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Building Solidarities, Battling Propaganda, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqAgrbRwzhw by Smruti Koppikar 
some thoughts on building solidarities battling propaganda. But I'm going to start with the propaganda part. Um,
 It was Bombay then when liberalization was brought in. Among other things in the city the top story was the dreservation of vast trackcts of land in Vasai Virar. Some
585 plots dres reserved in one go. Some of you might remember that my editor
then asked me to interview JB not even two years into the profession. Okay. And
so one hot afternoon I landed at Hanila auntie's Bandra home. It meant for me
commuting from Borivi to my newspaper office in South Bombay to Bandra then
back to the office because there were no uh mobiles and systems there before
trundling home to Borli. When I sat in their drawing room taking in everything
that JB was trying to explain about land loss, dreservation and why it was a
scam, I think Nila auntie took in other aspects of me. At the end, she very
briskly directed JB and me to the dining table, pushed me to have a snack and tea, and
told me in a very motherly voice, "You're as old or as young as my son. I
can see what you people need. Okay, thank you for that Nanti. If this
was quiet grace, there was more. That evening in the 3 hours I spent with JB,
he the former municipal commissioner of Mumbai, the former chief secretary of
the government of Maharashtra did not once let on that he was educating me, a
rookie reporter in the complexities of land governance in Bombay. How could I
interview him? But he let me do that. That is grace. Another lesson learned.
But allow me to tell you this evening of JB's act of defiance, of courage,
steadfast belief in upholding the law as Sahan sir said a while back that I saw
very soon after. It is the one that I draw a link to today's topic about
battling propaganda. Many of you in the room are old enough to remember how Bombay burned in
December 92 and Jan 93. And you would recall that one newspaper, a highly
popular Marathi newspaper edited by a demagogue, stopped being a newspaper and
turned into a propaganda sheet. Among the headlines and stories it had
were, and I quote, "There are many Pakistans in Mumbai. Blast them. No
justice for Hindus. Fanatic traitors go scot-free while terrorist Khan who was
by the way an IPS officer a Khan fires at Hindus and so on. The logical step
should have been for the police to file FIRS charge journalists and editor the
editor with sections 153A and B of the Indian Penal Code for provoking sentiments and all of that. The Mumbai
police of course did not do that. The Congress government did not instruct the police because who would dare to touch
the late Mr. Bal Takre the editor. I got a call from JB a few days later
and he said please come and meet me. Can you help me with something?
When JB called you went you didn't ask questions. So I landed at their home. I
realized later where it led. He and Dilip Takur the journalist
approached the Bombay High Court demanding appropriate action against Mr.
Tak. Two men in this city who stood up to believe what they thought was right.
What was what did I do in that? A very footnotish role.
They needed translations of all that had appeared in SA the headlines and the
stories. and I was a in a small group of translators and those translations then
became part of the case papers. JB and Dilip Takur had dared to take on
the loudest lethal propagandist of their time in our city. You will agree with me
that in the 32 years since the scale, the nature, the kinds of propaganda have
substantially expanded despite or because of the growth in the
media. We have tons more of it now, freely floating, often unchallenged.
Frankly, I think we are all quite tired of challenging it. And you'll agree with
me that most of the news media certainly not all have turned more propagandist in
the past decade than we than anything we had seen back in '9293.
I speak today on propaganda but not only in the media.
Why? Because propaganda sub subtly influences how people perceive facts and
events. By selectively presenting information, mixing truths and falsehoods using loaded language. It
creates and reinforces biases and prejudices. It shapes public opinion on
complex issues by framing them in a particular way, making it difficult for
people to see alternative perspectives. Noom Chomsky, he doesn't need an
introduction in this room. Chsky wrote in his book, The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, and I quote,
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian
state." What a line. We must frame it, paint our walls with it. Propaganda is to a
democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. Who indulges in
propaganda? Those in power or those who aspire to power? Propaganda and power,
I'm sure you know, are joined at the hip. Propaganda helps power, allows it
to shape public discourse and the popular narrative. And as Hannah, the essaist who decoded
so much about fascism told us, before mass leaders seize power, their
propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts. In their opinion,
fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it. And so
propaganda is sinister. It's dangerous. And most of all the profession that I
come from, journalism, it takes away from truth. And if we take truth away,
we have very little left in our democracy. And so I have five points to offer you
about propaganda. And I'll go through them with a few examples.
