The
Information War Against India — And Why It Is Being Lost
Sovereignty
and Narrative
A state that
cannot defend its own story in the global mind has ceded a piece of its
sovereignty, no matter how strong its economy or military power. Information
warfare is now a decisive domain of conflict, and India has yet to systemically
fight on this front.
Trump’s
Comment and Iran’s Response
On 23 April,
Donald Trump reposted a letter on Truth Social calling India a “hellhole.”
India’s foreign ministry responded the next day, dismissing the remark as
“uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste.”
Surprisingly,
the loudest defence of India came not from New Delhi but from Tehran. Within
hours, Iranian consulates in Mumbai and Hyderabad replied in Hindi, using
tourism videos and cultural references. One urged Trump to take “a one‑way
cultural detox” and “Kabhi India aa ke dekho, phir bolna.” Another reminded him
that “China and India are the cradles of civilisation,” contrasting India with
America’s threats against Iran.
Iran’s
Strategic Use of Soft Power
Iran’s defence
of India was not sentimental. It was calculated information warfare. By
engaging Indian audiences in their own language and culture, Tehran sought to
soften Indian sentiment toward itself — a resource it can spend later in
diplomacy.
On a fraction
of the budget that Western lobbying consumes, Iran has shown how perception
management can achieve what diplomacy alone cannot.
The Larger
Campaign Against India
What Iran runs
in a friendly tone, others run at industrial scale. India faces a hostile
information campaign funded thousands of times more, delivered through outlets
its elite considers authoritative.
This campaign’s
visible surface can be measured.
The 0%er
Club
Between 2022
and 2025, one Bloomberg Opinion columnist published 188 articles on India.
- 94% negative
- 5% neutral
- 1% positive
The Kutniti
Foundation, which tracks India coverage across 160 publications in 23
countries, designates journalists who never publish a positive piece as members
of the “0%er Club.” India’s chapter is the largest in the world.
Patterns in
Western Coverage
A study by the
Indian Institute of Mass Communication analysed 3,000 India‑related articles
from leading Anglo‑American outlets. The ten most common headline words were: fear,
hate, violence, riot, Hindu, Muslim, Kashmir, cow, mob, protest.
Missing from
this lexicon are India’s economic transformation — UPI, GST, manufacturing
expansion, digital public infrastructure — or achievements like the Moon’s
south pole landing and the rise of the world’s third‑largest start‑up
ecosystem.
Why the Bias
Persists
Three
overlapping layers explain the pattern:
- Commercial Incentives — Outrage about India sells. NYT’s
Indian readership grew 22% while its global readership fell 8%. BBC’s
Indian readership grew 173%, nearly five times its global rate.
- Editorial Bias — Some Indian‑origin columnists in
Western media hold antagonistic views of the current government, often
spilling into anti‑India narratives. Their bylines lend insider
credibility to hostile frames.
- Information Warfare — Beyond bias and commerce lies a
coordinated campaign, aligned with lobbying calendars of hostile states,
which India has not yet named in doctrine or funded in budgets.
India’s
Operational Cost
General Anil
Chauhan, Chief of Defence Staff, admitted at the Shangri‑La Dialogue that
during Operation Sindoor, Indian forces spent nearly 15% of their
operational bandwidth fighting fake news rather than Pakistanis.
In India’s
sharpest short conflict since Kargil, a full working day of military bandwidth
was diverted to a front where New Delhi had neither doctrine nor equipment.
India currently operates with 0% of a published information‑warfare
doctrine.
Conclusion:
The Unfought War
India is losing
the information war because it has not recognised it as war. Editorial bias and
commercial incentives explain part of the pattern, but the largest mass is
deliberate information warfare. Until India develops doctrine, allocates
resources, and trains for this domain, its sovereignty will remain vulnerable —
not on the battlefield, but in the global mind.
