Pahalgam, Propaganda and a New 'Two-Front War'

The question today is not only a response to terrorism but to a growing propaganda that seeks to position India as the next target after Israel.

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

Two things will be remembered long after the current crisis over the Pahalgam terror attack that has killed 28 people in Kashmir. First, the terrifying photograph of the young woman sitting beside the dead body of her newly-wed husband, their honeymoon turned into a nightmare for no fault but that they chose to spend it in Kashmir, and second, the abysmal reportage especially in the American (and some other Western media) on one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on Indian soil.

The Associated Press, America's main news wire agency, deemed fit to put the words "terror attack" within quotes suggesting that the murder of tourists who were sun-soaking in a grassy meadow at a place described as "mini-Switzerland" was merely Indian government opinion.

For many Indians this underlines something which has been felt for a long time, large sections of the so-called liberal press do not emphasize the dastardliness of terrorist incidents in non-Western countries as they do in the West. This is especially pronounced against countries which are deemed to be under "right-wing" governments.

There was a concentrated effort in many parts of Western media and academia to promote Pakistani talking points to show the deadly attack in Pulwama in 2019 which killed 40 Indian security personnel as a "false flag" attack—meaning conducted by Indian agencies but shown as a terror attack.

This canard would have taken greater root if India had not responded seriously by sending fighter jets to bomb terror camps inside Pakistan. But it has never quite disappeared by the global left sees the Modi government as part right-wing governments that need to be fought and questioned even when under terror attack.