Captain Moonlight's Notebook: Propaganda war

A GLOSSY brochure for a new Hollywood film landed on my desk - or so I thought before I turned the pages and found it to be the Indian government's latest propaganda onslaught against Pakistan. It is a grotesque publication, with pictures in living colour of the dead, blood all over the page, and specious montages that seek to link foreign newspapers, including our sister organ, the Independent, to India's charges that Pakistan is responsible for the civil war in Kashmir and terrorist outrage in Punjab. I can't think that Israel or the Arab states have ever stooped so low in their propaganda war.

Called 'Asia's Deadly New Great Game', the brochure has been distributed to 800 'opinion formers' in Britain, though since the first page of text includes a gratuitous Stars-and- Stripes graphic I assume it is actually addressed to that big 'opinion former' in Washington. It says a 'reign of terror' has been unleashed in India by Pakistan, 'using the flotsam and jetsam washed up in the wake of the Afghan conflict', to destabilise the Indian government 'at any cost'. It's pleasing to know that the Indian High Commission considers Captain Moonlight an opinion former, but I'm afraid that in my case New Delhi's latest effort has backfired.