Once upon a time, it was believed that mankind’s ancestors — a man and a woman — had descended from a garden of delights after being suitably chastised by the almighty. But things got a bit complicated after that with the dawn of the scientific temper. Charles Darwin arrived and argued, persuasively, that humans had descended, not from that near-perfect idyll but — of all things! — apes. Unshakeable belief in reason or, for that matter, in the right and the wrong, has turned wobbly, once again, in this era of Post-Truth. Fake news — the kind that is often thought up and disseminated via traditional and alternative media platforms by willing acolytes — has made it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. So Darwin has been challenged in India, that too by a minister of higher education. But India’s ruling dispensation, which has selected such men to run critical institutions, is unlikely to be perturbed. However, there are warriors at work, painstakingly separating wheat and chaff. Perhaps they ought to be credited for forcing the technology titan, Facebook, to announce — albeit gushingly — that it had removed hundreds of pages and accounts in 2018 after discovering that these were propagating falsehood.

Falsehood is an abomination; it must be fought. But could it be that on rare occasions, fake news can, ironically, help weave a fantasy of — some would say — a better world? This week, it had been reported that counterfeit editions of The Washington Post, one of the most respected newspapers in the United States of America, had been sold for free, that too around the White House, declaring that Donald Trump had scooted from his post. The irony was rather delicate: Mr Trump, who is severely critical of the publication, has often described The Washington Post as a fount of falsehood. Understandably, the paper decried this rather ingenious stunt. The condemnation is justified because one of the pillars that hold up the edifice of journalism is truth.

But what has been done, repeatedly in the course of human history, when truth becomes unbearable? Artists and leaders have usually relied on their power of imagination to inspire fellow men and women by portraying a world that is shorn of trouble. What else did Martin Luther King do on that momentous day in 1963 in Washington DC? He spoke of a dream to end racial discrimination, which was, at that point in US history, only a fantasy. Hind Swaraj, penned by the Mahatma in 1909, spoke of home rule, a concept that could have been met with incredulity in an India that was years away from dismantling its imperial yoke. But things turned out differently.

There are instances of dreams turning into dust on account of deranged fantasies — those spun by Hitler are an example. Yet, Andy Warhol, that cheeky artist, did have a point when he said that everyone needs a fantasy. A flight, no matter how fanciful, is often the only way out of darkness.