As the tensions in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict continue, India has formed a crucial part of the discourse. How has India responded? Who does India support? What has India got to gain from its stance? Are the government and people of India on the same page? Has Indian foreign policy experienced a shift? A number of questions have been addressed and the discourse has been unending, and apparently agenda-driven.
Two events in the past week and their coverage in the international media need to be examined in this context: Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the terror attacks by Hamas and the deaths of civilians in Gaza as part of his inaugural speech at the Voice of Global South Summit on November 18. The following day, on November 19, another batch of Indian aid to Gaza was dispatched. This was the second batch of humanitarian aid dispatched from India since the conflict began after the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
It is interesting to note that media coverage that has elaborately touched every aspect of the Indian response, these two recent, defining events, caught little discussion outside of national media. This is both surprising and not surprising, depending on how we choose to interpret the same. This heightened activity in the cognitive domain has a deep connection with the country’s cognitive resilience.
International media discourses regarding the conflict have consistently covered India, ranging from its unequivocal support to Israel against terrorism, India’s abstention to vote on the recent UN Resolution, mass protest rallies (both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel) inside the country, to even Kolkata’s synagogues being protected by local Muslim caretakers as a generational legacy. This seems fairly contrary to the amount of coverage received by the two recent events, just as important and vocal representations of India’s current foreign policy that has been a focus point in most discussions surrounding the conflict.
While this reflects the influence India holds in the regional dynamics of West Asia, the nature of reportage has been rather interesting. A repetitive rhetoric has been connecting the current government’s “Hindu nationalism” with its support to Israel. This is often backed by the increased India-Israel relationship in terms of economics and defence, as well as the historic 2017 visit of Prime Minister Modi to Tel Aviv that made him the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel. While relations have warmed up since 2014, a number of simultaneous facts have been comfortably overlooked.
The India-Israel relationship has been on the rise since formal diplomatic relations were established in 1992. Moreover, Israel was one of the very few countries that supported India against Pakistan in the wars of 1971 and 1999, events that found India almost isolated even within the Non-Aligned Movement that India proudly led. Having said that, apart from being the first Prime Minister to visit Tel Aviv, Modi also became the first to visit Ramallah the following year. While the foundational foreign policy principles have continued to remain the same, what indeed changed under the ruling government was a conscious de-hyphenation of India’s relationship with actors in the region. This included warmer ties with each of the three power centres in the region — Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel — hence, also consequently, with Israel and Palestine. However, this is just one part of the ongoing rhetoric.
The next most discussed aspect is India’s abstention to vote on the UN Resolution on Gaza. Mass protests, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine have been covered against the background of India “supporting Israel and abstaining from a recent United Nations vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza”. Clarifications on the same have been officially given but with limited coverage. While India favoured an “immediate, durable, sustainable humanitarian truce”, supporting an amendment authored by Canada, India called for a simultaneous explicit condemnation of terrorist attacks on October 7. Abstention came about as a protest to the exclusion of the proposed amendment, where India did not vote “for” the exclusion of an explicit condemnation of terrorism and did not vote “against” a much-needed halt to the ongoing humanitarian crisis, where India itself has sent over two batches of aid and relief material.
Having noted that, this becomes important to discuss because narrative-laden information floating amidst the conflict not only attempts to impact India’s international image, but also seems to challenge the cognitive resilience within the country. Against this background, it is interesting how the current narratives cater to different sections of popular sentiments within the country, touching on themes across the spectrum: deprivation; communalism; identity crisis; and liberal values. It carefully exploits each of the pre-existing faultlines, thereby creating a wedge between various segments of the masses, eventually attempting to delegitimise the government’s credibility to represent the “people of India”.
This reminds us of Kautilya’s depiction of four kinds of “seducible parties” while referring to vulnerable sections of the population: क्रुद्ध-लुब्ध-भीत-मानिनस्तु परेषां कृत्याः (1.13.22), roughly translating as the enraged, the deprived, the frightened, and the proud. If the state is unable to identify and tend to them, they being targeted and turned against the stability of the state is a critical threat. A mass rally virtually hosting a former Hamas member in Kerala last month, or disinformation drives running wild on social media are only tips of the iceberg that awaits us.
Given that India is a vibrant democracy that is home to a diverse demography, we must acknowledge that these 2 billion people are our biggest strength as well as our critical vulnerability. The Indian Constitution protects and celebrates this diversity, hence differences in aspirations and opinions are not only existent but also encouraged. To ensure that these differences do not become cognitive fractures to be exploited by adversaries, ensuring cognitive resilience is built becomes a necessity. The enraged must be listened to, the deprived must be tended to, the frightened must be reassured, and the proud must be honoured.
In doing so, India must make sure that official communication is more extensive, and clarifications on ongoing narratives and disinformation campaigns must be prompt and efficient – that is, faster and louder. If delayed, given the emotive element they carry (of grief, devastation, and deprivation), the snowballing is beyond control. While studying Cognitive Warfare, this is often termed as “participatory propaganda” where the requirement of agenda-driven media warriors to spread propaganda vanishes. Here, ordinary people who believe that the information so shared is true, tend to participate in furthering that “propaganda”, thereby turning an artificially created/manipulated information into an organic conversation. With social media in the picture, its speed has been tremendously accelerated.
As India continues to rise in stature, the threats will become more damaging and targeted. Developing cognitive resilience is going to be India’s defining step in facing the threats in the cognitive domain.
Tejusvi Shukla is a Research Associate at Chanakya University, Bengaluru, and is also serving as a Research Analyst for the Online Indian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies. Previously, she has served with the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, a Think Tank of the Indian Army. Her areas of research include India’s internal security with a special focus on the information domain. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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