Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels famously said - "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it". He wasn't far from the truth.
But far before the rise of Hitler, more than a thousand year ago in Ancient India our master storyteller Vishnu Sharma elucidated the same in one of his famous stories from his PANCHA TANTRA (The five treatise) as follows.
Once a group of three friends saw a Brahmin carrying a goat on his shoulders. They wanted to acquire the goat for themselves and came up with a master plan. The first friend walked to the Brahmin and addressed him acting perplexed - "Sir, you are carrying a pig on your shoulders". "Are you out of your mind ? Can't you see that I am carrying a goat ?" - dismissed the Brahmin.
After a while the second guy appears in front of the Brahmin and starts laughing at him - "Pundit jee, how silly of you to carry a donkey on your shoulder ?". "What ? Today it seems I am having a bad day, encountering some blind and crazy people", said the Brahmin and walked on.
No sooner he had walked a furlong further, than he saw the third guy who approached him with an inquisitive look - "O' the pious one. How on earth a sacred brahmin like you is carrying a dirty animal like dog on your shoulder ?" The Brahmin was now scared to death. He was convinced that he is not carrying a goat but a ghost who is metamorphing into different animal forms. He threw the goat away and fled, leaving it to mercy of the three amigos.
We have heard of the Odia proverb "TINI TUNDARE CHHELI KUKURA", meaning when word travels across three mouths, a goat can be transformed into a dog. So true. As words gets transported from mouth to mouth they can get distorted beyond words. Same thing happens when a message travelling on the Social media gets metamorphosed with its far reaching consequences with ripple effects.
North korea does similar propaganda. The commoners in their country believe that their Dear Leader Kim Jung Un, his father and grandfather before him don't pass urine, nor defecate. They are simply superhuman bearing superpower. Day in, day out lies blasted by their state run media ingrain this weird notion in their gullible head about their perfectly human leaders.
No wonder Trump loves and idolizes Kim Jung Un and sundry dictators like him. He pontificates some of the dangerous lies at time of this Coronavirus crisis which has already claimed nearly 60,000 lives in America. In one of his widely covered White House briefings he advocated intake of disinfectants to get rid of the morbid, obnoxious virus.
It was soon followed by several calls in across in America with people asking if they can consume disinfectants like Clorox to cleanse themselves of Coronavirus. A la those gullible in America who blindly follow Trump, their counterpart extreme Right wingers in India (alluded as BHAKTs) have traced almost all the modern innovations and inventions, everything from Airplanes, Television to Internet to some Sage or Baba from 5,754 BC. Any rational person questioning the veracity of such idiotic propaganda is readily branded as unpatriotic, a perfect candidate for migrating to Pakistan.
Such characteristics are dangerous for Scientific temper and future. But the politicians shamelessly use this for cheap political gains. After all TINI TUNDARE CHHELI KUKURA. A lie repeated three times after all a truth. Repeated 100 times, it becomes gospel.
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