Facts – of the govt, by the govt, for the govt

Do you remember when Amit Shah boasted about being able to make any message go viral, real or fake? He was talking to BJP social media workers in Rajasthan in 2018, and the subtext of his message to them was also viral: It doesn’t greatly matter how true something is, just keep winning us elections. He then came over all correct and said that, really, one shouldn’t post fake stuff because credibility matters, but you could practically see the wink and feel the nudge.

Fakery is, of course, as much a matter of omission as of commission. With the BJP having filled the internet and phones with oceans of untruth and spin, the Modi government is now giving itself the power, via amendments to the IT rules, to have anything taken off the internet that it considers to be fake, false, or misleading relating to the government. That includes critical social media posts and critical journalistic reporting. Sound bad? Minister of State for IT, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, assures us that free speech is safe, this process is only going to trip up the enemies of India who are trying to subvert our democracy, and is going to be super credible and transparent. He also said it’s important because misinformation goes viral more easily than the truth. Maybe Amit Shah told him.

Read | Democracy, bureaucracy, and State capacity: The false choices we make

So, everyone relax: The government’s fact-checking unit, comprised of the government, will be scrupulously fair in assessing the government’s rationale for suppressing content critical of the government. Chandrashekhar said (I paraphrase) that the fact-checking unit has to be a government body because who else would really know the truth, and that making online intermediaries accountable for their content is (I quote) a “principle of natural justice”.

A moment of silence, please, for irony where she lies with her head kicked in.

This style of justice, in which the accused presides over their own trial, takes it further by empowering the accused to cancel the trial, burn the evidence, lock the courtroom, and throw away the keys. If internet intermediaries don’t comply with the takedown order, they forfeit their ‘safe harbour’ immunity and become liable for the content, which means they’re unlikely to put up any resistance—Elon Musk has already publicly rolled over.

Bad press, both domestic and international, is intolerable to a government that spends all its time dusting and polishing and shining up its own image. Uncomplimentary content? Flag it as fake and erase it—piece of cake.

Erasure does a lot of the heavy lifting not just for the government but for majoritarianism. After all, if Nirmala Sitaraman can say that news of violence and intimidation against Muslims must be false because their numbers are so very healthy, you can expect the bullying, violent edge of Hindutva to recede into soft focus online. Soon that won’t even be a thing: Hindutva is slowly but surely erasing Muslim-ness from India, from attacking Muslims over cow transport, to filing FIRs against Muslims for holding communal prayers in their homes, to whiting out Mughals from school textbooks. It is working hard at erasing dissent, opposition, and principles of natural justice. It is doing its best to erase political opposition, though that’ll take some doing because contrary to what it likes to believe, over half the country did not vote for the BJP.

The utter hypocrisy of being concerned about fake news only echoes the utter hypocrisy of glorifying democracy while disembowelling it, or the utter hypocrisy of talking rule of law and walking mob sentiment. The absurdly draconian IT rule amendments may suppress some things for some time. But the problem with suppression is that it takes constant effort, and more importantly, in the end, the truth will out.

(Mitali Saran thinks a good asteroid could solve all our problems. @mitalisaran)