A report published by the BBC years ago considered India a fertile ground for the spread of false and misleading information, as cheap smartphones and the tyranny of Hindu nationalism facilitated the spread of misinformation, and caused a low economic and scientific level among the majority of users of social media in this country, because they are unable to distinguish facts from the lies spread on these networks, which were exploited by some extremist Hindu groups to spread information and misleading news that serves their interests, according to many reports.
Despite the distance between the Palestinian territories and India, it has not escaped the manufactures of deception that some people there seem to master.
Al-Aqsa flood. Lies of the Hindu Right
The Atlantic reported that Mohammed Zubair, a fact-checking journalist based in Bangalore, found a video on the X website at midnight on Oct. 4, less than a day after Hamas's Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa, but comments on the post claim that Hamas shot down <> Israeli helicopters in Gaza.
Zubair had seen similar footage dozens of times before from the popular video game Arma3 and had previously been posted as images from the Ukraine war as well.
According to the nature of Zubair's work, most of his focus is at night, and this has become a daily routine for him, so he searches for false news and propaganda for about an hour after midnight.
But that day was different, stunned by the flood of misinformation he spotted on Indian social media. The scale of misinformation this time was horrific and unimaginable.
A video showed scenes of beheadings presumed to be in Israel by Palestinians, and after searching it was revealed that the incident belonged to a drug cartel in Mexico.
The claims invented by Hindu nationalists have been embraced by those interested in the conflict in Palestine and other countries (Reuters)
Over the next few nights, Zubair found himself staying up until after sunrise to refute the torrent of misinformation through his X account, which has nearly a million followers. Two-thirds of the disinformation about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict turns out to come from the Hindu right, one of the world's deadliest propaganda publishers.
The Hindu right-wing fake news spreading machine has been serving as a source for furthering its anti-Islamic agenda, and the Hindu media system is contributing videos with misleading headlines and fake stories to an intense and flaming conflict, adding to the confusion and indistinguishing between truth and lies.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that actors interested in the conflict in Palestine and other countries adopt these claims made by Hindu nationalists.
Zubair, who argues online with elements of the Hindu right all the time, has found himself confronted by far-right influencers in Israel and the United States who promote this false information that originated in India.
Five days after the "Al-Aqsa Flood", Zubair wrote on platform X: The Hindu right has made India the capital of disinformation in the world.
Investigation reveals the origin of the malicious tree
In a 2019 Microsoft survey, the company warned that fake news remains a growing threat in India, which has seen the highest number of fake news incidents of anywhere else. More than 60% of Indian respondents said they had seen fake news online versus the global average of 57%.
In late 2018, the BBC's investigative department found that nationalism was the main driving force behind the spread of fake news in India. The investigation concluded that the fake news incidents were the result of efforts to strengthen India's national identity, and that facts lacked the concerns of Indians when it came to the nationalist tendencies of ordinary citizens.
Investigation reveals links between fake news accounts on X and Prime Minister Modi's support networks (Getty Images)
The investigation attributed the ease with which fake news was spread among Indian users to the inherent distrust of mainstream media. Therefore, when a fake story mentions India positively, it is seen as the "correct version" of the story even if it contradicts the truth, and users of social media sites adopt it through messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook without actually verifying it and its source.
The most troubling revelation in the investigation was the fact that accounts that spread fake news on Twitter were linked to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's support networks.
An analysis map by the study team showed that the X hashtags that were spreading fake news were among "pro-BJP" groups.
Modi's party is at the forefront of political parties using social media to achieve political goals (Reuters)
The emergence of fake news in India appears to be not just about misleading people, but about how this information is then used to spread violence.
The BBC investigation examined 16,3 Twitter accounts and <>,<> Facebook pages to determine how fake news spreads in India. According to their research, there was a "strong and coherent" promotion of right-wing messages.
Modi's Bharatiya Janata (BJP) and its Hindu nationalist groups are at the forefront of global political parties using social media to achieve political goals, whether to strengthen their ideology or strengthen their grip on what is arguably the world's largest electoral democracy.
The investigation suggests that they have mastered the dissemination of inflammatory material – often false and bigoted – on a large scale, sparking a major debate beyond India's borders about how to use social media to the agenda of a party that rules a country they believe is democratic.
This recruitment was recently demonstrated by Hindu nationalists' use of the "Al-Aqsa Flood" on October 7 to further their domestic ideological goals, as they try to spread this misinformation about the resistance in Palestine to emphasize the danger of Islamist movements, a topic they believe will work in their favor in elections.