First, propaganda has been normalized in the past decade or so. It was a part of
our lives. It's not that it suddenly came up in 2014 or 15, but it's now
become normal and it shouldn't. As we watched our immediate worlds turn
propagandist, people we worked with, cousins, uncles, we grew up with,
friends we thought we knew well, people in our neighborhoods,
cycling friends, subziallas, futualas, housing societies, you name it. Literally, everybody has bought into
propaganda. And I don't need to say what kind of propaganda for me because I also teach classrooms and campuses. Fellow
academics have turned ever so softly majoritarian.
As we watched propaganda has become completely and thoroughly normalized around us. We must first recognize this
normalization so that we can begin to battle it. Propaganda has so corrupted our entire
system in such a large measure that many good people with critical thinking minds
have begun to believe that this is normal. Let's get on with life. Okay, it
is not. It should not be normal. Both the propaganda and the perception of its
normaly have to be battled. That's point one. Point two, propaganda takes us away
from truth and this matters. How often have we heard this question? What
development happened in the last 60 years? This is not just a political question.
It has a lot of propaganda behind it. Ironically, this question has been
asked, repeated and parited even by those people whose lived experience
covers those decades. Okay. But just for perspective, let's recall
India's literacy rate was barely 12% at independence. 12%.
By 2014, when a certain kind of propagandists tell us that we got our
independence, it was 70%. In 40 in 1947,
India's average life expectancy was only 32 years. By 2014, it had become 72
years. Propagandists of this sort tell us there was nothing worse in this country than
the emergency of 1975. Propagandists of an other kind will tell
us that today's undeclared emergency is the darkest ever. But why go back all
that way? Let's just go back two months a month actually. We witnessed
halftruths and falsehoods about the conflict of war between India and Pakistan in early May.
The Indian government claims to have won. Pakistanis claim to have won it
too. Only one side can be telling the truth. But both sides are very heavily into
propaganda. In other contexts, at other times, you will remember that we've been dished out
a very heady mix of untruths, a mix of untruths, lies, truths, whatever. Such
as demonetization will eliminate black money or now Dharavi redevelopment will
benefit Mumbai. That's those are propaganda statements. I turn here to
the feminist scholar Judith Butler who said in a recent interview about
President Trump which I think holds true for his friend here too. She said and I
quote, "Trump speaks so many falsehoods. We have to ask ourselves why is it that
people are ready to believe these falsehoods, this propaganda?"
My theory is that they know he's lying. They know he's exaggerating. They know
that nothing grounds many of his claims. But they are thrilled that he is able to
say all these lies, all of this, and make it seem true.
It is that right-wing thrill that wants to be free to hate most of
all that wants to be free to be irrational. And the irony is that they
treat it as some form of liberation. And so each time a propaganda statement
takes us away from truth, we lose as a society, as a country.
Number three, propaganda leaves us shocked, confused, and often silenced.
We remember the night the demonetization was announced. News reports tell us that
more than 100 people died later waiting in cues for their money or unable to get hospitalized.
We had to go through the many of us here had to go through the egnominy of not being able to pay small amounts withdraw
our own money from bank accounts and so on in different ways in different degrees almost all Indians suffered
suffered the propagandists told us we had sacrificed
that's the power of propaganda presenting suffering as sacrifice very effective that's what it does It
confuses us. It makes us doubt ourselves, our judgments, our conclusions. It is intended to shape our
worldview, the popular narrative of what's happening. Once the ruling regime did not
acknowledge people's suffering and instead called it sacrifice, it was then parited endlessly by its minions,
including in the media and the social media. Flooded with this, many of us
would have hesitated to say we suffered. If you don't agree with the propaganda,
at some point you are likely to fall silent. That, my friends, is the
intention. See the international narrative on Israel bombing Gaza for 18 months now,
which international aid agencies tell us has killed more than 53,000 people and
disasted lacks more. bombs being dropped, targeted shelling of homes and
hospitals, intentional starving of an entire population, turning that entire
Gaza Strip into one large concentration camp. As we understand language and
history, this is called genocide.
And yet there is a debate in the media and in the political world and on
campuses about the very use of that word and that term including by very widely
recognized and respected publications of news publications and the media. The
more that Israel and its friends propaganda tells us it is not genocide
and to even suggest this becomes anti-sionism. Many people are shamed into silence.
The biggest media now don't use the word social media deletes accounts or shadowbans people who use that word and
we are forced to replace the I in genocide with ironically
an exclamation mark upturned. Okay.
Number four, propaganda touches poly crisis in our society.
