Fake News, East and West, In Indology and In Politics

 

Fake News, East and West, In Indology and In Politics

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Fake news, carried on by financially powerful forces entrenched in the media (or, alternately, the “social media”) and academia, has been going on for decades. Goebbels made Fake News (which could also be called misinformation, disinformation or simply false propaganda  or public iteration, reiteration and dissemination of lies – and which by extension also means the deliberate stonewalling, misrepresentation, suppression or banning of authentic news, valid alternate views or genuine information) a byword, and his name itself became a symbol of Fake News, during the second world war. Colonial powers, Fascist countries and Communist countries: no-one has been lagging in the race to be more effective, and more effective than others, as purveyors of fake news and vicious fraudulent propaganda.

A. American Politics.

B. Indology and Hindu Issues.

C. BJP (as opposed to Hindu) Issues.

 

A. American Politics

The power of the Left in India is well known. It is equally powerful in America and Europe, as well, in media and in academic institutions, and this has been demonstrated in the last few decades (and of course, the earlier decades were not different) by its ubiquitous Goebbelsian sweep in all matters pertaining to India and Hinduism. Also, it must be noted, in almost all matters pertaining to Israel and Russia. And, particularly in the last decade, in almost all matters pertaining to certain American politicians themselves, mainly Donald Trump: the power of the Left, and its totalitarian sweep, far exceeding that of Goebbels himself, cannot be better exemplified than by the fact that Donald Trump, the previous, and now once more, President of the United States of America (a position considered to be making him the most powerful person in the world) was banned on Twitter for some years! And almost the entire top gamut of the woke-controlled western press and academic world has been blackening his name for almost a decade. A key word in the leftist western propaganda jargon is the word “false”: for many years now, most of the reports concerning Trump in the western press routinely and mandatorily carried, in its headlines, this presumptuous loaded word “Trump falsely claims…”. “Trump and his supporters falsely say…”, etc. Needless to say, the free use of the word “false” in most reports blackening Hindus (and Hindu issues), Israel, and Russia, is as universal and ubiquitous even as it, in a Freudian way, reflectively exposes the true nature of the propagandists themselves. Even Goebbels would have blushed with shame (or envy) on seeing the heights and extent to which “Goebbelsian” propaganda has been taken forward by modern woke leftists.

[It must be noted in passing that fortunately for Israel, it has its own small base of supporters in the west; and Trump also, as the massive flood of media exposures (check youtube) completely denuding the woke leftist propagandists in America post the election results has made clear, has his own supporters (usually much more erudite, witty and efficient than the woke morons) who can lay bare the truth. Hindus, Hinduism and Hindutva are relatively unsupported by any significant bloc].

The two key features of this fake news industry are the manufacturing and bombardment of fake news against the targeted subjects and the manufacturing and bombardment of fake news in support of the desired (anti-Hindu, anti-Russia, anti-Israel, or anti-Trump) entities.

One prime example of the latter, in American politics, was the claim that Kamala Harris (who openly claims to be “woke” and supports the Kashmiri separatists and terrorists) was a truly multi-racial American personality who, by her very DNA, was best suited to represent all the racial sections within America: she was, it was claimed, of both white and black ancestry on the father’s side, and of Indian ancestry on the mother’s side. The entire top layer of woke leaders controlling the media and academia in America was in full blast in propagation of the claim that Kamala Harris was (among other ancestries, also) of black ancestry and it was the duty of all black voters to vote for her: most woke persons on the media described her as a “black” woman. In fact, when Janet Jackson (Michael Jackson’s sister) said in an interview that she was told that Kamala Harris did not have any black ancestors (“She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian”), the entire elite woke media launched an attack on her. NBC (22 September 2024) put up a report titled “Janet Jackson tells interviewer she's heard Kamala Harris is not Black, echoing election disinformation”. A person named Mo Elmasi, claiming to be Janet Jackson’s manager, is then reported to have announced that he had been authorized to issue an apology statement by Jackson “acknowledging that her comments were based on misinformation” and expressing her respect for Kamala Harris’ “heritage” and “values” (and this fake “news” was spread everywhere by the woke media). Janet Jackson was compelled to immediately go on media again to clarify that she had issued no such apology, that the said person was not her manager, and that she stood by her original words. The New York Times (the undisputed King of Fake News in America) then immediately carried the headlines in its issue of 23 September 2024: “Janet Jackson Repeats false Claims about Kamala Harris’ Race” – note that tell-tale false word “false” again!

