A recent report by The Washington Post on the Indian government’s ties to the fake news website, Disinfo Lab, is not a surprise to most fact-checkers, but the extent of the relationship is still concerning. It is well known that the vast majority of Indian media is either owned or otherwise tied to PM Modi’s kleptocratic backers, but many people did not know that the government had long been directly financing disinformation operations. This report illustrates the extent to which India has been relying on lies to build its brand abroad and how it slanders democracy and human rights activists. Incidentally, the group was also given an intentionally misleading name, so people confuse it with the EU DisinfoLab, a legitimate and respected research outlet that has previously exposed Indian state disinformation operations.
The Post’s report said Disinfo Labs was set up in 2020 by RAW officer Lt Col Dibya Satpathy. The report, based in part on three whistleblowers within the fake news outlet, focused on Disinfo Lab’s US-related activities, namely its efforts to malign and slander critics of Modi, or even fascism in general. The organisation and its chief use alias to interact with Western journalists and influence their opinions on several topics, particularly Modi, India, Pakistan and China. The group also coordinates with ‘pro-Modi influencers’ and other Hindutva trolls to amplify its propaganda on social media. Some of the group’s choices of targets have been nonsensical, such as progressive US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who immigrated to the country from India. In 2019, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar actually canceled a meeting with US lawmakers in Washington because he was afraid she would ask him questions about Kashmir. The group has also attacked billionaire philanthropist and pro-democracy activist George Soros and even US government officials whose former Muslim coworkers are now prominent activists. However, it has been afraid to even try ‘fact-checking’ the Post report, limiting its response to calling it “Pakistani propaganda”.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2023.
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