We now don't have one crisis. We have many crisis happening all at once and on
many different fronts. Okay? And so suddenly we have many battles to fight
together. We are told that tearing down hills and cutting thousands of trees to put more
roads and buildings is a good thing. that rivers can be bent at will, all
types of wetlands can be landfilled and reclaimed to do what? Put more buildings and highways. We are told that economics
versus environment is the only way to see it. That's the longest serving propaganda probably from the time of my
grandparents. We told that cities have been and are inherently unequal and that's how it'll
always be. We've become so used to this statement that we do not any longer recognize the
propaganda in that statement. We told it is okay to not grow food on
farmlands, but to accumulate them and hand them over to private capital is fine to do what? Build more airports,
ports, buildings, private cities. We're told it is not okay to wave farm
loans because how can the economy take that burden? But it is completely okay to write off corporate loans.
As I said, point number one, this has become such a normalized statement that we've even stopped seeing the propaganda
behind this in the papers and outside. We told that farmers are stupid if they
take their own lives because their produce does not even bring them a living wage. We told that developments
in AI are now inevitable even if they threaten and challenge the human world.
This is complete propaganda. Why is it inevitable? How often do we stop and ask this
question? This kind of propaganda at work is resultoriented and it's often
successful. It presents the world in binaries. It's no longer just about the
media. It is about every aspect of our lives. For each of the propaganda statements
that I just listed, there are factual assertions, counterarguments,
denials based in academic work, explainers, and so on. But it doesn't matter. When there is a flood of
propaganda, facts by themselves do not make a difference. This is our lived
experience of the past few years. And this has been proved also because
propaganda speaks to people's emotions specifically the negative emotions of
hate, fear, anger. It doesn't speak to rational selves and
therefore it becomes a very easy tool to fragment communities and divide people.
Every entity in power, political, economic and social, or the power elite,
as Chsky called them, in capitalist democracies, wants us to believe in such
propagandist statements. They want us to buy into each of these without
questioning, without thinking for ourselves. That's why we find suddenly that there are too many fronts for us to
battle on. It's flooding our spaces. Where do we even begin?
Point five, propaganda paralyzes us, makes us incapable of questioning or criticizing
power. That's the idea. That's its purpose. That's the end game. This is
not the work of a few mavericks sitting in some garages. If you feel heavy,
dispirited like I do often, then pause and know that there is a trillion dollar
propaganda machinery at work. It's an industry. Don't forget that 5 years ago,
we were told we were turned into a nation of zombies with the propaganda. We were told to bank thalies and clap
and sing go corona go to drive away the co virus. Those of us who did not
participate in this silly spectacle were otherred and ostracized.
And we wondered why those who did all of these silly things did them.
But propaganda is designed to make people numb, to blunt our critical
thinking, to make us exhausted, immobile, render us unwilling to engage
with rational, with any kind of factual um truths.
Once it dominates, we have fewer and fewer shared truths about our world,
about the country, about the economy, the environment, cities, culture, everything.
Why does this matter in democracies? Because
historians like the Yale professor Timothy Snder, who by the way recently
quit Trump land to move to Canada to be safe.
Timothy Snder says, "When we lose shared truths and understandings about ourselves and the world, we lose the
capacity to engage with our democracies and with those in power. This is the
intended effect. Let propaganda overwhelm the masses, even the most committed amongst us. Let it shock and
confuse people. Let it paralyze and disconnect people from one another, from
our social circles, from the environment, from nature, from everything. The point of modern propaganda is not
only to misinform. And I believe that those of us who've tried to counter
propaganda with fact checks have been at the level of dealing with the misinformation. But the point of modern
propaganda is not merely to misinform. It is to exhaust as Snder and others
have said, it is to exhaust our critical thinking and to annihilate truth.
And so these are the five points which I feel need to be remembered and revoked.
And why propaganda needs to be battled at every level in families, in drawing
rooms, in schools, colleges, housing societies, walking tracks, cycling tracks, gyms, offices, restaurants,
history books, most important media,
public discourse, everywhere, there is a price to pay, which is why solidarities
become crucial. And I turn to the first half of today's title, building solidarities.
Of course, battling propaganda can be a solitary act, sometimes of great
courage. But I say from some experience of watching, observing, participating,
it is a lot more effective and more resilient when it is a collective act.
When we have built solidarities, solidarities in plural across the aisle as it were
across themes and topics, across groups, even with people with whom we might have
differences, across languages, geographies,
building solidarities, I propose to you, is one way to begin to
unscramble the propaganda. to begin to unscramble it. I would like
to say a few words be about solitary actions before coming to solidarities.
Individually many of us have been taking initiatives and steps doing what we could.
