How Anti-Modi Propaganda Works
Western readers are often unwitting participants in India's internal political battles
For me, it all started with an e-mail from a friend showcasing an unlikely article in The Australian, Australia’s conservative-leaning national newspaper (founded by Rupert Murdoch and published by News Corp). Amit Shah, the Indian home minister, had given a speech in Hindi promoting the use of Indian languages in India. Shah acerbically criticized the use of English in Indian national life:
In this country, those who speak English will soon feel ashamed — the creation of such a society is not far away. Only those who are determined can bring about change. I believe that the languages of our country are the jewels of our culture. Without our languages, we cease to be truly Indian.
You can listen to the relevant passage in Shah’s speech with an English translation at:
Shah’s argument, in essence, was simple linguistic nationalism: that Indians should learn and treasure Indian languages. Not much to see there.
But a freelance journalist in Delhi saw her opportunity. Amrit Dhillon is a highly reputable veteran reporter who writes for a multitude of Western newspapers, ranging in politics from The Times (“Indian Paintings Reveal what Bewitched British Colonialists”) to The Guardian (“Transgender Sex Workers Teach India’s Truckers about Aids”). She is also an ardent opponent of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
So how do you spin an anti-BJP angle to the Murdoch-owned Times of London? You present Amit Shah as an anti-colonialist who hates India’s English heritage. Had it been the left-leaning Guardian, a different angle would have been necessary. But The Times took the bait, running with:
Of course, Narendra Modi had nothing to do with the speech, but no one in England has ever heard of Amit Shah, so “Modi’s Minister” would have to do.
The story was then picked up by columnist Helen Trinca of The Australian and run under a photo of Narendra Modi bearing the caption:
Since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, sidelining English as a ‘colonial relic’ and privileging Hindi has been part of the nationalist project.
No source was given for the scare quote ‘colonial relic’, though it is the sort of thing that Modi would say. Of course, it is also true: English is a colonial relic in India. I would say exactly the same thing myself. In the article itself, Trinca disapprovingly noted that:
Amit Shah, a former president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, argued that India would “cease to be truly Indian” if the “languages of our country” were not supported.
One must wonder whether or not she believes that Australia would cease to be truly Australian if English were not supported in her own country. It is hard to imagine a columnist for The Australian feeling comfortable with a future government that allowed Australian public schools to teach the national curriculum in Hindi, Gujarati, and Mandarin instead of in English. But who knows? Maybe the Murdoch press will one day come to support multiculturalism after all.
Amrit Dhillon’s London Times article was also picked up by British journalist Jawad Iqbal, writing for The Spectator:
The Australian version of Iqbal’s article was also sent to me by a friend. In it, Iqbal characterizes Amit Shah’s “war on English” as “stupid and counterproductive.” He approvingly quotes India’s opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress (INC) as saying that:
English is not shameful; it is empowering. English is not a chain; it is a tool to break the chains
Of course, there is no “war on English” in India. There is, however, an epic political battle being fought between an entrenched English-speaking elite (represented by the Gandhi family’s INC) and an insurgent new elite (represented by Modi’s BJP). Western media have been thoroughly weaponized by the old English-speaking elite to portray their less internationalized opponents in scathingly negative terms. And Western readers are left completely unaware that they are being intentionally manipulated into supporting one side over another in India’s political debates.
The great irony in this case is that the English-speaking INC intellectuals are India’s “left-wing” socialists and the insurgent BJP intellectuals are the “right-wing” conservatives in Indian politics. Australian and British socialists find little space for their views in outlets like The Times, The Australian, and The Spectator. But English-speaking Indian socialists are sufficiently sophisticated to know exactly what buttons to press when they want to get a conservative Westerner to condemn conservative Indians. They don’t pitch articles about Narendra Modi’s close ties to big business, or his market-oriented economic reforms to the Murdoch press. They pitch Modi’s Third World anti-colonialism.
Personally, I have no horse in this race. As far as I am concerned, Indians are welcome to speak English or Hindi. They can call their country India or Bharat. And they can embrace state socialism or freewheeling capitalism. It’s up to them. But I do know propaganda when I see it. And I saw a lot of it in researching my new book, Dharma Democracy: How India Built the Third World’s First Democracy. As I wrote in Chapter 3 in discussing the new Indian nationalism:
For a full account of how India’s cultural wars have shaped the country’s politics, please consider buying the book from your favorite store or from Amazon at:
Researching this book really was an incredibly rewarding (though often frustrating) experience. I spent five years cutting through all the obfuscation that surrounds Indian history — and even Indian statistics. I worked very hard to provide an objective account of Indian politics and India’s democratic institutions. Sad to say, I came across hardly anyone else in my research who made a similar effort. Nearly everyone who writes about India is either a propagandist — or an unwitting dupe of propagandists.
People often think I’m biased because I’m very upbeat on India, but I set out on this research project without any position on India at all. Whatever opinions I have now, I have as a result of spending five years with the data. It was an education, to say the least. I hope people will take a serious look at what I found.
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