The India That Is: Story of the ‘Population Propaganda’

A Dispatch from the Indian Affairs Series

Manasa Narayanan is a journalist and writer, trying to navigate the mighty and confusing world of journalism (or what is left of it). At present, she mainly works with The Citizens (a news non-profit). She mainly deals with topics related to politics, protests, media and technology. In addition, Manasa is Editorial Assistant for Emerging Voices. To access her writings, click here. And to catch her needless newsy tweets, click here.

In India, things always roll with a kind of hugeness. A large chunk of land encompasses diversity difficult to describe to outsiders but matter-of-fact to those residing within it, people with large hearts (many T&Cs applied), whose challenges, big and small, often arise out of the country’s vastness. It’s all so big, burdensome to carry. Whenever someone unfamiliar with India’s nationalistic politics asks me about them, my head fires in many directions. It’s an achievement when I respond with any semblance of coherence.

This series, ‘Indian’ Affairs, published monthly, is an unpacking of thoughts on problems with contemporary Indian nationalism — what it means to ‘Indians’, residing within or outside the ‘motherland’, or just to those who care about the region and its peoples.

This is an edited excerpt from one of the dispatches in the series. See the upcoming pieces here.

---

In a few days, I am travelling to India to see my family. I was last there in the summer of 2020 — the year Coronavirus took the world by storm. As I prepare to visit, my concerns stretch beyond packing clothes, gifts and other paraphernalia. I’m also preparing mentally. I fear the India I left and the India to which I return are different places. Politically, things were terrible then and I worry they have become worse. India has lost hundreds of thousands of lives to a pandemic whose effects were catastrophic, owing to the stunning ignorance and indifference of the Indian government. The India to which I return is more blatantly discriminatory and violent towards Muslims, flouting the demise of secular temperaments. I go back to an India deprived of the oxygen needed to survive as a democracy.

None of this popped out of nowhere. Warning signs have been obvious to any observer. One did not even have to go far to see them. One only needed to look at family WhatsApp groups.

If you access an Indian person’s WhatsApp chats, chances are you’ll find it’s a family group. [Unless, like me, they have quit the group, having had enough of a confusing mix of harmless good morning pictures and hate-spewing forwards--often in quick succession.] These are not groups consisting only of one’s immediate family. Often there are hundreds of members in a group, composed of uncles, aunts and cousins one has at best seen a few times in life.

What is to marvel at is not the size of our families or of the groups, but the very fertile ground they provide for the circulation of fake news. Unlike say Twitter, which is a public platform on which messages can be challenged and sometimes removed, WhatsApp is an encrypted personal messaging app. Detection and tackling of false information is almost impossible. WhatsApp has been heavily weaponized by those linked to India’s ruling party, the BJP — and it was deployed extensively during elections.

RapidLeaks

WhatsApp’s ability to reach untold numbers of people quickly, with minimal costs, and the lack of any oversight governing communications has meant that family WhatsApp groups have become a notable phenomenon in themselves — a not very micro microcosm of ideological rinse and repeat. It’s a site where scores of people can be reached by simply forwarding stock messages. More alarming, by facilitating the creation of an intimate family space, all kinds of ideas and ideologies are easily reinforced. Most people want to fit in and to avoid confrontation with their family.

To take a key example of today’s fevered Indian identity politics: a majority of Hindus tacitly agree with what’s posted about the negative and dangerous presence of Muslims in India (given how strongly identified many are with their Hindu religious identity). But even those who do not view Muslims as a dangerous Other do not challenge the disparaging and dangerous propaganda posted on their WhatsApp feed. They seek to avoid discord with their family group. I was an anomaly, especially as I challenged senior family members.

What I refer to as ‘population propaganda’ has been making the rounds on these Whatsapp groups since I was a teenager. I am now nearing my mid-twenties. This is almost a decade of the same pieces of fake news repeatedly surfacing without serious scrutiny. With time, this propaganda gains more and more legitimacy-- as if it were undeniable fact.

What is this ‘population propaganda’? Put simply, it is that the population of Muslims will exceed that of Hindus in the country, turning now Hindu-majority India into some kind of Islamic nation dominated by a majority of Muslims. It is a grand tale of a majority under threat as if it were the minority.

The way these messages are framed tells a story of a rise in Muslim population over the past decades that is outpacing the rise in Hindu population in the same time frame. And the messaging concludes that by some arbitrary year (usually 2050), the Muslim population will overtake that of Hindus.

In 2015, a Pew Research report declared: “By 2050, India will have the world’s largest populations of Hindus and Muslims”. The report said that India already has the largest Hindu population in the world and that by 2050, it will also have the largest Muslim population. These numbers were cited in comparing India to other countries. But absolute numbers came to be taken out of context to paint a false narrative and to misrepresent realities.

The study said that while the Hindu population will grow more slowly, Hindus will still make up 76.7% of the population in 2050. The growth in Muslim population in no way will surpass the growth in Hindu population so that Muslims will exceed Hindus in 2050. But the right wing narrative insists that Hindus are in danger of being outnumbered by an odious outsider group.