For myself, like I said, fact checks have been a large part of my toolkit till I realized that, you know, there's
an ocean of propaganda out there and I'm going with a bucket of fact checks and it's not going to help, right? And so,
uh, but that's the tool I have and that's the tool I will use that and grabbing every
opportunity to speak to a room full of people who will listen to me. The consequence is that I have been like
some of you here perhaps been thrown out of rooms, thrown out of WhatsApp groups or we have left them in complete disgust
at the very large buffet of lies and untruths that are getting happily consumed.
Many of us have chosen individual parts for whatever reason to resist this and
to battle. Individuals have gone to courts, organized marches,
demonstrations, written in the media that's still open. Many of us individually support independent media
with subscriptions, sharing grants. We know people who regularly silently
donate to organizations that resist propaganda, power, and creeping
authoritarianism. We know satireists who have shown individual courage to question power
when the media has been found wanting. But I say this with some thought. But in
solitary actions, there's always the danger of more easily lapsing into
the spiral of silence. to use a very eloquent term that
sociologist Elizabeth Noel Newman gave us. She's one of my most favorite
uh persons to read. The spiral of silence. Simply put, her
theory says that individuals are less likely to express their true opinions
or to take on untrue opinions if they perceive that they are in small numbers
because they fear social isolation or retribution.
I think I'm alone so I remain silent. Each of us thinks you're alone, so you remain silent. We're all silent. We
believe there is no alternative to what we are hearing because we have gone into that spiral of the society has moved
into a spiral of silence. We no longer for example
even mention the word secularism anymore. The word secularism has been
silenced from our public discourse. Did you realize that we haven't heard it for how many years
now? How many months on debates? Right? And so words, thoughts, opinions fall
lapse into what Elizabeth Newman says, the spiral of silence. And I quote her,
"This silence then reinforces the majority viewpoint, creating a
self-perpetuating cycle where minority voices, divergent voices, dissent are
effectively erased." unquote. So individually we
fall silent, we monitor ourselves, we become cautious, we self censor, some of
us possibly even withdraw. Individual actions, therefore, while
admirable, fall short in the kind of poly crisis that we are in. It's not
good enough to say like the stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra did in a recent interview,
I'm okay without solidarity," unquote. I'm not aware what made him say this,
but we should not be okay without solidarities in this kind of a society. We need
solidarities of different kinds. We need to break the silos and ecochambers that
have been created even amongst ourselves perhaps unwittingly over the past few
years. Why? Because we live in society. We need each
other in this battle more than ever. We need each other. And here I recall the
words of Albert Einstein, the physicist. What's he doing in this lecture?
Okay. Well, Einstein wrote on socialism
too. In the journal, the monthly review, he
wrote, and I quote, "Man is man, okay, dicey, but man is at one and the same
time a solitary being and a social being. The individual is able to think,
feel, strive and work by himself in his physical, intellectual and emotional
existence. But it is impossible to think of him or to understand him outside the
framework of society. He writes about solidarity in the
context of socialism all those many years back. So how and where do we build these
solidarities? I offer three ideas here.
One, the solidarity economy. Yeah, there is something called the
solidarity economy. Some of you may already be aware of this. What we are
now living in is past the capitalist economy stage. Say many experts. We are
in an attention economy. The social media have given us a loneliness
economy. These are all real words by the way. And AI is set to increase this
loneliness, isolation, individualization, and cause more
hyperindividualization. Just in the last few months, AI has been
used not for information but by people to talk to in their moments of
loneliness. Okay, we are heading into as the economist and
former Greek minister Januz Varukis termed it, we are heading into the age
of technofudalism.
If like Einstein we believe that the economic anarchy as it exists today his
today is the real source of evil real source of evil in quotes this is
Einstein saying then it all seems very hopeless right
till we realize that other kinds of economies are possible and that is where
the work has to Start solidarity economy is one alternative.
It's an alternative model that prioritizes cooperation, social equity,
and environmental sustainability over profits and competition.
It talks of shared prosperity and empowered communities. At its core, it
is a framework aimed at building an economy rooted in human and
environmental values for inclusive and just communities. It's a framework. It's
out there. It's happening. But it's also a movement. In practice, the solidarity economy
principles encompasses more sharing and caring when it comes to land, food,
labor, housing, energy, finance, art, and the media.
