Narrative is a strategic story being told at a certain time to achieve a certain cause and effect. In recent years India has witnessed a wave of narratives creating controversies around issues of national interest, resulting in occasions of civil unrest and the undermining of the national fabric and security. It has also been seen that a reaction to a debunking effort of these narratives at an official level would always include an allegation of suppression of human rights or freedom of speech. A narrative attack is not something explosive and does not always carry a physical fingerprint that could be traced back to its source for an investigation. It carries a series of events described in a certain way to create an impression of fear – the most primary of feelings. It is on this feeling of fear that reactions occur sometimes in accordance and most of the times in discord of the said event. Another feeling that these forces rely on is the apparent under-confidence of Indians about themselves creating a sense of inferiority and propagating this inferiority in comparison with the West.
In India it has not been deemed necessary for the security establishment to look at narrative warfare as a great threat. It is mostly the people who fight these narratives individually. With the ongoing Russia Ukraine war one can see the reality being hidden from the western world by an overload of a one sided narrative creating the justification for their actions. This situation shows the vulnerability of a population to commit self harm in order to go along a certain narrative and be on the “right side of history.”
Narratives are central to cognition and understanding of situations happening around us as citizens of our country. As human beings, we try and satisfy the natural urge of knowing and being a part of a trend. The result is that, a narrative with some masala is consumed much faster than the boring detailed reality. A narrative war effort would include an interpretation of or a derivative message of some facts that would be required to be consumed by the target audience twisted to attack the primal, fear. Narratives would have to be speculative but based on the facts and with a healthy addition of an agenda. Narratives are intended to serve the identity goals of a hostile power. The attempt is always made to defeat that power by recourse to the truth. They say the truth always wins but if truth-telling is part of our strategy, it cannot be reactive; we cannot chase our adversaries around matching their lies with the truth, because, as cognitive science has demonstrated, countering lies by repeating them with the word “no” (or some other negative) actually has the opposite effect. This opposite effect strengthens the false statement in the minds of the audience and showcases us as the reactive weaker power. The truth does catch on, but by the time it happens, the damage is done.
Narratives which are against Indian interests are based on the fault lines that exist within our country. From religious, social, political, ideological, ethnical or based on a public interest issue that is known to have potential of a great divide. Narratives could vary in their design, approach and propagation depending on the target audience. The audience being the key target would need to studied very well to realise potential gaps associated with incidents or debates. Building on to the trend would be critical and the timing would be the most important for the narrative to be set well.
Most of us believe that a narrative war is a modern day social media phenomenon which is incorrect, as we can see in history, narratives have been created and propagated pre social media which were as effective as the ones we see today. One big example would be the belief of us all Indians that our partition was done due to the divide between Hindus and Muslims completely ignoring the British interests of keeping India divided and away from the Soviets. One of the outcome was that post the 15th Aug 1947 we had over 500 princely states with some having their own fancies. How does it justify the statement of independence the the country, when “Balkanisation of India” was the objective. It was sold to us as independence and partition on religious grounds and we believe that till this day.
In today’s times we see some trends being used to propagate anti India narratives which are as below:
Sattire or comedy. A no harm intended game with a hidden meaning.
Misleading Content or Data: A set of content or data manipulated to get a certain result to portray a set situation.
Manipulated Speech or “shorts”: Content wherein speech is broken and joined together to give out a different meaning than the one intended, showcased in the popular social media shorts or reels.
Complete Fabrication: This would be a creation of a set of circumstances or events with no proof propagated by known personalities for creating a sense of authenticity.
We in India over the past few years have seen multiple examples of the above trends being propagated on our mainstream media as well as social media for the creation of a narrative showcasing India as a weak, divided and a religiously polarised society. We have also seen the appearance of same personalities and agendas coinciding in different circumstances for different events and for different purposes. This showcases a certain organised set up conducting these activities with a single point political agenda. It is difficult for the common man on the road to decipher hidden meanings behind certain wordplay and he ends up not just propagating unknowingly a divisive narrative, sometimes even adding a few bits of his own understanding toward the situation. A narrative is like a living breathing organism who needs to feed upon minds of a population creating an effect of a wave within the people.
Today it is critically important to know the source of a bit of information along with the agenda and understanding of the person narrating the same. In most of the cases one realises that a destructive narrative has been propagated by someone known to the people resulting in larger reach there by creating a buzz amongst people. On social media a big factor which is unrecognised as far as spreading information is concerned is the idea that a verified account with high number of followers would not spread fake news. This simplistic thought process has led to the spread of various different bits of stories propagated by “bluetick handles” without due check and verification. The propagators behind narratives always take advantage of the fact that it is the firm belief of people, anyone who is famous would not be telling a lie. The second advantage which is leaned upon by some forces against our nation, is the fact that a lot of us in India still believe what is been written in newspapers or shown in the news would be the reality. The myth has been proved wrong time in again in India in the past few years specially with regards to the misinformation spread during Covid, CAA, farmers protests and many other small incidents.
It is surely not possible for a common citizen to be aware of hidden agendas behind each individual, organisation or even a foreign entity while consuming content either overtly or covertly representing these agendas. It is therefore critical that society must develop a basic understanding and belief that not every thing that comes in front of them maybe the reality, as well as the ability to question not just the propagators of narratives but even the propagators of truth to be able to decipher the correct information. As easy as it is to say this task is even more difficult than one can imagine. As a country one can easily make this observation about India that the leadership and the government in many cases has failed to strategically communicate with the citizens and depend on the righteous nature of various anti-establishment forces do not take advantage of public service events. India in the past few years has been able to develop a certain section within the society who has developed an understanding of fake news and narratives being propagated. It is the duty and responsibility of each one of these individuals to create a platform for themselves however small and place correct fact based analysis to slow and steady grow this community into a large base resistant to tactics of information warfare and narrative warfare.
As we go close to the elections in 2024 we would see a combination of effort both domestic and international with vested interests trying to influence our thought process in order for us to fall in line with the larger agenda. The current dispensation and its ability to be able to stand on its own and question western narratives has further created a target on the back of each and every Indian. With such a large population this anti-India effort can be equated with a nuclear explosion of thought processes added to it individual understanding/misunderstanding, creating an unimaginable problem for the security establishment of this country. It is therefore recommended that the government and social bodies create a set up officially required to strategically communicate not just domestically but also abroad in order for the propagation of the correct message of India.