In today’s world, wars are no longer fought solely on battlegrounds with bullets and bombs. The more decisive wars are waged in minds, media, and perceptions, a realm known as information warfare or narrative warfare. India, despite being a civilizational giant with an illustrious history, a rapidly growing economy, and one of the most powerful militaries in the world, remains shockingly weak in this arena.
This weakness is not due to a lack of truth on India’s side, but due to systematic narrative distortion carried out by radical Islamists, Leftist ideologues, Western elites, and self-loathing domestic actors. This article dissects the structural and ideological forces that render India vulnerable in narrative warfare and lays bare the hypocrisy of the global media-industrial complex that consistently paints India as an aggressor, an oppressor, or a backward, broken nation.
1. Understanding Information Warfare and Narrative Warfare
Information warfare refers to the use of information and communication technology to gain a competitive advantage over an opponent through propaganda, misinformation, psychological operations, or manipulation of public perception.
Narrative warfare, a sub-category of information warfare, deals with the crafting and dissemination of stories, perspectives, and moral framing. It is about who controls the story, not just the facts. In global geopolitics, whoever controls the narrative controls the morality of war, and therefore, legitimacy.
2. India’s Blind Spot: The Battlefield We Refuse to Acknowledge
India, with its civilizational heritage and modern strategic capabilities, often wins the physical battles, be it surgical strikes or ground-level counter-terrorism operations, but loses the perception war.
After the Pulwama terror attack and India’s subsequent Balakot airstrike, global media outlets ranging from Al Jazeera to BBC, from New York Times to Middle East Eye, ran headlines suggesting Pakistan’s victimhood and downplayed India’s right to retaliate.
Islamic and radicalized portals portrayed India as a Hindu nationalist aggressor, conveniently ignoring that India was responding to terrorism that had killed its soldiers.
Pakistan, a state sponsor of terror, was given moral high ground, and India, despite acting in self-defense, was forced to defend its actions in international fora.
This is not merely journalistic bias, this is narrative subversion, and India currently has no effective counter-infrastructure to fight this psychological battle.
Recently, In April 2025, Islamist terrorists launched a brutal attack on tourists in the Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam, Kashmir, killing 26 civilians, a stark reminder of how radical Islamist forces continue to weaponize fear against unarmed Hindu tourists and innocents.
As expected, global media coverage was sparse, with more focus on “civilian tensions” and “Kashmir unrest,” rather than on the clear case of Islamist terror targeting Hindus.
When Indian forces conducted surgical operations across the LoC in retaliation, media houses again shifted the narrative to potential “human rights violations by India” and “nuclear flashpoint” rhetoric, echoing Pakistan’s victim card.
Once again, India’s legitimate counter-terrorism efforts were painted as aggression, while the actual Islamist brutality was diluted or rationalized.
3. Why India Fails in Narrative Warfare
a) Colonial and Islamic Psychological Conditioning
India has been psychologically colonized for centuries. Our education system, media narrative, and public discourse were designed by British imperialists and sustained by post-independence Marxist historians. This includes:
Glorification of invaders like Babur, Aurangzeb, Ghori, and Ghazni.
Teaching that British colonialism “modernized” India, ignoring that India was the world’s richest nation until British loot began.
Erasing or distorting the valor of Hindu kings and resistance movements, from Maharana Pratap to Guru Teg Bahadur.
This has created a nation that is not proud of its own past, making it harder to defend itself on global platforms.
b) Nehruvian and Communist Legacy in Media & Academia
Post-1947, instead of reclaiming a Dharmic or Indic narrative, the Indian elite handed over thought leadership to Nehruvian liberals, who were deeply influenced by Soviet communism and Western Marxism.
JNU, AMU, Jamia Millia, and Leftist intellectuals became the gatekeepers of historical truth.
Media houses like NDTV, The Wire, Scroll, and others, championed narratives that demonize Hindus, delegitimize Hindu concerns, and romanticize the so-called “Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb” while ignoring centuries of slaughter.
This Left-Islamist ecosystem, working in tandem with Western media, ensures that India is always framed as the regressive, fascist, casteist, or fundamentalist “Other.”
c) Lack of Institutional Support for Strategic Communication
Unlike China, Russia, or even Pakistan, India has no coordinated propaganda wing. Pakistan has ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations), a dedicated military media arm, and funds thousands of social media influencers and global Islamists to paint it as a victim.
India, on the other hand, has:
No international English-language media of global reach.
No ecosystem to counter false accusations or propaganda campaigns in real-time.
A diplomatic corps that is reactive, not proactive.
4. The West’s Strategic Use of Narrative
The West, especially Anglo-American media, continues to project India as a chaotic, poor, caste-ridden democracy, despite its rise in space, defense, and digital economy. Why?
India is seen as a threat to the Western moral monopoly.
A resurgent Hindu civilization challenges the Christian missionary-industrial complex, which still seeks to convert and “civilize” the East.
India’s independence in foreign policy, especially under Modi, angers Euro-American powers used to puppets.
Thus, Western media deliberately collaborates with Islamists and communists to paint India as:
Anti-Muslim
Oppressive to Dalits
Anti-Christian
Nationalist and undemocratic
All while whitewashing real genocide committed by Islamists or Communists, such as the Kashmiri Hindu exodus or Bengal radicalization.
5. Hindu Civilization and the Psychological Chains of Defeat
India’s civilizational story is told in reverse:
We are taught we were “civilized” by Britishers.
That Islamic rulers brought art and culture, not death and forced conversions.
That Ram is myth, but Mughal kings are historic.
Our temples were destroyed, our gods mocked, our culture vilified, and we were made to be ashamed of our own roots. This shame still echoes in how Indian elites view their own religion, traditions, and people.
6. The Global Islamist Propaganda Machine
From Qatar to Turkey, and from Pakistan to Western university campuses, radical Islamic lobbies have mastered narrative warfare:
Funding chairs at Harvard, Oxford, and Georgetown to teach “Islamophobia studies”.
Spreading propaganda through media networks like Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, and Anadolu Agency.
Exploiting Western liberal guilt to paint Islamists as victims and Hindus as fascists.
These are the same lobbies that tried to label the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as anti-Muslim, ignoring that it helped persecuted Hindus from Islamic nations.
7. The Urgent Need for a Hindu and Indian Narrative Ecosystem
What India must do:
Invest in global media arms, like a robust version of India Today International or a state-sponsored English outlet equivalent to RT or Al Jazeera.
Encourage private initiatives, like xhindianin, that speak the truth without colonial filters.
Reclaim education, rewrite history books to reflect real Indian valor, not Marxist distortion.
Support digital warriors, influencers, writers, filmmakers who are unapologetically Indian and Dharmic in voice.
Establish narrative cells in the Ministry of External Affairs and Defence, just like strategic warfare units.
8. Narrative is Power, Truth Must Be Reclaimed
India can win military wars, we proved it in 1948, 1971, and even in surgical strikes. But we lose narrative wars because we don’t show up. The war of perception is being fought 24/7, in newsrooms, classrooms, chatrooms, and think tanks.
And we are absent.
It is time, India and Hindus in particular, wake up from the colonial slumber. We must take control of our story, our history, and our destiny. No civilization survives if it cannot defend its own identity. And narrative warfare is where this battle is won.
Let this be a call to arms, not of weapons, but of words, ideas, courage, and pride.
China may have suffered a ‘Century of Humiliation’, but India has endured over a millennium of humiliation, invasions, distortions, and denials, and it is time we reclaim our truth.