---

This population propaganda is effective because while the facts don’t add up, it taps into the Hindus under danger sentiment, propagated by the right-wing. Tales of widespread forceful conversions of Hindus — of Muslim boys luring Hindu women into marriage and conversion (what’s termed ‘love jihad’) — or of Christian missionaries manipulating and undertaking conversions, are ripe in India’s media landscape. These are reported as facts without any scrutiny. As there is no larger challenge to these narratives in the mainstream media, and as historical tensions between Hindus and Muslims show no sign of slackening, a large chunk of the Hindu population believes this distorted narrative. And given the punitive ethos the Indian government has created for any dissenters and critics, anyone raising alarm over these stories is automatically termed ‘anti-national’. There is no space to have a logical debate. People believe what they are fed.

As social psychology research points out, for people who have strong social identification with a particular variable (like religion, caste, etc), a perceived threat to their cherished social identity can strengthen an in-group bias. And all of these tales, of a Muslim population boom, of forced conversions, target that vulnerability — telling the Hindus (who love being Hindus) there will be no Hindus left if they do not act against the out-group--the Muslims.

As I see it, there are two major issues with the population propaganda I describe. One is that it paints a false picture of Muslims overtaking Hindus to become a majority. Another is that it propagates the belief that a rise in Muslim population is in itself some kind of a bad thing. It vilifies Muslims and strengthens the stereotypes of religious fanaticism and evil-ness with which they are associated. We can only begin to fight this nationalism by acknowledging India’s realities as they are - by telling the story of India as it is and including Muslims as a legitimate part of our national narrative.

---

Future Machine Spring 2022 Update

by Rachel Jacobs

Future Machine is an artist-led project planned to continue for 30 years, a witness to when the future comes, however and whatever the future brings.

The Future Machine is a device created via a series of conversations with artists and citizens across England. As the name suggests, the creation looks ahead, aiming to help address an uncertain future on a planet in crisis. Its interactive technology allows stories to be recorded from the words of participant viewers. These narratives are intended to help individuals imagine creative ways to address global climate change.

This is the latest update on Rachel’s journey with Future Machine. For more of Rachel’s writings, see Emerging Voices, Winter, 2020, and her writings in Emerging Voices’ Conversations in Crises.

The first annual journey of Future Machine has come to an end.

www.whenfuturecomes.net

Winter 2022

Celandine Day. Monday 21st February. Finally, after over 2 years of shielding, lockdowns and remote collaboration, artist-collaborator Juliet Robson and I met in the Parish of Peppard, Oxfordshire, on the weekend of the worst storm in 30 years – one of three storms in one weekend. Given this, we decided to delay the Future Machine event until the Spring Equinox. Instead, before sundown, we posted 100 Celandine Day cards through the letterboxes of as many houses as we could reach within Peppard’s parish boundaries.

The week before the Spring Equinox, 20th March, I began to feel unwell. I was trying to ignore the sore throat and sneezing. But my lateral flow test was positive. I had Covid. Happily, Juliet and a group of village participants agreed to go ahead without me.

In her driveway, Juliet introduced Future Machine and the wayfaring stick to those who would accompany her. The wayfaring stick, created by Juliet, is a holder of stories and sounds from the village and beyond. On the way to the common, Future Machine got stuck in the gate, too wide to get through to the daffodil and blossom strewn field where the gathering was to be held. The only way forward was to remove the larger gate. Villagers searched for the padlock buried for decades in the earth underneath, dug it out, removed the gate and pushed Future Machine through. Others from the village then joined in to speak to the future, hear the sounds of the beautiful warm spring weather as they were played by Future Machine, and listen to the wayfaring stick. Messages were left for the future, including a haunting Irish melody played on a harmonica by a visitor from Ireland.

When the Trees Blossomed 2022

The cycle quickly began again with the cherry trees in Christ Church Gardens, Nottingham, blossoming just a few days after the Spring Equinox. They bloomed six days earlier than last year, during a global heatwave. I was still in bed with Covid.

This heatwave was an ominous result of the shocking polar temperature rises at both the North and South poles – up by 60 degrees centigrade in some parts. With my collaborator, Prof. John King, Senior Climate Scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, I write 'News from the Planet'. Future Machine prints this news as prompts for people to speak to the future. Preparing the recent edition, John and I discussed the impact of this frightening rise in temperature. We were continuing discussions we’ve been having over the past few years on the changing climate, its impact on the polar regions and how this portends future sea rises. We consider how these stories can be shared in ways that have meaning to the people in England where Future Machine visits, without leading to despair and disconnection – an ongoing and very difficult job.

Then came the snow. Always a possibility in April. This year, the near horizontal snow was dramatic. Frank filmed the blossoms as they survived the onslaught, but our original blossom tree suffered. By the time we met up with Future Machine, all the trees were in varying degrees of blossoming. The new baby blossom tree was fully in bloom; a young, bright pinky-purple in contrast to the much older trees we had been following for the past five years.