However a prominent (and herself black) Republican, Candace Owens, went deeper into the matter, and cross-checked, and produced and publicized, all the evidence, which showed that Kamala Harris’ claims about her paternal grandmother being “black” were totally false and fraudulent, and that she had no black ancestors. The evidence is truly shocking and shows the extent to which Fake News has become the New Normal in the west:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIatwwijh9E

 

Needless to say, this evidence was completely stonewalled by the anti-Trump woke activists, who still insist on prominently referring to Kamala Harris as a “black woman” candidate who lost only because of “racism” and “misogyny”!

 

I will not talk here about the Fake News which is broadcast all over the world by the extremely powerfully entrenched and ubiquitous woke media and academic machinery in respect of the Russia-Ukraine and the Israel-Palestinian conflicts: this propaganda is so powerful and mesmerizing that it has even managed to brainwash sections of committed Hindus who are otherwise plainly able to see through woke propaganda where it involves Hindus and Hindu issues, and we find even many committed Hindus (let alone most of the younger generation of “modern” Hindus who are generally ignorant on most issues, and end up becoming woke-peer-influenced) shedding crocodile tears for the Palestinians (and/or Ukrainians). I will restrict myself only to the (anti-) Hindu side of this woke Fake News Industry, which, as my title points out, covers the areas of both Indology and Politics.

 

 

B. Indology and Hindu Issues

 

The most recent example (or the most prominent among countless recent examples) is the Fake News about Bangladesh. An article in that hyper-woke and hyper-anti-Hindu website The Wire, by a woke writer Partha S Ghosh, on 12 December 2024, titled “India Is Hardly in a Position to Lecture Bangladesh on Minority Protection”, and with the sub-title “Most Indians seem to have failed to note that the communal situation in India is not very different from what is happening in Bangladesh”, indulges in a breath-takingly insane orgy of Fake News, including the following gems (note that every sentence in this hate-article is breath-stopping: I am only quoting a bare handful of them): “since India is very powerful, accounting for three-fifths of the region’s population, GDP and military strength, it has a monopoly over anti-Muslim hatred”, “The fact that 200 million Muslims of India (15% of population) grieve the fact that they have been reduced to the status of second class citizens disturbs BJP/RSS the least”, “It is difficult to know for sure how much violence the Bangladeshi Hindus have actually been subjected to. In these days of social media and fake news galore every bit of news must be taken with a pinch of salt”, etc. About Sheikh Hasina he tells us that “Sheikh Hasina is indeed playing politics”, while whatever Yunus, the current ruler of Bangladesh, says or does is “Characteristic of his polite demeanour”!

 

That, (1) even after the Hindu population of Bangladesh has reduced from its earlier 22.5% to the present (even before the present outbreak of massacres!) 7.95%, while the Muslim population of India has increased from its earlier (in 1951) 10.45% to 14.23% (that figure was in 2011: the latest figures in 2024 must naturally be much more!), and (2) even after Anand Ranganathan’s recent book “Hindus in Hindu Rashtra (Eighth Class Citizens and Victims of State-Sanctioned Apartheid)” (which gives in ruthless detail the full situation regarding the legal and factual position of Hindus vis-à-vis Muslims in India), this slavering hate-writer can still claim, without apparently the slightest bit of shame and guilt, that the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh is “fake news” while “200 million Muslims of India (15% of population)….have been reduced to the status of second class citizens” in India, shows us that for woke propagandist merchants of Fake News, the sky is the limit – or rather there is simply no limit whatsoever!

 

That no prominent Indian politician has bothered to refer to “Hindus” being massacred in Bangladesh – the few mealy-mouthed and milk-and-water references forced out of even the so-called Hindutva politicians euphemistically mention (and only mention, and that too hesitatingly, and with many clauses and “buts”) the plight of “minorities” in Bangladesh, always specifying Christians also if forced to refer to Hindus , shows us why Hindus are always easy targets: Hindus have no protectors or defenders!

