Wars have existed since the beginning of humankind. They exist even today, and warfare techniques have evolved throughout ages. Many experts including American author William S. Lind have termed this evolution as “generations of warfare”. The first generation warfare refers to the use of massed manpower, the second generation warfare refers to the introduction of rifles and machine guns in the process of wars, the third generation warfare refers to the stealth strategy—where the armies in small numbers bypass the enemy lines to attack them from the rear side, and the fourth generation warfare refers to demarcation between military and politics.
All these methods of war are prevalent even today, but at present, a new kind of warfare has come into existence, which is called the Fifth Generation Warfare. It can also be termed as information warfare in which the objective is to mould the public perception to fulfil vested interests. Social media, as well as other forms of media, act as essential tools for this warfare. The process is simple, at present, the general population of majority countries are too much occupied with their work and rely on media to receive information on the happenings around the world—due to which they trust the news they receive from the media without even thinking otherwise. It is this trust that is misused by others.
Through media, the public perception can be shaped; hence many countries use the press as well as social media to limit and control the information to form a favourable opinion among the population of native states as well as other countries. The same thing is happening against India, and knowingly or unknowingly people belonging to the incumbent government are responsible for this to some extent.
For example, for the past few years, mob lynchings have been on the rise, in these cases mostly people belonging to particular communities have been targeted, and unfortunately, the groups which conduct these attacks have the support of people belonging to the incumbent government. The best example can be the garlanding of the people accused in the Ramgarh lynching case by Jayant Sinha, who is an MP, belonging to the ruling BJP.
Another incident was a protest led by two BJP ministers Chander Prakash Ganga and Lal Singh in support of people accused of raping Asifa, an 8-year-old girl in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Although after public outrage the two ministers resigned from their posts. This is one of the reasons that the incumbent government has been criticised because it seems that the government is not interested in stopping these crimes and the hostile countries namely, Pakistan is taking advantage of this situation.
It is no secret that the Pakistani government and ISI (Pakistani intelligence agency) have been working towards their objective to separate Jammu and Kashmir from India. They have even gone to wars with India, but still, even after so many years, they were not able to fulfil their objective. Knowing the current internal situation of attacks against people belonging to different religions in India, the Pakistani government as well its intelligence agency the ISI have waged Fifth Generation Warfare against India in collaboration with their few allies, namely the incumbent Turkish government and media houses in the Middle East namely Al-Jazeera.
Using the mediums of media and social media these hostile countries are trying to form a perspective that the Indian government is committing atrocities against people belonging to different communities, and hence, they are or will do the same to the people living in Jammu and Kashmir. Their general partners in this process are the incumbent Turkish government, the Chinese government, as well as few media houses in the Middle East. Although Turkish government refrains from taking any stance against India openly, but if we go through the reporting of their state broadcaster, i.e. TRT World, we will come to know that the reporting of this media house is quite similar to Al-Jazeera, where it is clear that their reporting when it comes to India, is quite biased and usually supports the Pakistani perspective. It is a fact that the stance of these media houses represents the actual stance of their governments.
Even in the United Nations meetings, the Pakistani diplomats have always pointed out these internal factors in India to form a perspective that India is no longer a secular nation, and through this perspective, they want to gather the support of other nations who have good relations with India. This stance can also be found even in social media accounts of Pakistani hardliners who are taking full advantage of the situation that the members of the incumbent Indian government are supporting groups accused of committing crimes.
Given all the above information, my personal opinion is that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has to accept the fact that in order to tackle this warfare it is important that crimes related to mob violence do not occur in this country. But the problem is that the groups which indulge in these crimes have allegedly been the support base of the ruling BJP—due to which the incumbent government remains hesitant to take action against these groups. But given the urgency of the situation PM Narendra Modi—after winning 2019 Lok-Sabha elections—made a speech in which he asked the appointed MPs to make efforts so that minorities do not live in fear, indirectly asking them to ensure no more mob-related crimes occur in India.
Whether PM Narendra Modi meant what he said or not, is another debate and whether strict action will be taken against the culprits or not, can be known in the further stages of the tenure of this government. But at present, I in personal capacity do hope that the current government takes all the necessary steps to tackle the warfare that has been waged against India by hostile nations.