It includes initiatives like worker cooperatives, fair trade, communityowned
businesses, neighborhood relations, ethical finance, all of which will have
people in some decision-m capacities or roles. While traditional
capitalism focuses on maximizing shareholder value, the solidarity
economy stresses value for all stakeholders. Not shareholders, stakeholders,
employees, communities and the environment. This, as I said, is a movement and it
has to be built. But it is possible. Some of us may not be around to see it
come to fruition. But that should not keep us from
imagining it, discussing it, proposing it, trying to build it.
Second kind of solidarity is solidarity with nature.
David Suzuki again doesn't need an introduction here. David Suzuki said, "Economics is not a science. Economists
try to fool us into believing that with equations and arrows going all over. But
it is not a real science. It is a set of values. Where in this equation will they put the
forests and the ozone layer, the deep underground aquifers,
the top soil, the birds and the bees. Nature performs all kinds of services
which economists call externalities. That is simply nuts. Conventional
economics is a form of brain damage because money doesn't stand for
everything. Solidarity with the environment is
something we must absolutely talk more about and actively work towards.
Trees speak. They have their own forms of communication. Water has its rhythms everywhere.
Seasons are very deeply tied to natural cycles and human beings are a part of this
great complex web of life. that human beings and human society are
not separate from nature is something that it something that
should have been obvious but if it needs to be spoken then we have to speak that
if something hurts human beings it's bound to hurt nature and the other way around too. This means we must
critically think through the propaganda about economy versus ecology.
It is not a binary. It never was. So what can we do?
There is an idea, a concept of social ecology. It is a real discipline.
It offers a framework for understanding how social and ecological issues are
interconnected. how we must develop solutions that address both aspects
simultaneously. The Institute of Social Ecology, they are on the internet, you can go and look
them up. The Institute of Social Ecology says, and I quote, "This is a coherent
radical critique of the current social, political, and anti-ecological trends.
It envisions a moral economy. It envisions a world that reharmonizes
human communities with the natural world while celebrating diversity, creativity,
and freedom," unquote. Can we plan and build cities in keeping with these
principles? Can we speak? Can we keep knocking on the doors of bureaucrats to
slip one poster about this beneath their doors? Maybe teach all this to children
in schools. Take them to nature
and build solidarity with people about nature. This means that people of South
Mumbai should care about Ar
need not have been saved. AR's trees, 2,200 of them need not have been saved by um activists in the suburbs.
People of South Mumbai should have cared more about RA and those of us in the suburbs, we should worry a lot more
about the coastal forest. So the third solidarity
is solidarity circles. The term may be sort of new but the idea
would be familiar to many of you here. I remember circles like this when I was in
college many years ago. A solidarity circle is an informal gathering
organized by thinkers, grassroots people, activists, academics,
homemakers, children, whoever that brings a cross-section of people
together with the colle with the goal of collective engagement and care.
The purpose of a solidarity circle is to facilitate healing from the propaganda
and its impacts from the impacts and vulnerabilities that have come with the excesses of
consumerrist capitalism to create safe spaces. Its purpose, one
of its purposes is to create safe spaces to reconnect with one another and
re-imagine our society, our world. Why? To develop a collective voice. It is
intentionally purposefully inclusive. It works at the intersections of many
things. And so, social solidarity circles have
been used. They've they've probably silent, but they've been used in the US.
Methodist churches and religious groups have used solidarity circles for a long time to drive home their message.
I hear that activist groups have tapped into solidarity circles or something
like that in the past few months in the US and some of that energy lay behind those
50 protests in 50 states in one day that we saw in the US in April. It didn't
happen out of the blue. It didn't happen because of WhatsApp groups. happen because of real work in rooms
building these solidarities and circles. As we speak, there are solidarity
circles in Europe to support Palestine amplifying the voices of people living
under the occupation there becoming or trying to become ambassadors for change.
The power of the collective is well documented and I won't bore you with that here. You know it. But how can we
build solidarity circles in our worlds, in our life, in this city, this city which doesn't even allow us to get home
in good time, right? How do we begin to build solidarity circles here? Maybe
start with our neighborhoods. Seek out like-minded people wherever
they are. Seek out the activists. Seek out, reach out to people who are
resisting, who could do with a little more of solidarity.
Join groups and marches. Do we have differences? Yes, we might.
Let's acknowledge these differences and rise above them to build
solidarities because that is what we need desperately today.
I would suggest that we begin even with reading circles. Even that engagement is
a start. 30 people get into a room and read
on propaganda and how to battle it best and then go back and do what we can.