 

[Incidentally, my favorite politician in the world is an American (a Hindu but with no Indian ancestry!), Tulsi Gabbard, who has always spoken out openly in support of Israel, Russia (vis-à-vis Ukraine) and Bangladeshi Hindus − even if she may now perhaps be constrained by not being a citizen of India, and happening to be holding a high position in a government of an American party which calls itself “The Party of Christ”! I sincerely wish she had been an Indian politician].

 

In respect of Indology and Hindu Issues, the flood of Fake News is staggering, and is purveyed with as much vigor by Indian (Hindu) sepoys as by ignorant and/or anti-Hindu western academics and media.

 

I have already, in many previous articles, referred to the complete sway of Fake News and Fraudulent “scholarship” in matters pertaining to Hindu Issues and Indology, giving as examples the case of the Ayodhya structure and the Rigvedic Sarasvati river respectively. I will again take only these two earlier examples, which only constitute a representative drop in the ocean of blatant and ubiquitous Fake Anti-Hindu News:

 

The Ayodhya Structure: Islam came into existence some time after the birth of the prophet Mohammad in Arabia in 570 CE: according to Islamic traditions, the first revelation was received by Mohammad in 610 CE, signaling the birth of Islam. The flight of Mohammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE signaled the beginning of the first expansion of Islam outside Mecca. By the time of the death of the prophet, in 632 CE, almost the whole western half of the Arabian peninsula had become Muslim, and by 656 CE, the whole of the peninsula and parts of Syria, Iraq and Egypt were Muslim. By 750 CE, the whole of West Asia (covering Iran and Afghanistan, Sind and Central Asia) and the entire Mediterranean coast of Africa had become part of a massive Muslim empire. The entry of Islam into India had started in Sind in 712 CE, and was consolidated by repeated invasions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and through subsequent rule of Islamic or Muslim dynasties in various parts of (mainly) northern India culminating in the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century.

 

Throughout this period, the destruction of temples and non-Muslim religious structures was a regular part of Muslim expansion in every land (starting with the destruction of the pagan idols in Mecca itself in 630 CE on the personal instructions of, and under the personal supervision of, Mohammad himself). Literally lakhs and lakhs of non-Muslim religious structures have been destroyed in the course of Muslim history: the following book by Sita Ram Goel lists out around 2000 temples which were destroyed by Muslim invaders and had prominent mosques built on the sites. These are all major temples where the archaeological and other features stand as evidence to these temples-destroyed-and-turned-into-mosques claims, and, in addition, all these events are recorded in detail in official Muslim documents (Hindus had a very poor sense of history, and provided few written testimonies) mainly in Persian or Urdu and often even in plaques or inscriptions on the converted sites placed there by the Muslim destroyers themselves. It must be noted that there have to be countless times more such cases which were beyond the scope of this one intrepid historian, and that all these only represent only the ones recorded in detail by the Muslim destroyers (and not the many times more number of those not so recorded or where the records have not survived) and represent only the major temples-turned-mosques of national/international fame and not the (again) many multiple times more of Hindu temples in every lane and corner of every city, town and village captured by the Muslim invaders.

 

Sita Ram Goel records not only the details of these 2000 temple-turned-mosques, but also of the temple-destroying history of Islam outside India from the very birth period of Islam in Arabia, and also the “destroy idol temples” principles which form such an intrinsic part of Muslim (as of Biblical Christian) religion, and which were reinforced by the founder of Islam himself in his lifetime. Needless to say, the Fake News Brigade dismisses all this evidence as sweepingly as the woke writer quoted at the beginning of this article dismisses the idea of massacres of Muslims in Bangladesh: see for example the Wikipedia entry on Sita Ram Goel’s above book!

