The unarmed student-led mass upsurge that toppled the Sheikh Hasina government on August 5 stunned political observers everywhere. Appreciative of such an unprecedented movement by students of universities, colleges and even schools, most such observers are trying to comprehend the dynamics of the street agitations that could unleash such tremendous youth power that traditional political party failed to demonstrate. But to all appearances, the Indian political observers and the media that reflect their views are not willing to see anything but anarchy and persecution of the Hindus and destruction of their properties and places of worship in thar earthshaking event. To them, the student-led mass struggle against the authoritarian pre-August 5 government in Bangladesh as one spearheaded by Muslim extremists whose only mission was to kill Hindus. But being the next-door neighbour of Bangladesh, they should have been able to understand Bangladesh, its people and their struggles better than the rest of the world.
Consider the deluge of falsehoods disseminated through the Indian media about imaginary atrocities unleashed on the Hindu community of Bangladesh. And there is also gullible audience eager to believe those lies without further scrutiny because those resonate with their own fears and prejudices. RumourScanner Bangladesh, a fact-checking or information verifying organisation, has found from its study on these fake messages, images and video clips that some 50 accounts on the social networking site X, formerly Twitter, were behind spewing disinformation about imagined Hindu persecution in Bangladesh in the wake of August 5 revolution. All those X account holders were operating from India. According to the experts surveyed for the World Economic Forum's 2024 Global Risk Report, India was ranked highest for the risk of misinformation and disinformation.
Joyojeet Pal, who is Associate professor of Information, School of Information at the University of Michigan, USA, says, 'There are three challenges with online dangerous speech and propaganda: sophistication, believability and virality'.
'The levels of polarisation and media distrust in India are such that there are pockets of citizens who are quickly willing to believe things about groups they see as antagonistic to their interests, so believability is already high'. When believability of such online disinformation and false propaganda is high in a society, their potential for getting viral is also higher. Add to that the use of advanced technology including AI to make the fake reports look and sound real. And such distortion of facts has been going on unabated since August 5 to the detriment of people-to-people as well as normal diplomatic relations between the two close neighbours.
Clearly, the intention of those involved in false propaganda was to show the struggles and achievements of the people of Bangladesh in a bad light before the international community. But an investigative report by the BBC published recently has proved that most of such videos showing atrocities being committed against Hindus in post-Hasina Bangladesh shared online were false. "And while reports on the ground have found violence and looting impacted Hindu people and properties, far-right influencers in neighbouring India shared false videos and information that gave a misleading view of the events', the BBC report maintained.
In fact, post-August 5 developments in Bangladesh provided the far-right and Islamophobic quarters not only in India, but also in other parts of the world including Britain with an opportunity to churn out false and distorted stories of violence and murders committed by what they term the so-called Islamic Jihadists, though the movement launched by Bangladeshi students was completely secular in nature. Tommy Robinson, a far-right British influencer, who had been sharing unverified videos on post-August 5 events, claims there is 'a genocide of Hindus' in Bangladesh. However, BBC investigation found his claim and video clips shared online in support of his claim to be baseless.
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