There are moments in a nation's life when truth becomes a casualty not of war, but of words. Not of silence, but of noise. In the days and nights that followed the recent India-Pakistan hostilities, our television screens glowed with righteous fury, our social feeds surged with patriotism, and yet somewhere beneath the din, a quiet betrayal unfolded.
It was not the enemy across the border that wounded us most—it was the fiction dressed as fact, delivered with a grin, and consumed with fervour. It was fake news, and it did not merely distort events—it disfigured the soul of public reason.
This was not the first time, and it will not be the last. In India, fake news has become the invisible gas we breathe—odourless, colourless, and deadly. It slips into drawing rooms, hostel corridors, WhatsApp groups, and war rooms. It paints fear on the faces of innocents and pride in the hearts of mobs. It turns pixels into pitchforks and memes into manifestos. And in its most malignant form, it wraps itself in the flag.
During the recent confrontation with Pakistan, videos lifted from video games were aired as exclusive footage of military strikes. Explosions from other nations' wars were repurposed to show Indian firepower. Old clips found new uniforms. A song of vengeance was played, and the anchors danced. There was no time for verification, no place for caution. Ratings had their appetite, and the truth was too slow to feed it.
The danger is not just in the lie—it is in its repetition, in its amplification, in the reverence with which it is packaged. We no longer live in a time where news is a mere reflection of the real; now, the news creates the real. And when the foundation is false, the edifice becomes a hall of mirrors, each image more distorted than the last.
India, in its ambition to rise as a digital superpower, has built a vast and vibrant information economy. But it has failed to build the laws that can protect the minds of its citizens from the viral toxin of fakehood. Today, we stand exposed. There is no singular legislation in India that criminalises the deliberate spread of fake news. The existing codes—be it the Indian Penal Code or the Information Technology Act—are ill-suited to the scale and subtlety of this menace. They are too broad, too slow, or too vague. And in their vagueness lies immunity for those who twist the narrative with surgical precision.
What is urgently needed is a law—clear, firm, and just—that recognises fake news not as a mistake to be corrected, but a crime to be punished. Such a law must understand the difference between error and evil. Journalistic lapses are not crimes. Malicious, premeditated disinformation campaigns, especially in moments of war, election, communal tension, or national crisis, are. When a media house knowingly airs false content to provoke sentiment or mislead the public, it is not journalism—it is sabotage.
Let us not be naive. The danger does not merely lie in remote villages or among fringe groups. It lies in the primetime glare, in the swagger of celebrity anchors who cloak their fiction in nationalism. It lies in editorial rooms where integrity is outbid by TRPs. And it lies in algorithms that push virality over veracity. In such an ecosystem, truth needs a shield—and that shield must be the law.
But this law must not be a club in the hands of power. It must not be crafted to silence criticism or dissent. It must be drawn with precision and guarded with oversight. There must be an independent regulatory body—not under political command—that can investigate violations, levy penalties, suspend licenses, and when necessary, initiate criminal prosecution. Protections must exist for satire, bona fide journalism, and whistleblowers. The intent must be to punish the peddlers of deception, not muzzle the seekers of truth.
Digital platforms, too, must bear their burden. When a rumour on WhatsApp leads to a lynching, or a deepfake on YouTube triggers a riot, accountability cannot vanish into the cloud. The platforms that profit from virality must also pay for the damage caused by their negligence. They must invest in real-time fact-checking, user education, and timely takedowns. If they do not act as responsible intermediaries, they must face consequences, not gentle warnings.
Around the world, the tide is shifting. Germany’s NetzDG law imposes heavy fines on platforms that fail to remove illegal content. Singapore’s Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) empowers the government to issue correction notices and penalties. While not perfect, these laws signal a global recognition that fake news can no longer be treated as harmless digital noise.
India must develop its model, rooted in constitutional values and democratic ethics. India must evolve its model, not borrowed, not blunt, but tailored to our realities; a democratic framework that balances freedom with responsibility; that treats misinformation not as a mischief but a virus that corrodes the public mind.
And beyond the law, there must be learning. The greatest vaccine against fake news is an informed citizen. Media literacy must find its way into classrooms, training children to ask, to verify, to pause before they share. Newsrooms must be retrained in the ethics of truth. The public must be reminded that patriotism is not proved by forwarding a message, but by questioning it. The revival of fact is a collective task.
We are, as a people, in a dangerous dance with delusion. We have mistaken noise for news, performance for proof, and anger for analysis. But the consequences are not theoretical. They are dead bodies on railway tracks, burnt shops, broken families, diplomats summoned, and soldiers misunderstood.
All because someone decided that a lie told with confidence is better than a truth told with care. To let this continue is to let democracy hollow itself from within. Freedom of speech cannot mean freedom to deceive. Journalism cannot survive if facts are disposable. And national unity cannot be built on borrowed footage and studio theatrics. If we want to protect our democracy, we must first protect its language—truth.
We are not calling for censorship. We are calling for conscience. And where conscience fails, as it too often does, we must invoke consequence. A law against fake news will not restore truth overnight. But it will remind us that truth still matters; that in this republic, lies are not entitled to freedom. And that the first casualty of fake news need not be reality itself. In a nation where myths can move mobs, we owe it to ourselves to anchor our minds. Let that anchor be the law and let that law be just.
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