 

Apart from the general history, all available records from the last few centuries (Indian as well as foreign) reinforce this same truth about the particular Ayodhya temple-turned-mosque: even the Muslims who intermittently used the “mosque” structures within the Ayodhya complex as mosques till 1947 called these structures (many of which still had visible temple carvings on them, as graphically recorded in detail by Ayodhya activists well before the demolition of the “Babri” structure, including images of the varāha avatār or boar-reincarnation of Vishnu – an animal impossible to be found carved on any mosque) by names such as “Janmasthān Masjid” (Birthplace Mosque) and “Sītā-Ki-Rasoi Masjid” (Sita’s Kitchen Mosque) before the Ayodhya movement made the name “Bābrī Masjid” the standard one! Whose “birthplace” and which “Sita” were these Muslims referring to? Further, no namaaz had been performed in the structure since 1947, and the idol installed in 1947 was still intact through all these decades. The authentic and honest narrative about the temple-turned-mosque structure continued till the start of the Ayodhya movement in the mid-eighties, after which the woke Fake News Industry took full charge of the issue and rejected the idea completely.

 

And, when a crowd of determined Hindus demolished the Babri structure in December 1992 to take back the temple site, the entire sweep of national and international media and academia (which had dismissed the history of the destruction of lakhs of temples with a shrug, although this kind of destruction was still regularly going on in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir and many Muslim-dominated parts within the rest of India itself) came to life, and there was a massive national and international uproar about Hindus daring to take back even one of those lakhs of Hindu sites, almost as if the demolition of one building represented the most heinous and shocking crime against humanity after Auschwitz!

 

The Fake News about Ayodhya, and the front-page stories about the insufferable pain, mental and socio-economic agonies and injustices that Muslims suffered due to the Babri demolition, continued in full force from 1993 till the Allahabad High Court judgment in 2010, and with slightly less force till the Supreme Court judgment in November 2019, and is, incredibly, still a staple in woke articles and talks to this day! But the way in which, for nearly four decades, the entire national and international world of media and academics jointly functioned as a monopolistic Fake News Big Brother from Orwell’s 1984, in the matter of Ayodhya, will remain a classic test case of Fake News Goebbelsian Propaganda for future students.     

 

 The Rigvedic Sarasvati River: I have dealt with this topic in detail in section 2 of my article “The Logic of Rigvedic Geography”:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-logic-of-rigvedic-geography_6.html

I will only repeat the essence here:

That the Sarasvati of the Rigveda is the present-day Ghaggar-Hakra river which flows through Haryana, Rajasthan and Sind out into the sea is an accepted fact in the interpretation of the Rigveda. Today, after the realization that this disproves the Aryan Invasion Theory (according to which the “Aryans” entered India after 1500 BCE and only composed the Rigveda after that) − since the Sarasvati (Ghaggar-Hakra) had largely dried up well before 1500 BCE, and since the Rigvedic description of the massive river is incompatible with this alleged date of composition of the Rigveda − it has become politically necessary to reject this identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra. But to make this Fake News more Fake, there is a massive political campaign in the media and academia not only to propagate the lie that the Rigvedic Sarasvati is actually a river of Afghanistan, but also to allege that the Hindu "right-wing" is trying to propagate a new theory that the Sarasvati of the Rigveda is the Ghaggar-Hakra! 

First let us see what the consensus has been, on this point, until the importance of the identification of the Sarasvati in the AIT-OIT debate became clear to the AIT-supporting present political "scholars" (especially after books written by myself and some other writers after the 1990s, and new developments in satellite-mapping and geology) and made them take up damage control on a war-footing:

The first western scholar to propose that the Ghaggar-Hakra was the Vedic Sarasvati was the French geographer Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin in 1855 in his very massive and detailed book "Geography of India’s North-West According to the Vedic Hymns".

After that, this identification has been fully endorsed by almost every single eminent Indologist, geologist and archaeologist in the last over 160 years. A representative list, first of the western scholars down the ages, and then the Indian (and Pakistani) ones: Max Müller, Keith and Macdonell, Monier-Williams, Pischel, Geldner, Hopkins, R.D.Oldham, C.F.Oldham, Wilson, Renou, Benfey, Muir, Lassen, Stein, Jane McIntosh, Wilhelmy, Mortimer Wheeler, Bridget and Raymond Allchin, Gregory Possehl, JM Kenoyer, Jean-Marie Casal, Kenneth Kennedy, Rosen, Southworth, Pargiter, Gowen, Burrow, Basham, Shamsul Islam Siddiqui, AH Dani, BB Lal, SP Gupta, VN Misra, Dilip Chakrabarti, M. Israil Khan, S.R.Rao, K.S.Valdiya, A.D.Pusalker, H.C.Raychaudhary, D.C.Sircar, Ashok Aklujkar, and many more.

