Lies, Fake Narratives, and the Quest for an Original Sanatana Response

This is the first thing one needs to understand about the global fakery known as fake news: if it is fake, it is not news.

The most appropriate word to describe what is peddled by the infernal global nexus of the Left Liberals, the Jihad NGO and conversion mafia is the old-fashioned, familiar term: lies. The Left Liberal media is the dedicated harlot of these forces, an exclusive brand of whore who paradoxically cannot be bought by…err…outsiders.

Here is a straightforward formula: those that self-righteously holler about fake news are the greatest and the most accomplished purveyors of lies. It must be said that the fakery of the “fake news” cottage industry has been outed so badly that it has reincarnated as fact check in the last two or three years. A wart-ridden reptilian online kirana shop called Alt News headed by an irascible snorter of the leftover cocaine of India’s National Joke is one of the prominent Indian outposts of this global “fact check” pandemic.

The name of Irving Wallace has largely been forgotten. But he reckoned as one of the most prolific and bestselling American novelists from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. One of his highly underrated novels, The Almighty published in 1982 deals with the media industry. The protagonist is a monomaniacal loser who inherits a media empire from his father and wants to prove to the world that he is better and more powerful than his father. To demonstrate this power, he begins to create news by hiring terrorists and mercenaries and organizes high-profile assassinations. Quite obviously, his paper gets to publish the breaking news first. The novel was made first into the 1987 Malayalam movie titled New Delhi starring Mammootty and then remade into Kannada and Hindi starring Ambarish and Jeetendra respectively.

The central thread of the novel’s plot is an eerie precursor to what is known as “fake news” and “fact check.” With a crucial difference: the novel’s protagonist is motivated only by his personal megalomania whereas the latter is stimulated by the reincarnated, crackling embers of a genocidal ideology.

Which is where our focus must turn to: fake narrative.

Fake narrative is set first. Fake narrative is what births lies. As we’ve seen, “fake news” and its depraved, illegitimate cousin cum avatar, “fact check” is among the biggest lies.

Let’s illustrate this with the example of a pen. Yes. A pen. Put this pen in the hands of a hardcore Jihadi preacher. What does he become? A devout Islamic scholar dedicated to spreading the peaceful philosophy of universal brotherhood. How about a gun? In Burhan Wani’s hands. He becomes the innocent son of a school headmaster who was victimized by an evil Hindu state and therefore became a “freedom fighter.” But the same gun in the hands of the Indian army becomes a deadly weapon to exterminate Muslims in India.This is just a simple, familiar, and easily understandable example of setting a fake narrative. News that is “reported” in such tenor is thus pre-rigged. Akin to the ancient practice of bringing up Vishkanyas who are fed fractional doses of poison from childhood till their blood becomes so thoroughly poisoned that one kiss or bite is fatal. A Western variant of this practice was known as the proverbial femme fatale. Thus, reams of editorials, columns, TV talk shows, and increasingly, standup circuses, all build up and amplify this pre-rigged “news report.” But the truth: Burhan Wani is an Islamic terrorist motivated by his religious ideology.

Of course, other sophisticated techniques for setting and disseminating fake narratives exist, which are so incredibly secretive and smooth that we can’t detect them because they work in the most effective way: by hiding in plain sight.

The most insidious intent and goal underscoring fake narratives is to alter the present thereby altering both the future and the past. Despite abrogating Article 370, what is the public narrative that still governs Kashmir throughout the global media and academia? Your guess is as good as mine. Ideally, this brilliant, history-altering decision should have been made part of academic syllabi, and case studies should have flooded all international platforms like the United Nations on dealing with rogue politico-religious intrigues against national sovereignty.

And if the fake narrative is given free run, twenty or thirty years from now, scrapping Article 370 will seem like a mere blip, a pesky inconsequential nuisance in the larger scheme of things.

Thus, in this larger scheme of things, no matter how many rebuttals or counters, the stalwarts of the Modern Sanatana Renaissance are still struggling to find their rightful place in the annals of honour in contemporary Indian history and culture, which has been hijacked by Left Liberal crooks, criminals, and baby-snatchers.

In a way, the past has been successfully erased and the dominant strain of the present is still in the psychological thrall of the Nehruvian durbar-slavery.

Fake narratives have proven highly effective because they represent a bestial triumph over the destruction of true education, culture and spirituality. Thus, even well-meaning people who are genuinely and rightly alarmed at this phenomenon find themselves at a loss even after mounting a spirited, consistent, and dogged resistance: the fake narratives never stop, the stream of lies reappear in newer colours and more innovative forms. Because this loss is fundamental. Their resistance is at best on the surface. This resistance is a feeble defence mounted by second and third-rate minds against XXX-rated psyches, a lethal race to the bottom. There has already come a point where these defenders are aping the methods of their opponents in the hope that the outcome will be different. Ever wonder why genuine scholars and truly wise people have stopped coming to the proverbial public square?

Indeed, one of the tragic phenomena of our time is the proliferation of all kinds of experts and business leaders and intellectuals and self-styled Gurus but the chasmic absence of wise people.

The root of the epidemic of fake narratives lies elsewhere and one of the time-tested methods to address it is to develop an original response. The Bhakti epoch is one of the most original responses in all of world history to tide over a savage phase in Sanatana civilisational history. It was also a profound era of organic growth and development. Indeed, the pioneering saints of Bhakti evolved this response because they correctly realised that the nature of all tyrannies is fleeting and only as brutal as its most savage practitioner. Let’s not forget that Samartha Ramadas was a product of the later Bhakti era but what he infused Shivaji with was uncompromising Kshatra.

Which is that original Sanatana response in our own time against the global tyranny of fake narratives one of whose declared aims is to exterminate the last non-Abrahamic civilisation? The seeds of that original response lie in the depths of timeless spirituality and transcendental beauty with all its infinite expressions in art, song, dance, sculpture, painting, and literature. There is both an invisible and indivisible silken thread that binds all of these, and a society that will emerge when these are nurtured with the finest ingredients in the Sanatana tradition will automatically create a concomitant political leadership.

Till such a time, one can perhaps take temporary solace in these Emersonian words.