Reading is becoming a rare skill and I say this with great responsibility
because I'm in classrooms for half of every year talking to 19, 20, 22 year
olds and I recently met a bunch of 15y olds who had not read a single book of
fiction, non-fiction, anything. I mean 15 year olds don't read non-fiction but no fiction from cover to cover and I
asked them why they said why should I spend time reading the whole book
yeah I get a PDF I get a summary I get I have perplexity it just draws everything
and gives me and Google is now par there perplexity which does so much more
than Google so why would a 15year-old want to sit with a book well for now let's leave the 15y year olds out. Can
we the 60 year olds sit in a room and perhaps read something together and do something about it? And so uh reading is
a necessary skill and I believe it's a necessary step in building solidarities
also. Banu Mushtak, you remember the name, the
international who when she won the international Booker Prize said in her acceptance speech and I quote,
"In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last
sacred spaces where we can live inside each other's minds, even if only for a
few pages," unquote. Perhaps we set up reading circles, they become
solidarity circles and then become active or activist on certain issues.
Who knows, right? So to reiterate, building solidarities
would include the solidarity economy, solidarity with nature and solidarity
circles.
I may sound like a dreamer, but I hope I'm not the only one. Okay,
of course. Let's begin by believing that building
solidarities is possible, that battling propaganda is possible. It is a
continuous dynamic battle. It's not over when one election gets done.
Because as one of my most favorite writers and thinkers in this world,
Susan Sag once argued, 10% of any population will be cruel no
matter what. And 10% of any population will be
merciful no matter what. and the remaining 80% can be swayed
either way." Okay, we all of us here, those who have
gathered in JB's memory, I reckon are not the 80%.
We are not the 80%. We are not the cruel ones either.
We are the 10% I should think the engaged ones the ones with voices and
skills that we can use must use to move the needle away from
propaganda and injustice even if for a little bit. We should not play small
because our playing small does not serve the world. It does not serve us.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. I know uh this has been titled as a memorial lecture uh and
I might have sounded lecturish. I have many lecture friends, lecture giving
friends, some of my dearest ones and I've been giving lectures for a long time. But I really and I told Dip this
when we spoke that um I don't want to end it like end this like a lecture. It
would be really nice if we could have a discussion not question answers because
I'm not an expert. I'm a foot soldier in this battle like all of you are. And so
if we can have a discussion and for me the apogee moment of this evening will
be if we can leave this room having formed one solidarity circle.
I think JB would be happy with that.
My name is Sunil and in the 35 minutes or so that you
spoke nonstop without a pause, it was wonderful to listen to you. At some
stage I asked myself and maybe you might not agree with my
question to myself. return a question to you whether this presentation which
obviously came from the heart was in a different way a kind of propaganda
that's the question that came to mind and I don't have the answer to have someone speak so gently for such
a long uh time and nothing about yourself and no nothing just calmly
telling us what we are facing what I'm left with is that are you still
saying that there is hope for change? Are you saying that there is hope for change or are we going to get worse and
worse and destroy ourselves and each other? The demon or the Frankenstein, the monster is getting bigger doesn't
mean we just sit quiet. That's what I'm saying. I'm not I'm not
just saying hope for change. I'm saying we need to act to make the change happen.
SRI, I can't thank you enough. You were brilliant. You were the clarity of thought you had
were absolutely fantastic. My question to you is when you're looking at the last three points you made, you were you
use the word economy over and over again and I think that
word is so deeply connected to capitalism. When you look at all the literature on
capitalism, it is always connected to that word economy. And I was just wondering if you
could have altered that like you know you talked about connection to nature,
you talked about solidarity circles. I hope we're going to find one form one now. I hope everybody will agree. But
that word economy constantly bothers me.
If you could think of something else or is it something that is the only word you can explain all these things about?
Well, the the term solidarity economy is not mine. I borrowed it for this
lecture. It exists and that's how it is understood. uh you're right in principle
to think of an alternative while using the terminology of what you are building
the alternative against is uh it's a it's a very confused state of affairs
but um left to myself maybe I would have coined another term but the term
solidarity economy is quite uh has is gaining momentum around the world as
solidarity economy u there are people who would understand some of those principles
uh you know where shareholders are replaced by stakeholders who are the stakeholders. So well yes you we could
think of replacing that word but the term solidarity economy is is an
accepted term. Solidarity is a much larger phenomenon and it's a much bigger
aspiration. Solidarity economy is at the moment one form
and it is very structurally oriented okay about material realities of life
and I so I think Anita's point is well made that while that certainly has its place I think in relation to propaganda
we are seeking here and that's why you know automatically you said can we or somebody said can we have a solidarity
circle come up here today I think that is Maybe currently the bigger urgent
kind of you know restlessness that we are all feeling. Yes. Um because they are interrelated. Yes.
