Indian Disinformation Campaigns Against Pakistan – OpEd
The fact that the Indian media immediately starts blaming Pakistan after a terrorist attack in India gives an indication of how war-crazed they are. India has been purposefully misrepresenting Pakistan using false flag operations. There have been many international masquerading in the past, but there are also many instances of Indian fake operations and its baseless allegations against Pakistan that were later disproven, revealing India’s agenda to harm Pakistan’s reputation abroad.
These false flag operations also involve attacking their own territory and attributing the attacks to rivals or terrorists, which could serve as justification for inland or foreign aggression. These accusations were consistently supported by tenuous evidence and were even disproved by Indian judicial systems and international investigative organisations. Sushil Kumar Shinde, a former minister of the interior of India, claimed on January 20, 2013, that the BJP and RSS are supporting Hindu terrorism through organized campaigns. Additionally, he described how India created false flag operations to defame Pakistan.
Subsequently the former Indian home ministry officer Mr. RVS Mani stated that members of the investigating committee claimed that the Indian Parliament attack (2001) and Chittisinghpura Massacre (2000) was planned by the Indian government. The Godhra train attack in 2002 claimed the lives of 69 people. Following the incident, there were anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat that resulted in the deaths of 3,000 Muslims and the destruction of their homes. Narendra Modi (acting Indian PM) was prohibited by the United States as a result of his involvement in the massacre of Muslims.
The Samjhauta bombing was similar to the 2007 Mecca Mosque bombing. However, investigations found that those found guilty included Major Ramesh of the Indian Army and terrorists from an extremist Hindu organization. The author Davidson acclaimed in his book “The Betrayal of India: Revisiting the 26/11 Evidence.”an alliance of the intelligence services of India, the United States, and Israel carried out the Mumbai attack 2008, under the guise of a real attack to malign Pakistan. Similalrly in the Pathankot Air Base Attack occurred in 2016, and “Operation Bandar” in Balakot occurred in 2019 in an investigation, the Indian DG of the NIA stated that they had not discovered any involvement of Pakistani agencies. Additionally, India asserted that one of its Mig-21 fighter jets had downed a Pakistani F-16 plane. However, this claim was disproved by a reputable magazine called Foreign Policy in its research confirmed that no F-16 was missing from Pakistan’s inventory. Leaked WhatsApp conversations between former BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta and anchor Arnab Goswami by The Wire revealed the nefarious plans Modi’s administration had made to pin the false Pulwama attack on Pakistan, which was followed by a botched air strike on Balakot in February 2019.
Additionally, India engages in organized state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. A 15-year campaign by India to defame Pakistan was revealed by an investigation by the EU Dis-info Lab. According to the report, the disinformation network operated by the Srivastava Group, a New Delhi-based organization, was created primarily to “discredit Pakistan internationally” and have an impact on decisions made by the European Parliament and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). In order to “undermine Pakistan internationally,” the network “resurrected dead NGOs” at the UN, pretended to be the EU, and smuggled fake media content to legitimate media, reaching millions of people in South Asia and all over the world.
In order to bring together India’s culturally disenfranchised populace, far-right political parties and adversarial forces have always projected the idea of a shared or fictitious enemy. India supported this agenda before international statue platforms in an effort to paint Pakistan as a nation that sponsors terrorism, but it was unable to do so in all forums. Indian false accusations against Pakistan also aim to undermine and isolate Pakistan in international relations.
The Indian government is still working to create a narrative that portrays Pakistan as a regional troublemaker, but in the process of doing so, it is endangering the stability of the South Asian region. A security conundrum between the two nuclear-armed nations, where Pakistan is also capable of launching a second attack, threatens to place the entire world under nuclear oblivion.