Yes, yes, Bharat is mahan, very great, aspires to be vishwaguru or world teacher. And our leadership is also the best and smartest in the world, with every other great world leader a personal friend. We garner awards from all corners of the world, even countries ordinary citizens may never have heard of. All in the nation’s name, of course; nothing personal about it.
And, if we are to believe an overwhelming section of the media and the commentariat, the United States is not only a declining power but has already lost its war with Iran. Notwithstanding the stark reality of a decimated Iranian leadership, air defence totally destroyed and the missile capacity degraded substantially.
No, it’s not a case of wishful thinking or mass delusion. People believe whatever they need to. Those who lose wars—hot or cold—must content themselves with preaching and propaganda. Narratives as the opiate of the masses. He who shall not be named said something similar, remember, but about religion?
It has happened before. The erstwhile Soviet Union lost to the US, but its leftist supporters found cushy and tenured positions in Western academia as post-colonialists. Closer to our own pain point, the progressive Muslim Left lost to their sectarian and separatist Partition-mongering co-religionists. Pakistan was born a day before India, a blood-soaked severance of the sacred soil of Mother India. But they captured Bollywood. Lahore penetrated Mumbai.
Similarly, we see China losing to the US in most theatres the world over, but its propaganda machine has infiltrated right into the heart of American politics, media and civil society. And ours too, in all probability?
Russia, too, far from a swift victory in Ukraine, is entrammelled in a four-plus year war, from which it finds it very hard to extricate itself. It has also given up the Middle East, with its sponsored proxy regime overthrown, and its erstwhile dictator, Bashar al-Assad, now living in Russia under Russian protection.
But we can’t criticise Russia or its lifelong, ‘elected leader’. He is a friend of India. Just as China’s president for life is. We can—and must—criticise the US and Israel. Because they are occupying, colonising powers, no?
Yes, both Ukraine and Iran, to a huge extent, are proxy wars. And in both cases, the Western alliance led by the US seems to have the upper hand. But don’t forget the US is an ever-declining power.
The idea behind propaganda is simple, if dangerous. If major powers lose their resolve to rule, defeating them becomes easier. With Europe’s colonial guilt and managed decline well underway, a similar abdication, sooner than later, across the Atlantic is only to be expected.
Oh, but there’s the inconvenient phenomenon called Donald J Trump. Hated by the opposition parties both in the US and India. There is, however, a popular saying, “Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” That Trump represents something much deeper, the US belief in its own exceptionalism and its refusal to cave in, can easily be glossed over through ad hominem homilies.
The other side has been drumming it into us for decades: the decline of the US and the rise of China is a foregone conclusion. Who can dispute that? Why bother if Red China has not been able to provide an alternative to the Western world order, militarily, financially or politically within its own country? The dollar will fall, of course, but wouldn’t we rather have it than any other opaque and manipulated currency?
The Chinese line, promoted by so many of its paid or unpaid champions, is that the US better step down gracefully from its pedestal. Its time is over; it has neither the moral authority nor the means to be the global hegemon. Consequently, the world, we were told, far from being uni- or even bi-polar, is definitely and verifiably multipolar.
But is it? Can power—hard, soft, smart or any which way you slice and dice it—be countered just by bluff, bluster or propaganda? And the US certainly seems in no mood to be psyched into losing. Roll over and just die, the world says. But it is, quite contrarily, reasserting its position as the world’s greatest, if not sole, superpower. How inconvenient!
Where does that leave us? We, too, have ratcheted up our information and influence machine, asserting somewhat peremptorily, if not prematurely, that we are a great power—not merely regional, but global. We can also boast the glories of our ancient civilisation, trying to create our own version of Hindu exceptionalism. Several world leaders play along, flattering us, as if they’ve understood our weak point.
Why bother with the hard reality that to be a great power, we have not only to build economic strength or military might, but also to put boots on the ground far away from home or police the waters of the ocean named after us?
But, more crucially, we have to build a huge intellectual and strategic capacity across many verticals and spheres of understanding. Every sliver of constructive criticism that flags our broken governance and power structures, or laments our institutionalised, deeply entrenched mediocrity is instantly branded as anti-national. Even when it comes to our economic advantage, it is politically incorrect to admit that it arises mostly from labour arbitrage.
We, the eternal India optimists, must look the other way, even sing hosannas rather than noticing the parlous fallout of our peculiar aversion to both recognising and incentivising talent. We must ignore how education in the public sector has been given over to caste confusion and conflict, while in the private sector, profiteering and fakery abound.
Yes, this is a great opportunity for India, and we are poised at the brink of unprecedented success. But just repeating this mantra instead of investing in and nurturing real ability, fitness and excellence across the board will not take us to the next level of our ‘manifest destiny’.
As to narrative management, we’ve invested plenty in that.
Makarand R Paranjape | RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE | Author and commentator
(Views are personal)
(Tweets @MakrandParanspe)