This refers to your thought-provoking editorial, ‘WhatsApp users in India need to be careful of propagandas ahead’. The advent of social media on the Indian scene brought upon a radical change in the nation’s political, social and economic narratives. Barring a few occasions, the social media has only done harm to the citizens of the nation, especially belonging to the underprivileged sections, namely Muslims and Dalits. Social media, WhatsApp in particular, is often misused by the forces that flourish on hatred, to create the bad blood between various communities. WhatsApp is a very useful tool for the forces of obscurantism and communalism for their ideas of hatred. The propagation of lies by these forces as ‘news’ to target Muslims and Dalits is an open secret. Lies are manufactured and sent to millions of cellphones within a very short time to ‘inform’ and incite the faithful’s about the slaughter/smuggle of cows. Innumerable hapless Muslims have fallen victims to propagation of WhatsApp messages. They have knifed, shot or beaten to death. Those who use WhatsApp to spread rumours are, in fact, the Indian devotees of Goebbels (the propaganda minister of Hitler) who famously said, “A lie once told remains a lie, but a lie told thousand times becomes the truth.” WhatsApp is, sadly, the platform which is misused to turn lies into truths by the so-called educated folks and for the educated ones. Time has come for all Indians, irrespective of their religious faiths, to stand up and combat the forces that have reduced WhatsApp to a mere lie propagation machine. Only the Indians can save their dearly lived country from the nuisance created by the powerful army of liars.
Samiul Hassan Quadri
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