The economic reality and the way minds are being bent and the ways in which spirit is being undermined but they are
not synonymous. And I think it might be good to remember that and ask ourselves
why do our forms of solidarity actually quite frankly not have a
matching level of passion. Let's be let us be self-reflective about this.
The forces of hate command and are able to incite and evoke
an intensity of feeling that we simply don't demonstrate. So we need to seriously reflect on that.
Hi Smi firstly um thank you for putting it all so clearly and um also pointing
to the places where propaganda is being sold to us but now we sort of don't see
it anymore because it's become so everyday. But I mostly I don't have a question. I just want to say that we've
become so cynical in the way that we speak even on social media or amongst ourselves that um there's hope is sort
of diminishing in its um currency in a way. So thank you for bringing back that back and leaving us with a hopeful
thought that if we find a way to get a solidarity circle going or even started
amongst our peers then maybe we can get somewhere. If not now then eventually. So thanks for that.
See we have studied about propaganda in social psychology courses. Propaganda in
that widest sense is a tool of modern society mass mediated society and it it
is there in so many spheres. What you are specifically referring to is political propaganda with uh with the
backing of a very powerful political you know a kind of a dictatorial kind of a regime. There is propaganda and
advertisements. There is propaganda, election propaganda which functions within the uh framework of democracy and
people generally know that this is propaganda and it is okay. Everybody is
free to prop propagandize. So are you really saying no propaganda anywhere
else or are you you are concentrating on a particular kind of very very
pernicious propaganda but not propaganda per se because that is a tool of modern
communication however problematic it is available to everybody to do it. So I
thought I should uh I I would like you to make that difference. Um yes I did uh
confine myself to certain aspects but of course propaganda uh encompasses a much
larger wider and it's often in the kind of economy in the kind of society we are
in it seems pernicious like you mentioned it also seems inescapable
and therefore normal. Okay, my uh point was very simply we need not allow it to
become so normal that we need not allow our uh discourse, our public discourse,
the popular imaginations, our narratives to be uh uh uh devoid of certain people,
certain words, certain thoughts.
What is really propag what propaganda whether it is political or otherwise and
propaganda you're right it's a it's a tool of the modern capitalist
free economy democracy right democracy that's built on this kind of a modern
free economy but uh the problem is not that
propaganda exists from what I see the problem is that propaganda replaces es
verified information. Propaganda replaces truth. Propaganda begins to
muddy and sully the truth. And propaganda is completely makes us
incapable of critical thought. That is my point of argument. Not that
there I don't know what propaganda can be replaced with. That's for experts. But in recognizing this, can we bring
back a little more criticality into the way we approach it? Otherwise, why would completely
rational people uh who run businesses worth crows of rupees and are extremely
levelheaded and clear in their thinking uh bang thali at their windows and sing
go corona go. It's for me that remains one of the lowest points where critical thinking
died as a nation.
This is the this is the result of a very specific kind of propaganda where we are
fa we were at that point 5 years ago faced with something we didn't completely know. We were fearful.
Propaganda feeds on fear. You know that. And so what did what were we told to do?
we were told to do this and critical thinking never just entered at all. And so my point simply is
ideally in utopia maybe there should be no propaganda at all. But so long as we
have this kind of an economic system I think you and I are on the same side we agree that we can't escape it. It's
going to be there. It's a part of that entire system. And that's why I talked about the economy as well. Uh
but at what point do we at least begin to reclaim critical thinking?
How do we reclaim that? Like I said, it's probably taking a bucket to an ocean, but can 100 of us take 100
buckets, 200 buckets? That's the question I'm leaving.
I think not only in this particular economic system. I think in all systems
propaganda exists wherever there is a particular group or
party in power. It exists and to my mind
every group in power will distort
in order to serve its purpose whatever that may be depending on the various
systems. I think the only way to combat this
which can then propaganda can after all subdue suppress
and subdue in whatever way. The only way I think to combat it is when opinions
can be freely expressed so that large numbers who may not buy
that propaganda are able to express their opinions. When different
perspectives can speak, for example, scientific perspective, critical
thinking, when democracy, not just electoral
democracy, but one, but when democracy exists and is allowed to exist, at least
is rested by people for themselves, till then propaganda will continue and hold
some sway because It's easy. It's easy to believe than to question.
Yes. It's so much easier. Yes. Plus, of course, there are suppressive and there are all kinds of ways to
suppress. So, all political systems use propaganda
and uh no, all systems do. All systems do. All systems do.
