Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said it has been seen in the last two decades that the gap between the internal and external security is reducing and a country's independent media, judiciary, NGOs and dynamic democracy can be misused to destroy its security.
Addressing the second convocation of the Rashtriya Raksha University at Lavad village in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, Singh also stressed on the need for state agencies to work in an integrated manner.
With changing times, there has been a tremendous change in security dimensions, he said.
"We generally see security from two aspects - internal and external. But in the last two decades, it has been seen that the gap between the internal and external security is reducing," Singh said.
"In a hybrid war, the lines between the internal and external security almost disappear," he said.
Dynamic democracy
The defence minister said social media, NGOs, judiciary and democracy of a country can be misused by forces working to destroy its security.
"An independent social media can be used to carry out systematic propaganda. The freedom of social media is not bad, media should be free, but if the media is free, it can be misused...Attempts are made to establish and propagate dangerous and controversial things in the name of freedom of expression," he said.
“If the NGOs are free, efforts are made to use them in such a way that the entire system of the country is paralysed,” Singh said. “If the judiciary is free, efforts are made to use it to stop or slow down the works of development using the legal system. If a country has a dynamic democracy, then effort is made to infiltrate political parties to attack its unity and security.”
Singh also used the example of some media reports which said that 50 per cent of tweets in connection with the case of violence at Koregaon-Bhima (in Maharashtra's Pune district in 2018) originated from Pakistan.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.