Asia-Pacific

Modi met with spirited social media challenge as Indian elections continue

Modi’s party, seeking a third term in office, is expected to retain a majority in the 543-seat parliament when votes are counted on June 4th

Supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party cheer as they attend an election campaign rally for Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in Prayagraj, northern India. Photograph: Niharika Kulkarni/AFP/Getty

Rahul Bedi's face
Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
Fri May 24 2024 - 15:00

India’s mainstream broadcast, print and digital outlets, which are mainly supportive of prime minister Narendra Modi, have been facing a spirited challenge from social media during the general election.

Their video clips, commentaries and songs critiquing Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government have gone viral in the run-up to the last two rounds of the seven-phased polling process that concludes on June 1st. The sixth round of voting takes place on Saturday.

Modi’s party, seeking a third term in office, is expected to retain a majority in the 543-seat parliament when votes are counted on June 4th.

Political commentators have said online posts by freelance journalists, teachers, activists and humorists, among others, asking voters to reject Modi, are considered more effective than opposition criticism.

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Some opposition candidates have aired the clips, many of which have been translated into several Indian languages.

India's election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging such an exercise in democracy in the world's most populous country. Photograph: Amarjeet Kumar Singh/AFP/Getty

With more than 462 million users, India has the world’s largest YouTube/social media market, according to Statista, the German online data gathering enterprise. An increasing number of Indians source their news from YouTube and analogous platforms, all of which are exploited by the antithetical vloggers and bloggers.

Analysts have said that dwindling media space for “speaking truth to power” account for the popularity of these “fightback” online posts.

They have said the posts also counter politically partisan and Islamophobic posts by BJP supporters which are intrinsic to the Hindu nationalists’ ideology.

Dhruv Rathee has emerged as a popular adversarial vlogger, whose recent 30-minute video entitled The Narendra Modi files: A dictator mentality? has attracted more than 24 million viewers on YouTube.

[ Potential India-Pakistan war signalled as Modi’s election rhetoric grows more worrying ]

Speaking in Hindi, the Germany-based 29-year-old mechanical engineer has fact-checked Modi and charged the prime minister with perpetuating anti-Muslim communalism. He has also accused Modi of manipulating most of India’s institutions, including the judiciary and investigating agencies, to stifle dissent and opposition to the BJP.

Modi, he said, never mentioned critical issues such as spiralling unemployment, mounting social unrest or soaring income disparities in his election speeches, as he had done little to alleviate them. He also criticised Modi for never holding a press conference in his decade-long tenure or facing an “unscripted interview”.

Saheb (Master), a Hindi music video posted on Instagram last month by journalist Praanjoy Thakurta satirising Modi and the BJP, has also been widely viewed. It has been translated into several regional languages to reach voters across the country.

The plethora of posts berating India’s deteriorating democratic credentials have been supported by domestic and overseas human rights organisations.

Under the government’s revised Information Technology law, users are banned from creating, uploading or sharing content that threatens the unity of India or public order

In March, Sweden’s V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2024 said that after being downgraded as an “electoral autocracy” in 2018, India had declined further on multiple metrics to emerge as “one of the [world’s] worst autocratizers” by the end of 2023.

Its annual report stated that the BJP under Modi had “used laws on sedition, defamation and counter-terrorism to silence critics”.

The BJP has responded to the unfavourable online coverage with posts deriding Modi’s political rivals, perpetuating conspiracies regarding Muslims harming Hindus, and portraying a utopian future for India under its leader.

It launched a prosecution against folk singer Neha Singh Rathore in northern Uttar Pradesh state for her online song mourning the death of a mother and daughter in a hut last year, after it was set alight during a forced eviction drive in the industrial township of Kanpur.

[ India election: Modi deploys anti-Muslim rhetoric ahead of latest round of voting ]

Soon after, the 27-year-old vlogger was also charged with “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion” following her social media post decrying a video of a man urinating on a tribal man in public in Madhya Pradesh state.

Under the government’s revised Information Technology law, users are banned from creating, uploading or sharing content that threatens the unity of India or public order.

A “fact-checking unit” can identify “fake, false or misleading news”, take it down and can launch a criminal prosecution against the blogger.

Meanwhile, Modi has questioned his biological birth and in a recent interview with News 18 television said he had been sent by god for a particular task (of ruling India).

“Till my mother was alive, I had the impression that perhaps my birth was a biological one,” he said. But after her death in December 2022 he said he realised that his boundless energy could not have emanated from a biological body, but derived directly from God himself.

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