Late American Evangelical leader Billy Graham’s “Christianity Today” published a piece last week about how “India Says It Has a Border Crisis. Christians Say the Solution Will Divide Them.” The article spins India’s planned border fence with war-torn Myanmar as anti-Christian by exaggerating the impact on this cross-border religious community that was divided by the British. Speculative religious, humanitarian, and economic consequences are taken for granted while expected security benefits are questioned.
This analysis here from last year links to several related pieces about Manipur, which briefly slipped into unrest almost exactly 12 months ago, while this one here does the same with respect to Myanmar. Readers that are unaware of the connection between these two, which was also briefly covered here, should at least skim through them to better understand the background required for proceeding further. Basically, arms and illegal immigrants spilled into Manipur from Myanmar, thus leading to ethnic killings.
The Western media and their political allies in the Indian opposition exploited last year’s unrest in an attempt to discredit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP ahead of the ongoing six-week-long elections. Their weaponized information warfare narrative was that his party’s so-called “Hindu nationalism” was responsible for the violence. That claim never gained traction because it’s patently false, however, which is why the latest one spinning India’s border security policies is now emerging.
It was explained last week how “There’s A New Western Media Push To Sow Doubts About The Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership”, which coincided with top diplomat Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar criticizing hostile Western media reports as proof that they see themselves as “political players in our election.” The larger context concerned the upsurge in articles fearmongering about authoritarianism, Islamophobia, and even the implausible possibility of South India rejecting the election results.
“Christianity Today’s” piece should therefore be seen as the latest manifestation of this information warfare campaign. The intent isn’t just to manipulate American believers’ perceptions of India in order to turn them against that country’s leadership. Rather, the real goal being pursued is to influence Evangelical lawmakers on the right into lending false credence to their leftist State Department’s report late last year that India is supposedly just as unsafe for minorities (including Christians) as Afghanistan is.
The purpose behind this campaign is to generate bipartisan support for pressuring India on “human rights” and “religious” bases via sanctions threats in order to coerce it into abandoning its geostrategic balancing act and subordinating itself to the US as a “junior partner”. Those readers who reviewed the previously cited analysis about the new Western media push know that’ll never succeed after learning about the strength of its ties with Russia, newly troubled ties with the US, and multipolar grand strategy.
Nevertheless, it’s still important to draw the public’s attention to this latest information warfare attack since it might be picked up, amplified, and laundered throughout the global media ecosystem by American and foreign outlets alike, including their alternative and mainstream camps. At the end of the day, India has the sovereign right to protect its borders from infiltration by arms traffickers and illegal immigrants, and it’ll do its utmost to reduce the adverse impact on all cross-border communities.
