Explaining India's position to the world.
India responded to Pak-sponsored Kashmir terror attack. But the subsequent narrative information war needs work if India has to explain its position to the world. Lets dive in.
As I write this, news has come in that India has struck 9 places inside Pak occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and inside Pakistan targeting terror camps. The operation was announced late at night but immediately Pakistani propaganda machinery went to work. India's press conference came almost half a day later. This brings to the fore a critical question - why does India have difficulty explaining its position to the world?
The main reason is that our experts face a double issue.
First, they do not have "match practice".
To build the discourse, you need forums to experiment with ideas and narrative chains. Our forums are dominated by the leftist-anti-India ecosystem. New dialogue-based fora are coming up, but some are too jingoistic. We need our universities to create space for research-backed dialogue where our experts can hone their ideas, test arguments and build narrative structures that can explain the Indian point of view better to a Western, media-slanted audience.
Second, they have to start with the counter.
When Indian experts interact with global media, they have to start with countering the Western narrative right off the bat. There is no "understanding of the Indian point of view", and then "the debate". The western media is "we know your issues and you must defend your position, whatever it is". It does not help that our position is complex, thanks to our very, very long civilizational memory.
The solution
We need to create spaces where our global discourse is refined and our experts tested. It requires both
Research capability that produces articles, research papers and books AND
Oratory that helps our experts to rework the preconceived global narratives.
It is the responsibility of universities, educational institutes and think tanks to build this. At the moment, only the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, has online live lectures on various topics. The topics are a bit esoteric/niche, and the audience is limited, but nevertheless, it does try. We need all universities, educational institutes, and think tanks to build regular forums on topics of relevance so that we can build both research and oratory to explain India's position to the world.