As long as the message is simple and emotional, one can repeat it and make the audience believe it is their own decision to accept it.
Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state. Joseph Goebbels
Discredit the democratic process and the institutions that sustain it, is their modus operandi. The most effective propaganda is not necessarily the lie. It is the repetition of a selective truth until it becomes the only truth people remember. There is an old tactic: choose the facts that serve the agenda, discard those that complicate it, construct a narrative, repeat it relentlessly, and eventually the constructed narrative acquires the appearance of reality. Then scream bordering on abuse, spin manufactured and manipulative agenda setting to frighten the opponents. But that’s just one thread. There are several others like deception, emotional manipulation, selective facts, one-sided arguments, constant repetition, and the most lethal of them: the weaponization of knowledge. Traditionally, the arena for using these is no longer simply the newspaper or the political rally. Instead, the university classrooms, the so-called research projects, the nonprofits, and the media platforms have turned out to be the most effective and lethal platforms, using not merely their traditional tactics but increasingly the algorithm to advance their agendas. They stifle dissenting opinions. Prioritize identity over individual merit and foster cancel culture.
In the 20th century, Joseph Goebbels was often regarded as one of the most effective users of propaganda through the media. His understanding was simple but dubious: publicity, be it positive or negative, has value. The vile Nazi propaganda deliberately used newspapers, radio, film, posters, rallies, and education as interconnected instruments. Provocation itself, as it turned out, could generate publicity. Commercial advertising techniques, be it catchy slogans, emotional triggers, repetition, or striking visual presentation, all got imported and adapted into politics. In design, the principle worked because of its simplicity. As long as the message is simple and emotional, one can repeat it and make the audience believe it is their own decision to accept it. We hear, “Faith moves mountains,” but one must remember that it is knowledge that moves people into action at the right place and at the right time. Because once they repeat a simple proposition sufficiently often, eventually even an absurdity can be made to resemble common sense. The propagandist’s practical objective, therefore, is to control the rules, timings, and frequency of the information environment and shape public behaviour. That is why propaganda never remains confined to speeches. Fancy posters, large type, red ink, provocative headlines, photographs, slogans, marches, songs, and banners all perform the same function. A meeting preceded by a procession is not merely a meeting. It creates an atmosphere before anyone speaks. Provocation invites attention, which in turn produces coverage that, again, only amplifies the message. The ensuing violence may later be portrayed as something opponents caused or enabled. All this to demonise the opponents and weaponize bodies to target a legitimately elected government. Branding opponents with all the negatives is part of the construction of the fake narratives. Meanwhile, the mobilization is treated as benign, where the only opposition to it is what went wrong.
Similar logic works through deception, best illustrated in higher education and so-called research centres. A partisan research agenda can begin with half-truths and then search for evidence that confirms them. Selective bias and construed facts are used to give a picture that fits the agenda. Meanwhile, those who question the conclusion are branded and labelled, rather than having their questions answered. A single authority is made to appear to possess all the relevant information. Eventually, the manipulated audience is deceived into thinking that their analyses are so-called and arrived at independently. Education, in general, is where these tactics are becoming particularly dangerous because while the target audience is youth, and these young minds are the future of the country and society, they are now being misled to believe this to be knowledge.
These issues remain relevant even today, as ancient Indian knowledge gets treated selectively. Critical thinking is legitimate and appreciated, but selective exclusion cannot be. The same problem tends to repeat in the history and discourse of our past. Ancient and medieval India cannot be understood by mechanically repeating narratives in which invaders are presented primarily as benevolent cultural benefactors, while destruction, plunder, forced conversion, and temple desecration are omitted from the account. Nor should historical complexity be replaced by counter-mythology. The point is straightforward: historical evidence must be allowed to speak, even when it disrupts the preferred narrative.
In contemporary debates, the same selectivity appears. Hinduism is often interpreted almost entirely through caste, patriarchy, and oppression, while its internal philosophical diversity, its traditions of debate, inclusivity within it, its female deities, ecological ideas, and the Panchabhutas receive far less attention. Hinduism cannot be reduced to a single book, a single God, or a single code. Instead, its traditions are far richer than they contain contradictions and competing schools that vary radically within their conceptions of the divine and how the social order is organized.
Why, then, is Hindu unity so readily interpreted as hegemonic, while calls for unity from other religions are to be treated as solidarity? If caste is the objection, then caste must be examined across South Asian society rather than treated as uniquely Hindu. Casteism and hierarchical separation in Indian society are not unique to Hinduism. For these reasons, we need to look at Ambedkar’s uncompromising critique of caste. However, that does not mean we reduce Ambedkar to a convenient weapon against Hinduism while ignoring the rest of his views. His thoughts and views on the creation of Pakistan as an Islamic country are nowhere discussed.
One insight from philosopher Wittgenstein is relevant here. He argued that concepts acquire meaning through their use. “Secular,” “patriarchal,” “liberation,” “invasion,” “tradition,” and “rational” are not politically neutral when they are repeatedly deployed to classify one civilization while exempting another. This is the case when we look at today’s so-called intellectual science in contemporary India.
Finally, there is the element of money. “He who pays the piper calls the tune” remains a useful rule for examining institutional power. Funding does not automatically prove ideological control, but it determines which research can be commissioned, which conferences can be held, and which questions can be pursued. For years now, non-profits have become vehicles for partisan interests when their agendas follow the priorities of funders rather than the needs of the public. The same concern applies to academic networks: recruitment, mentoring, grants, conferences, and publication can reproduce an intellectual ecosystem in which members continually validate one another. This is precisely how an “echo chamber” develops. Students and scholars outside the dominant camp may be pressured to either conform or step out, all the while those speaking the preferred vocabulary receive institutional recognition, rewards, and acknowledgments. Existing networks of informality and nepotism further help reinforce the process. The result is not merely disagreement but a systematic narrowing of what can be said or what is “allowed”.
In the age of AI, these tactics have become more opaque. We are told that machines are intelligent, but machine learning is still dependent on data. If the knowledge supplied to the machine is distorted, selective, or ideologically saturated, the machine can reproduce that distortion with unprecedented efficiency. Large LLMs do not magically escape the biases of the knowledge environment from which they learn. What we need is for our data to be ours, our scholarship to be intellectually independent, and our institutions to remain open to competing evidence. We cannot become the master’s voice. Nor can we allow someone else’s narrative to become our inherited truth.
Today, the real battle is over narrative power. Whoever controls knowledge production, money, institutional infrastructure, and the power of repetition acquires enormous influence over what society thinks is true. Because once a lie is repeated long enough, it becomes difficult to distinguish the lie from memory itself. The toolkit and tactic is fascist and an attempt to control public opinion through street mobs rather than the ballot box. Today, the real battle is over narrative power. Whoever controls knowledge production, power, money, institutional infrastructure, and repetition acquires enormous influence over what society thinks is true. Because once a lie is repeated long enough, it becomes difficult to distinguish the lie from memory itself. That is precisely why the struggle over education, media, and NGOs is ultimately a struggle over who gets to define reality.
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Prof Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit is the Vice Chancellor of JNU.