A few scholars (Bergaigne, Lommel, Lüder), on the basis of the present-day poor condition of the Ghaggar-Hakra, had expressed doubts, and concluded that the Rigvedic river may have been "a celestial river" and not an earthly one, and on the same grounds Roth suggested that it could be another name for the Indus. Roth's suggestion was partially accepted by Zimmer, Griffith, Hillebrandt and Ludwig, and yet all these scholars, Roth included, accepted that in many hymns of the Rigveda, it did indeed refer to the Ghaggar-Hakra!

Only a few scholars, such as Brunnhofer, Hertel and Hüsing held that the Rigvedic Sarasvati was in Afghanistan or even in Iran: but since these scholars located the whole of the text in Afghanistan and Iran, and this identification of the Sarasvati was only a part of their whole scenario, their writings on this point were outright rejected by all the other Indologists.

Michael Witzel is now frequently cited as an authority challenging the identification of the Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra. Here is what Witzel himself had to say on this matter before the full implications, for the AIT, of the identification were made clear by me in my books:

In this paper on Rigvedic history written in 1995, Witzel categorically tells us “Sarasvatī = Sarsuti; Ghaggar-Hakra” (WITZEL 1995b:318).

He concludes the paper/article with a summary of the “Geographical Data in the Rigveda” in detailed charts covering ten pages (WITZEL 1995b:343-352), giving the geographical data classified into columns as per five areas (which he classifies as West, Northwest, Panjab, Kurukṣetra, East) from west to east. In these charts, he specifically locates every single reference (mentioned by him) to the Sarasvatī in Books 6, 3 and 7 exclusively in Kurukṣetra: VI.61.3,10 (WITZEL 1995b:343, 349), III.23.4 (WITZEL 1995b:343, 347), VII.36.6 (WITZEL 1995b:344, 349), VII.95.2 (WITZEL 1995b:344, 349) and VII.96.1,2 (WITZEL 1995b:344, 349). Further, wherever, in the main body of the article, he gives geographical areas in sequence from west to east in these three Books, the Sarasvatī is inevitably to the east of the Punjab (WITZEL 1995b:318, 320).

So clearly, the Rigvedic Sarasvati is the Ghaggar-Hakra, and the Ghaggar-Hakra is the Rigvedic Sarasvati, and this was the absolute consensus till the last few decades. And now, the anti-Hindu propagandists not only claim that the Rigvedic Sarasvati is a river of Afghanistan, the Helmand, but, instead of admitting that it is they who have now turned against their own former consensus, they falsely (as the New York Times would put it, though correctly in this case) claim that their new claim has always been the consensus, and that the Hindu “claim” that the Rigvedic Sarasvati is the Ghaggar-Hakra is the new claim which goes against the former consensus! Can there be more convoluted Fake News than this? And this Fake News is now being propagated on a war footing by the entire national and international world of media and academics.

Anti-Hindu Fake news in the world of Indology and of Indian history of every historical period is rampant everywhere, and constitutes a massive discipline of scientific study in itself.

On a personal level, I (like all pro-Hindu people) have faced all kinds of Fake News attacks from woke leftists and Hindu sepoys. By Fake News, I am not referring to the personal name-calling and ad hominem attacks on me (and my academic qualifications, vocation, caste or political views), or the massive stonewalling of my work by the “scholars” who find themselves totally unable to deal with the evidence presented by me. I am referring to the actual Fake News put out about me, such as that I “insulted” Witzel’s wife or that I postulated Maharashtra as the original PIE Homeland:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/02/fake-allegation-about-my-insulting.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/02/goebbelsian-repetition-of-witzels-lies.html

The Fake News Czars have other tactics to control the dissemination of Authentic News: most prominent among them is the exertion of peer pressure on their own academic scholars who bring out facts or analyses which tend to corroborate the OIT rather than the AIT, to make them rescind or take back their words:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-new-western-academic-crusaders-and.html

The anti-Hindu Fake News Industry is a massive monopolistic Multinational Corporation in the fields of Indology, Hindu Issues and Indian politics, and will only become more and more dangerous as newer and newer tools of propaganda (such as Artificial Intelligence) are developed. It is necessary to be fully conscious and aware of its power and sweep and not to fall prey to it.

