Days after the police assaulted protesters who were marching from Jantar Mantar to Parliament on 20 July, a viral video started doing the rounds. Fact-checker Mohammed Zubair found several pro-BJP accounts uploading a mischievously edited video that wrongfully showed “Islamic” slogans being raised in the protest.
One of those users who had uploaded the video was Nupur Sharma, editor-in-chief of OpIndia, a pro-Hindutva online portal. Sharma didn’t take too kindly to Zubair’s tweet, calling out her post to be misleading.
“Calm your t*ts, C*****e,” she wrote, defending her post.
Sharma is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was even invited for his swearing-in ceremony in 2024.
On 31 July, Modi posted a video decrying the abusive comments directed at him by a 15-year-old girl in a viral video. Society, he said, had suffered “a cultural shock” at hearing these abuses being hurled at him. But Modi, magnanimously, was “forgiving” the young protester. After all, he and others had to show the young the right path, he added.
The BJP Is Not A Stranger To Abuse
There’s little Modi could do about Sharma, though. In the past, she had called film-maker Vinod Kapri “m*******d” (motherfucker) for pushing for peace between India-Pakistan.
Then, a day after Modi decried the abuse, Sharma posted a video of her own and doubled down on her abuse. “The people I abused in those two tweets, woh m*******d the, woh m*******d” hai, woh m*******d” rahenge.”
Sharma’s defiance is telling.
Modi seems to have discovered the perils of abuse. But, it might be a discovery 12 years too late. For over a decade, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have craftily used violence to do just what Sharma does—browbeat critics, attack religious minorities, and silence them into submission.
Far from the impulsive response of a 15-year-old girl navigating the world, profanity has been a carefully-employed weapon used by the BJP as well as its ecosystem of Hindutva voices—many of whom Modi actively follows and patronises.
Those The PM Leads
One possible reason behind Modi’s shock at the protesters’ language could be that he wasn’t paying attention to his own colleagues’ utterances.
Early on in his tenure, his ministerial colleague Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in December 2014 called all non-Hindus ‘haraamzade’, or those born illegitimately, while launching the party’s campaign in Delhi for the assembly polls. If the Prime Minister was shocked at her language, he didn’t show. Despite calls for her to be sacked, Jyoti served not one, but two terms as a Union Minister for State in the Modi government. She is now the chairperson of the National Commission for Backward Classes.
Another colleague of his, General VK Singh, hurled the slur “presstitutes” at journalists, which normalised abuse and slander towards critical journalists on social media. Perhaps Modi should have heard speeches by his party’s three-time Telangana legislator T Raja Singh. Singh has been the BJP’s face in the state for years. He has been photographed with Modi multiple times in the past, despite Singh’s reputation.
He has frequently delivered anti-Muslim hate speeches, calling Muslims everything from “laandon”, to “jihadi”, to “mulle”. In 2023, Singh, speaking at a Ram Navami rally in Hyderabad, out did himself.
Singh claimed threats to his son’s life, purportedly from Muslims.
"Arre m*******do”, yeh mera beta hai, bada beta. Jis din bhi main marunga, meri jagah par yeh Hindutva ka kaam karega. Agar mere parivar tak koi behen ka l***a aankh utha kar dekhega, itihaas rach dunga,” he said, to cheers and applause.
Ironically, Singh said this while on suspension from the BJP due to an earlier anti-Muslim hate speech he had delivered. But his speech might have won the BJP leadership over, because months after this speech, his suspension was revoked. Instead, he was renominated from Goshamahal constituency, where he won in the Assembly polls of December 2023.
The Language of the BJP
The BJP in Maharashtra wasn’t far behind.
For nearly two years, BJP MLA Nitesh Rane delivered virulent hate speeches across the state. The speeches targeted Muslims with threats and abuses, calling them green snakes and green pigs. In September 2024, in the run-up to the assembly polls in the state, Rane delivered one such threat.
He travelled to Achalpur city in Maharashtra’s Amravati, and launched into an abuse-filled diatribe against Muslims—he called them repeatedly called Muslims “bhadwe” (pimps), referring to the Owaisi brothers as “bhadwe”, calling for an economic boycott of Muslims and advocating a violent punishment of Muslims participating in the Navratri festivals by asking his followers to insert a “dandiya stick so hard” that they won’t be able to bend down.
22 minutes into his speech, Rane lost his speech and struggled to speak any more. “Evdhi g***d maarli ki awaaz gela…m*******d” (I abused them so much, I lost my voice…motherfucker),” he said.
Less than three months later, Rane was sworn in as a Cabinet minister in the BJP-led state government.
The PM's Instagram Follows
While the Prime Minister might have not been able to pay heed to the actions and words of his own men across the country, could he have used a little more discretion in hitting the follow button on ‘X’?
After all, among those he follows on X, formerly Twitter, are those who have celebrated and justified the murder of journalist of Gauri Lankesh; those who have openly called for violence against Muslims, as well as those who have called women journalists, “r***d” (whore), and “sluts”.
The Prime Minister’s dubious company extends also to the invite list his government draws up for official functions.
Along with OpIndia’s Sharma, Modi’s 2024 swearing-in ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan also saw an invitee in Suresh Chavhanke, who runs Sudarshan News, and has been frequently caught delivering hate speeches against Muslims. In one speech, he threatens to exhume bodies from a Muslim Qabrastan, in order to support his claim of a “land jihad” by Muslims.
Beyond the likes of Chavhanke lie the party’s infamous, faceless, unnamed IT cell warriors. For years, they have employed vitriolic abuse, gendered sexualised threats, morphed images and cartoons against the BJP’s critics and ideological enemies.
In May, after she tried asking Modi questions about India’s declining press freedom, Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng was targeted by a coordinated cyber harassment and doxxing campaign at the hands of Modi’s online supporters. She reported to have received abusive messages, sexualised threats and violent threats from multiple users.
This, obviously, is far from an exception. Look through the comments of journalists like Rana Ayyub, Zubair, or critical voices like Swara Bhasker and you will see the full wrath of the IT Cell, unleashed like clockwork, each time they post.
All this is well-known.
But 12 years in, the Prime Minister hasn’t condemned the abuse that his supporters have mounted in his name. Modi would have received a cultural shock much earlier, but he just wasn’t looking.
Since its ascent to power, the BJP brought with it a powerful arsenal of tools to take over the online discourse on social media platforms. One crucial element in this was its use of abuse—targeted towards Muslims and critics.
For years, the BJP and its online mobs enjoyed a monopoly over the use of profanity and violent speech. Which is why, the Prime Minister’s cultural shock seems to have come 12 years too late.
(Kunal Purohit is an award-winning independent journalist, writing on politics, gender, development, inequalities, and the intersections between them. He is an alumnus of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)