Washington — Researchers from the National Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) have uncovered evidence suggesting that Iranian state-sponsored trolls are behind the spread of anti-India and anti-Hindu messaging on the social media to influence the American policy against India.
The research findings were presented by John K. Donohue, former chief of strategic initiatives at the New York City Police Department and senior law enforcement advisor, along with Prasiddha Sudhakar, an analyst with the NCRI, at an advocacy event organized by Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), at the Capitol Hill, Washington DC on Tuesday.
The study analyzed social media activity related to India and found a significant amount of content that was designed to incite hatred and violence against Hindus.
The research team found that the majority of this content originated from profiles and bots that were traced back to Iran. The content included false information, manipulated images, and misleading headlines, all of which were designed to stoke anti-India sentiment.
Findings
Prasiddha said, “Disseminating Anti-Hindu messages and one of the main messages of these Iranian state sponsored trolls was actually talking about the caste issue and here is actually some sample tweets, that the Iranian state sponsored trolls talked about, basically suggesting that uppercaste Hindus are oppressing all other communities”.
“This messaging was very prevalent with the corpus of about 20,000 feeds”, she added.
Further, she said, “While we investigated state sponsored Iranian trolls, when it comes to discussing this caste issue and affecting real public policies in America today”.
Their analysis of 1 million tweets revealed that Iranian trolls engaged in spreading anti-Hindu stereotypes with the intention of sowing discord. This was identified as part of an influence campaign aimed at accusing Hindus of perpetrating a genocide against minorities in India.
Leftist and Communist Propaganda
Prasiddha said, “Whether it was Professor Dilip Mandal, Jignesh Mevani, or Ambedkar International Center’s Ashok Swain. What is one thing that you notice, about all of these actors that are the most dominant in the conversation on Twitter? You’ll see that only three of these actors are actually based in the United States, and when you took a look at other, open source intelligence, from what these actors have been claiming about Hindus, you see that these are the types of views that they have typically held. So this really raises the concern of what kind of actors are dominating the conversation”.
“Are they really concerned Americans who are passing public policy that affect Americans or is this some kind of a foreign influence operation?”, she added.
The findings of this study are particularly concerning given Iran’s strategic interests in the region and its support for India’s arch-rival, Pakistan.
The NCRI’s research has shed light on the extent of Iran’s involvement in spreading anti-India propaganda and the potential threat it poses to India’s national security.
The NCRI’s findings are likely to have significant implications for India’s foreign policy and its relations with Iran.