 

C. BJP (as opposed to Hindu) Issues

One may ask: is there no Fake News from the Hindu side? Obviously, fake news can be from any side. But to understand this issue fully, it is necessary to first distinguish between two different kinds of Fake News, both alleged to be “Hindu”.

There are of course the genuinely Hindu varieties of Fake News, consisting of the propagation by iteration or reiteration of fantastic claims, naïve assumptions, superstitious beliefs, orthodox viewpoints, etc. But this is the case with enthusiastic followers of every religion, and the only difference is that Hindu Fake News, unlike Christian or Muslim Fake News, is not supported by massive and powerful financial and political forces. I personally, and other true Hindu (or pro-Hindu) writers and scholars, have never supported and have very often actively and emphatically rejected Hindu Fake News (often leading to me being actively attacked from both sides).

But then we have BJP Fake News. and this variety of Fake News is very regularly and wrongly treated, by both supporters and opponents of the BJP, to also be “Hindu” Fake News. But it very definitely is not: in fact, in the most relevant sense, it is actually hand-in-glove with woke anti-Hindu Fake News in its primary aim: the primary aim of both these supposedly opposed-to-each-other varieties of Fake News is to convince Indian voters that the BJP represents or stands for Hindus, Hinduism and Hindutva. And both are supported by massive financially and politically powerful forces.

In essence, BJP Fake News is primarily intended only to consolidate Hindu voters politically behind the BJP, while woke anti-Hindu Fake News is incidentally intended to consolidate and polarize anti-Hindu or non-Hindu voters against the BJP. But the primary message propagated by both these varieties of Fake News is the same: that the BJP represents or stands for Hindus, Hinduism and Hindutva.

I will not waste time on this issue. Suffice it to say that the Fake News Brigade of the BJP on the internet at least (if not so much in the academia and in large parts of the national and international media) is as powerful and all-pervading as the woke Fake News Brigade, and the aim of this BJP Fake News Brigade is to whitewash or provide apologetic defenses for all the Bad News about the BJP while presenting Fake Good News about the BJP , while at the same time blanking out any Good News (not that there is much here) about the political opponents of the BJP while presenting Fake Bad News about them. It is concerned only with the BJP and not with Hinduism unless the BJP itself is allegedly connected in any specific Hindu context. I will not bother to go too deeply into this, because, to be very frank:

1. Most (though not all) of the internet activities of BJP supporters actually consists mainly of rhetorical declarations in praise or defense of the BJP and in criticism or condemnation or ridicule of its political rivals, without necessarily encompassing any type of news or information as such.

2. And every political party has its own Fake News Brigade: it only just so happens that the BJP Brigade is much larger and more efficient tech-savvy and cash-rich than those of its political (electoral) rivals

The main aim of this section is therefore only to point out in clear and strong terms that there is a sharp difference between Hindu Fake News (or indeed any other variety of Hindu News) and BJP news (Fake or otherwise), although all sides are united in trying to obliterate the difference and to conflate the two, and not to go into details about the BJP Fake News.

But I will only relate one recent piece of BJP Fake News because it even had me completely fooled for some time. It was about the Shiv Sena of Uddhav Thackeray, or its most prominent voice, Sanjay Raut, and was more of a polemical nature than having anything to do with any real issues. The aim of all BJP Fake News is to present the BJP in the best possible light, and its opponents in the worst possible light, and this particular one presented Sanjay Raut as some kind of super-idiot.