The day of the Future Machine event began with the mysterious discovery of a blossom flower painting left under one of the trees. The identity of the painter remains a mystery. We met 62 children and 4 adults from the local primary school. We introduced them to Future Machine and showed them the weather word and bird light boxes they had made, hung in high up branches amongst the blossoms. We explained how Future Machine turns the weather into song. Alexandre Yemaoua Dayo and David Kemp, the musicians who create the sounds of Future Machine, played the weather; the children joined in with their own sounds. As the wind picked up and blew the blossoms from the trees, swirling white petals about like snow, we waved with the wind and Alex danced with his Djembe drum amongst the shower of petals. Then the children split into groups and planned their own messages. Taking it in turns to meet Future Machine, turn the handle, press the button and speak to the future.

Others gathered under the blossoms as we waited for the light to fade. Future Machine played the weather as the bright spring sunlight refused to fade. People turned small hand generators to light up the trees with the light boxes made by the school children. Messages for the future were recorded until, eventually, the light faded. We gathered under the blossoms to witness the moments between light and dark, past, present and future, and to consider the coming of Spring this year.

Time for Reflection

A week after meeting under the blossoms, Frank discovered the new cherry tree uprooted and destroyed. The same week I received an email from the Friends of Finsbury Park, north London. The local council ripped out 200 trees planted by volunteers – on Earth Day. These two destructive acts in places where Future Machine visits, where we pledge to be guardians of the earth, are a reflection of the wider world. It’s a world closer than ever to another unthinkable global war, alongside the greatest loss of species and natural environments since the last Ice Age. Climate desecration is happening at a speed not seen on earth since the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.

It’s always difficult for young trees to grow into old age, particularly outside of a forest. Predators--including us humans--are a continual hazard. Equally, it’s hard for young humans to grow strong and caring of their places. We are all jostling, struggling to survive closer together with few green spaces to share, know and love, particularly in England, where 92% of the land is privately owned and inaccessible to most.

An image keeps returning from the blossom meeting this year, 2022. A young girl I had earlier seen playing in the gardens looked over the wall with her father, as we were waiting for the light to fade. They disappeared and then reappeared, looking in at the gate but not entering. I was caught up in the music and the people already there. I didn't go to speak to them and invite them in. They left without joining us.

How do we make space for people to come together? As artists, how do we enter a place without imposing our own agendas onto others’ lives? How do we tread carefully, take time to speak and listen, find ways for witnessing and wayfaring? Let us not be another thing in the world that tears lives down, but a force that brings humans together.

Rachel Jacobs is a practising artist, academic researcher, interactive games designer, writer, arts facilitator and a consulting editor to Emerging Voices. In 1996, she co-founded the award-winning artist collective Active Ingredient.

When the Future Comes & Future Machine is a collaboration between artists Rachel Jacobs, Juliet Robson, Frank Abbott, Caroline Locke, Wallace Heim, Esi Eshun and musicians Alexandre Yemaoua Dayo and David Kemp. Future Machine has been developed by Rachel Jacobs, Robin Shackford, Dominic Price, Matt Little, Matthew Gates, researchers from the University of Nottingham, Prof John King from the British Antarctic Survey and people who took part in public workshops across England. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England, Furtherfield Gallery and Horizon Digital Economy and the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham.

---

I Died in Hell. They Called it Passchendaele

From a poem by Siegfried Sassoon

SQUIRE nagged and bullied till I went to fight, …. I died in hell— (They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight, And I was hobbling back; and then a shell Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light…

---

Earlier in May, I went to Passcheldaele with my friend Marlena Blommaert. Passchendaele is a small, insignificant village in Flanders. It’s become symbolic over the past hundred years as the ultimate expression of meaningless, industrialised slaughter. In the summer of 1917, the Allies gained five miles of ground in three months and six days. Upwards of 500,000 men were killed or wounded, maimed, gassed, drowned.

Marlena wrote: the day is beautiful and the sun warm when we arrive. With our heads turned to spring, carelessness and outings, we walk to the memorial centre. We pass a loudspeaker where the names of the victims and their ages are recited in an endless loop. A more effective way to confront the horrors of a war that raged a century ago is hard to imagine. My children are the ages of the dead. It’s their names I hear. The lump in my throat cannot be swallowed.

Nearly 12,000 white tombstones, sometimes with a name and sometimes only the designation “A Soldier of the Great War”. White gravestones side by side emphasise the order and neatness of peace atop battlefields where the chaos and madness of war reigned for years.

The cemetery is surrounded by a wall inscribed with the names of tens of thousands of missing British and Commonwealth soldiers. Men without a grave. Eternally missing.

We left the memorial, shaking off thoughts of war. After all, war belongs in the past. But we know that is not true. More war, more death and destruction. Syria, Ukraine, Somalia, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Palestine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Columbia, DR Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, South Sudan, Tunisia…

From Sasson again :On Passing the New Menin Gate

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

the unheroic dead who fed the guns?

Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,-

Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

…Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime

Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

Compiled by Rose Levinson; photos by David Jeffrey and Marlena Blommaert May, 2022

You can find out more about the Battle of Passchendaele here.