By Farooq Wani
Nations which are purveyors of disinformation or misinformation have a tendency to prey on the vulnerability or exploit the partisan potential of recipient countries or people with the expectation that the latter can be enlisted to amplify their propaganda or message for their benefit.
Pakistan most definitely falls in this category and has been identified worldwide as a country that continuously manufactures disinformation and even absolutely fake news regarding developments in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Its propaganda machinery has been somewhat successful largely due to extensive use of a variety of information promoting platforms, including social media.
Mobilising and manipulating information has been a feature of history that has been practiced long before journalism came into being and despite evolution of comprehensive “ethical” standards to define news, it has persisted. The 21st century, in particular, has seen information being ‘weaponised’ on an unprecedented scale.
Access to powerful and new technology makes manipulation and fabrication of content simple at one level. At another level, it allows states, populist politicians, and dishonest corporate entities to dramatically amplify falsehoods and share it with an unsuspecting and gullible public and such platforms become fertile ground for propagandists and ‘troll armies’.
Pakistan today is a nation in a tailspin, facing irresolvable domestic issues and pressures from the international and regional communities. In a bid to prop up its weak Kashmir narrative, Islamabad has time and again used various information mediums against India, in the garb of seeking “settlement” of the Kashmir dispute.
There have been times when Pakistan has been excessively jingoistic and by portraying India as a country harbouring hegemonistic ambitions, gone to the extent of warning about the likelihood of a possible nuclear exchange in case Indo-Pak hostilities break out. It has even gone to the extent of spreading manipulated and malicious narratives on communal and sectarian lines to promote animosity amongst different communities living in India.
While a report by Global Digital Insights states that both India and Pakistan are more or less equal in creating opinions against each other, there’s a major difference in the approach used by both. While Islamabad relies heavily on disinformation and playing the religion card to target India on the issue of Kashmir, New Delhi intelligently exploits existing contradictions and inadequacies in Pakistan’s Kashmir narrative.
Consequently, while Islamabad may manage to get support of the comity of Islamic nations on the Kashmir issue in various forums, such endorsement is nothing more than perfunctory lip service, because relationship between these nations and New Delhi remains as cordial as ever. There’s now a growing realisation that Pakistan’s only agenda is its claim over Kashmir and the much hyped concern that it displays for the people of Kashmir is sheer theatrics.
By sponsoring terrorism in J&K, Pakistan is promoting senseless violence for its own self-serving interests and has turned this once famous ‘paradise on earth’ into hell. It is also fomenting unrest and forcing the people of Kashmir public to accept secessionist ideology through its proxies like the All Parties Hurriyat conference (APHC).
Most importantly, APHC has been orchestrating public protests at the behest of its masters in Pakistan and a senior Hurriyat leader has been caught on camera proudly accepting this fact in a sting operation carried out by a private TV channel. So, it’s but natural that public protests ended after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) clamped down on APHC and choked its sources of illegal funding.
Pakistan’s false propaganda claiming that Kashmir was disputed territory was exposed when the Indian government abrogated Articles 370 and 35-A of the Indian constitution in August 2019. This landmark decision has made Pakistan all the more desperate, as this brazen bluff that it has been feeding to the people of Kashmir for 75 years has finally been called.
By refusing to entertain Pakistan’s objection to the abrogation of Article 370 and rejecting the demand for its restoration through concerted action, the international community has sent out a clear message that it recognises India’s sovereignty over J&K. With no hope in sight, it’s abundantly clear that Pakistan’s false Kashmir narrative fuelled by malicious propaganda has finally met its end!
According to noted Kashmiri criminal lawyer M J Hubi, Pakistan was never serious about resolving the Kashmir issue, because had it been so, then Islamabad would have certainly abided by the provisions of the UN resolutions and vacated PoK as this is the mandatory requirement to begin the process of resolve this logjam.
The author is Editor Brighter Kashmir, Author, TV commentator, political analyst and columnist. Email: farooqwani61@yahoo.co.in
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