Let me make clear at this point: I am not a supporter of Uddhav Thackeray or the Shiv Sena he heads. I voted for it in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, but in the recent assembly elections, I reverted back to NOTA. Uddhav Thackeray is personally responsible for the present pathetic state of his party. His only overriding aim seems to have been to carve out a powerful political position for his own son. And, in his pursuit of this obsession, he systematically destroyed the powerful political legacy (at least so far as Hindutva is concerned) that he himself received from his own father. In his zeal to promote his son’s political interests and sideline possible rivals in this line, he systematically wiped out intra-family rivals (and contemptuously dismissed all attempts by well-wishers to persuade him to join hands with his estranged cousin) and then kept the other important Shiv Sena leaders in the background (which left them susceptible to the carrot-and-stick tactics of the BJP), and he even (at least in my personal opinion) deliberately sacrificed the Thane Lok Sabha seat in the recent Lok Sabha elections and allowed the rival Shinde faction to win it rather than put the son of the late Anand Dighe (who could perhaps have won the seat) as his own party candidate. Even worse, in his new-found greed for Muslim votes he alienated his Hindu voters (many already alienated by his ambiguous and indifferent reaction to the murder of two sadhus in Palghar during his Chief Ministership) by going all out to present himself as a messiah of the Muslims. In this process, he not only openly declared that the Muslim vote had consolidated behind him, and got himself prominently publicized in the media in the midst of chanting crowds of Muslims, but (I am told) prominently visited the Mahim dargah a day or two before the assembly elections, and (I have seen this video clip) declared that all waqf properties were the properties of Muslims and he would not allow anyone to try to interfere in their waqf rights. In the process, he did get all the Muslim votes (which he would have got anyway even without these shenanigans) but lost out on large sections of the traditional Hindu voters of the Shiv Sena.

So the following example of Fake News (apart from the fact that there is no real issue involved in it) is not presented in order to make any important political point: it is just presented as an interesting example of the kind of Fake News which circulates everywhere on the internet, regardless of the particular political party propagating it:

A video widely circulated on whatsapp and youtube (and elsewhere) showed Sanjay Raut giving the following speech (freely translated by me into English from Marathi here) addressing a crowd of cheering Shiv Sena (UBT) workers: “Today morning, I got one more piece of news: Putin, the President of Russia held an online conference with Joe Biden the President of America (USA) and the present king of England, Charles. And they wanted to know: “Who is this Uddhav Thackeray? This man is fantastic! He does not accept defeat! However many disasters rain on him, he does not flinch by an inch. Tomorrow if we come to face the prospect of a war, we will have to take Uddhav Thackeray’s advice. So let us contact him. ….Zelensky also wanted to know “Who is this Uddhav Thackeray”…”.

The video clip was obviously genuine, and even I was speechless at the stupidity or madness of the whole thing. The internet (and particularly whatsapp) was full of people passing insulting and derisive remarks about Sanjay Raut, who had been very plainly made to look like a fool or a mad person beyond compare, and his cheering audience no less so.

However, on investigation, it turned out that it was an edited clip (and a one-year old clip at that) which cut out the earlier part of the speech, and banked on ignorance about the background to this seemingly mad speech. It seems the whole thing started out with Eknath Shinde (the rival Shiv Sena chief, and then CM of Maharashtra) who, in a meeting of his supporters, had the following to say: “That day, a man came to meet me. He is the relative of an Indian man who works with the former USA President Bill Clinton. When he went to meet his relative, Bill Clinton asked him: “Who is this Eknath Shinde? What does he do? How does he do so much work? When does he sleep? When does he eat?” Shinde added: “even today, reporters are curious about all this”.

It was in response to this, and after specifically referring to it, that Sanjay Raut parodied the whole thing by inventing a fictional online conference between three international leaders. What was narrated in sarcasm and as a joke, not intended to be taken seriously, was propagated everywhere as a serious speech, and led to large scale misinformation and insulting comments and opinions about a particular person (in this case Sanjay Raut).

As I said, this kind of Fake News is everywhere today, and is propagated by all “sides”. Now, with amazingly deceptive highly technical tools available everywhere (including those classifiable under the heading “artificial intelligence”), things can only get worse and worse. So the principle caveat emptor (“buyers beware”) will only become more and more relevant in future in matters of news and information: people must learn to use their vivekabuddhi more efficiently before swallowing any news or information as true.