Fake news in India

[6][10] According to newspaper The Telegraph, "a giant chunk of the disinformation is created and highlighted by an ecosystem close to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the Narendra Modi government, and their supporters.

[18][19] BJP leaders shared a phone number for people to give a missed call to show support, which was misused on Twitter with fake claims about lonely women and free Netflix subscriptions.

[17] BJP's IT Cell Head Amit Malviya shared distorted videos misrepresenting anti-CAA protesters as chanting "Pakistan Zindabad" and making inflammatory slogans against the Hindu community.

[39] In October 2019, it sponsored a trip for far-right European Parliament MPs to Indian-administered Kashmir, where they met Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

[45] In 2023, Indian media spread disinformation about a padlocked grave in Hyderabad, India, claiming it was in Pakistan to prevent the dead bodies from being raped.

[48][49] There have been multiple instances of pictures from the Syrian and the Iraqi civil wars being passed off as from the Kashmir conflict with the intention of fueling unrest and backing insurgencies.

[50][51][52] In August 2019, following the Indian revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's Article 370, disinformation related to whether people were suffering or not, lack of supplies and other administration issues followed.

[59][60] On the other hand, The New York Times claimed officials in New Delhi were portraying a sense of normality in the region, whereas "security personnel in Kashmir said large protests kept erupting".

"[61] The Supreme Court of India was told by the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that "not a single bullet has been fired by security forces after August 5", however BBC reported otherwise.

"[62] During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, social media accounts based in India spread pro-Israeli disinformation, with influencers misrepresenting videos purported to show school girls taken as sex slaves, or Hamas kidnapping a Jewish baby.

[64] Gobinda Pramanik, Former Secretary General of the Bangladesh National Hindu Grand Alliance, criticized the Indian media, suggesting they inaccurately portrayed the situation.

Pramanik stated that the vandalism incidents targeted only the homes of certain Awami League leaders, both Hindu and Muslim, with a history of aggressive actions.

[67] Numerous India-based social media accounts circulated misleading videos and images about attacks on Bangladeshi Hindus, using hashtags like #AllEyesOnBangladeshiHindus and #SaveBangladeshiHindus, which were debunked by fact-checking organizations.

[71] Several television news outlets falsely claimed the violence was an "act of genocide" and a "pogrom", while an alleged arson attack on a Hindu temple was found to have occurred at an adjacent Awami League office.

[73] Analysts Farid Erkizia Bakht and Siddharth Varadarajan suggested that India's intent to destabilize Bangladesh through this disinformation campaign stems from the disappointment of losing a valuable ally like Sheikh Hasina and from apprehensions about the new government in the country harbouring anti-Indian sentiments.

[87] Engineered mass violence was instigated during the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, through a disinformation campaign propagating the love jihad conspiracy theory and circulating a fake news video.

"[94][95] The J&K administration released a new Media Policy-2020 on 15 May 2020, stating that "any individual or group indulging in fake news, unethical or anti-national activities or plagiarism shall be de-empaneled besides being proceeded against under law.

[97] The Indian Express published an editorial stating that "at a time when democratic political voices remain missing" in the Union Territory, the policy is an "affront, intended to keep control of the narrative of J&K."

It is available globally and supports nine Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Punjabi.

The program, Google's largest training initiative in the world, would spread awareness of fake news and anti-misinformation practices such as fact-checking.