Americans who laid down a constitution, beginning with words `We the people’. Noam Chomsky says the American masses are like a “bewildered herd” that has stopped thinking (Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, p.16). Chomsky reminds, “Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1916 on the platform “Peace without Victory”, right in the middle of World War I.  The American population was extremely pacifistic and saw no reason to become involved in a European War.  The Wilson administration established a government propaganda commission, called the Creel Commission [Committee], which [through fake news, films, etc.] succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war mongering population which  wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war  and save the world….After the war the same techniques were used to whip up a hysterical Red Square…’ (ibid.page 12).

Sun Tzu’s and Kautliya’s principles were used not only in World War II but also in the Cold War period to hoodwink one’s own and foreign people. Sun Tzu says, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” When India abrogated the special status of the disputed Kashmir state the world remained a silent spectator. Kashmir is an unnoticed prison. India’s propaganda portrayed Pakistan as a hub of terror and created FATF difficulties. India wants to hone its already sharp propaganda ploys. Pakistan should take cue, and adopt countermeasures.

Amjed Jaaved
Amjed Jaaved
The writer is a freelance journalist, has served in the Pakistan government for 39 years and holds degrees in economics, business administration, and law. He can be reached at [email protected]

2 COMMENTS

  1. Pakistanis are a strong people with greatly talented individuals but unfortunately the cowards and slaves to US dollars are holding the reins. Only the khilafah has the ideological drive and determination to dominate and take on Indian policies in Kashmir and in India itself. Pakistani nationalism and secularism is a failed project which preaches nothing but cowardice and capitulation. Their vision is extremely limited and is leading to the disntegration of Pakistan itself.

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