True. uh in democracies this is particularly
dangerous because for example um newspapers in uh Dubai and Abu Dhabi can
have front page stories of the Sultan's pet horse who died.
Why should Indian newspapers front page an elected prime minister petting his
bird? Right? And so I think propaganda is also within a certain kind of a context in
totalitarian states. Propaganda is we know it exists
in dictators uh countries we know propaganda exists and that's how they function.
This what I all that I said is in the context of a democracy.
Propaganda erodess the best of democratic values and that's why we have
to fight against it. As a fellow lecturer at
Ravi, please don't please don't throw legal arguments at me.
No, I I can understand why our students at SEM are completely bowled over by
your lectures. So uh yes so now you know about the the subject of your talk uh I
see it differently that you are placing uh a certain u porative content in
propaganda. Propaganda is really neutral. You have propaganda of the peasant. You have the propaganda of the
insurgent. You have the propaganda of the rebel. You have the propaganda of the proletariat. So what you really want
to have is a marketplace of ideas of competing propagandas.
So because every political system there's not really a distinction between a dictatorship and a democracy. The
lines are all blurred. Blurred. Yes. So what the way I see it particularly in our context where the
public space where where dominant media is completely controlled by the ruling
regime which is driving people like us to the margins
that you have to study history. You have to study particularly military history
and you understand the juristprudence of the insurgent
whereby not only his military skills but his ideology. How does a Naguyan fan
the great victor of the Vietnamese people against French colonialism? He's a student of Napoleon of Germany,
Napoleon's great military general. And he deconstructs
French military science to construct a war where his illiterate peasant and
artisan and tribal can wield modern weapons and defeat one of the most important colonialists. So you have many
such examples. You have like Scott has written weapons of the weak as to how peasants would revolt against
powerful regimes very often by fleeing. A peasant war was very often you simply
picked up your family and you ran away. That that was a war in itself. Yeah.
You see in Gaza tunnel warfare whereby you you you do not come into conflict
with the enemy. You create a different battlefield altogether. You see today drones where small countries with drones
can wipe out entire armies and entire entire mass tank warfare of yester years
is is now something of the textbooks. So similarly for us if you see the mobile phone which today is the main uh
uh you know all our anxieties our hopes are are centered on our mobile you go
anywhere in India the mobile shop is ubiques. So here what is a what is the government
doing all the time? Every time there's a problem they'll cut off all media uh connectivity but today you have Musk's
Starlink system where despite how much you may hate Musk he has created
technologies today which the state cannot control.
So you have technologies today whereby tomorrow if the government says okay
there are going to be no mobile phones operational and you nobody can communicate propaganda counterp
propaganda everything is dead you have a system like starink or something similar
which will will come out whereby groups even like us can be can become broadcasters
so these are sorry yeah so sorry so therefore what I'm saying is that in In
understanding propaganda there has we have to think of counterpropaganda then we have to think of what I call the
juristprudence of the insurgent. Thank you. Good point. But I wouldn't trust Musk
over any elected government. One last thing.
Yes. Thanks for this very u uh inspiring and also challenging uh a talk that
challenges all of us. Mine is not a question but a kind of observation. What resonated very much with me is what you
talked about poly crisis. On which front do you uh uh fight and whom and how far
I mean I have a classmate who dropped out of the WhatsApp group because uh you
know two of us said we stand in solidarity Palestine. I have a cousin and all my cousins many of them who have
become much more overtly religious you know and they will not see beyond
that and because of that so-called I mean new found or it was already there
the enemy is so much more to be hated and nothing positive that you say or or
you try to say I mean they will not see anything positive in the other you know there's a my mother's driver in
Hyderabad a Muslim driver whose son was so hounded at school by other children whose parents
said don't play with him and the class teacher a particular class he had a mental breakdown now the fathers pulled
him out of the school the boy is 10 you know how does you know which which
direction what do you do like so uh often it's very disheartening
and uh the the my worry is if you have a solidarity circle are you in danger of
being your own echo chamber I know you mean you know from you don't stay within yourself you see how you can reach
outwards but uh tough with the alternative is
what to feel helpless desperative to be hyperindividualized
maybe right I you know this is one like I said I'm offering ideas these are not the only ideas of course
hello everyone I'm Suri um Bane's granddaughter and I'm here to
thank um Mr. Satish Sahani and um the Neru Center for this wonderful space. Uh
and to our guest of honor Smith Gopikar, thank you for your insight. Um I wish
Bane were here to listen to you. Um and also my aunt and uncle uh Mina and