Propaganda as Policy

How a well-orchestrated narrative was spun to widen the communal divide. An Extract

Ghazala Wahab

Since 2014, ever since the Modi-led BJP government assumed power at the centre, there have been several disturbing developments that have deepened the fears of minorities in the country. Perhaps the most vicious of these have been the rise of vigilante mobs in certain parts of the country. Before 2014, the perpetrators of communal violence were large groups in which individual elements remained faceless and nameless. However, after 2014, the mob, confident in its invincibility, threw away the cloak of anonymity. It was led by people who were proud of leading it to kill, maim, terrorize, or vandalize at whim. Sometimes, these were small-time leaders or aspiring leaders from one of the several militant right-wing organizations under the RSS umbrella, who believed, and as the subsequent years showed, rightly so, that violence against minorities creates a shortcut to fame and upward mobility within these organizations.

Three parallel narratives were built by the right-wing extremists to create conditions for violence. First off the block, which started the moment the BJP came to power, was ‘love jihad’, a variant of the old canard aimed at ‘virile’ Muslim men. Middle- and lower-rung BJP leaders started talking about a diabolical Islamic conspiracy in which Muslim men enticed Hindu women and married them for the sole purpose of procreating jihadi terrorists. Once this objective was met, the gullible Hindu women were abandoned or sold into the sex trade.

The Hindu pushback against supposed ‘love jihad’ served two purposes. One, it encouraged the lumpen, including impromptu women’s vigilante groups, to terrorize young couples in public places, even someti