Sadhavi Khosla, a Former BJP Volunteer, Discusses the Party's

INTERVIEW / GOVERNMENT “I Am Against Any Kind of Hatred Being Spread”: Sadhavi Khosla, a Former BJP Volunteer, Discusses the Party’s Social-Media Campaigns, Online Trolls, and Why She Left KEDAR NAGARAJAN

05 January 2017

Khosla, a former volunteer of the BJP's digital cell, said the party and its supporters led hateful campaigns against those who opposed the Modi government. AHMER KHAN

In her December 2016 book, I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Social Media Army, the journalist Swati Chaturvedi reports on the social media strategy, campaign and cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the online “trolls” that support it. She examines the social-media strategies the party employed during its campaign leading up to the 2014 general elections, and how it has used social media to its advantage since it came to power. In her book, Chaturvedi states that she spoke to more than two-dozen former and current members of the National Digital Operations Centre (NDOC), the BJP’s digital-campaign wing.

One such individual is Sadhavi Khosla, a former volunteer who worked for the NDOC for nearly two years, until late 2015. Khosla told Chaturvedi that the NDOC and its heads—including Arvind Gupta, the national convenor of the BJP’s IT cell—ran targeted campaigns over platforms such as WhatsApp and Twitter against those who appeared to criticise the Modi government or the BJP. On this list, Khosla said, were celebrities such as Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan as well as journalists such as Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt. According to Khosla, after Aamir Khan commented in November 2015 on alleged acts of intolerance in India, the cell ran a campaign to ensure that he was ousted from his role as the brand ambassador of Snapdeal, an e- commerce platform. She also spoke to Chaturvedi about the methods that the NDOC volunteers used, including threats of physical and sexual violence. Khosla told Chaturvedi that the absence of any reprimand from the BJP leadership for such acts led to her disillusionment with her work. Since the release of the book, several BJP members, including Gupta, have denied Khosla’s allegations, and accused her of lying about her involvement with the BJP. Many have also claimed that she either defected to, or was working for, the Congress party.

On 2 January 2017, Kedar Nagarajan, a web reporter with The Caravan, met Khosla, and later continued the conversation over the phone. They discussed the structure and functioning of the NDOC, the work she did, as well as the events that led her to resign. They also spoke about the allegations that have been raised against her. At the beginning of their discussion, Khosla said, “I would not be surprised if my phone is tapped and my activities on the phone are being monitored.”

Kedar Nagarajan: What drew you to the National Digital Operations Centre?

Sadhavi Khosla: I want to set one thing very straight, I was neither a member nor an employee of the Bharatiya Janata Party—I was a volunteer. I was driven by my passion to be part of a movement that was created at that point in time. In 2012-13, there was a huge anti-establishment wave with the Anna Hazare movement and all that. I think that this was the rst point in time where young Indians—apolitical people and educated Indians—came forward to be part of a political change. The year 2014 was the rst time I registered my voter ID card and chose to vote. (/covid-19?ref=article&id=3355) Advertisement

I am the only one in [my] family who supported a non-Congress candidate and I did so because at that point I was listening to my own voice—there was a serious void in the Congress leadership, and so the choices in front of the country were Mr Modi and the Anna movement. I am not a very ideological person; national interests drive me. I feel that for a healthy democracy, things need to rotate and power should never be only in one set of hands. I have lived in the US and seen how rotation works there.

Writing is my passion and I used to write on Twitter about the [United Progressive Alliance government]’s failure. That’s what caught the BJP’s attention. I was given a call [by the BJP] asking me to join, and I said no, I would like to volunteer. So they said that we have our Mission 272+ website [the BJP’s campaign for the 2014 elections], go register there and be part of the change. A few days after that, Mr Modi began following me [on Twitter] and he still does. It has been almost three years since. I do not think that any other leader has used social media the way Mr Modi has.

KN: What was the nature of the work you did for the NDOC?

SK: I helped organise many door-to-door campaigns to increase the volunteer base. I organised many “Chai Pe Charcha” events [an outreach programme launched by the BJP in the run-up to the 2014 general elections]. I helped organise an event for Smriti Irani [the union minister for textiles] and I worked directly on [the BJP member of parliament from Chandigarh] Kirron Kher’s campaign in Punjab. The door-to-door campaigns also bothered me because often these campaigns focused on maligning political opponents, instead of talking about the development intentions. It was, however, a combination of both kinds of rhetoric Advertisement

KN: Can you elaborate on the organisational structure of the NDOC?

SK: Once I joined in January 2014, I got a call from their Ashoka Road oce [the national headquarters of the BJP, in Delhi]. A person named Vishal Gupta, who was an employee of the BJP, became my daily point of contact. He used to report to Arvind Gupta [the national convenor of the BJP’s IT cell and reportedly the head of the social-media cell until July 2015 (http://pllqt.it/nQzD2O)]. Vishal Gupta is no longer a part of the BJP. He was the one who made me a part of many volunteer [WhatsApp] groups. We would have meetings at our homes, cafes and even at the Ashoka Road oce.

There was a lady named Smita Barooah [another volunteer, who was tasked with coordinating women volunteers for the BJP (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/smita-barooahs-insider-account- from-right-inside-modis-hectic-campaign/articleshow/35317252.cms)] who has attacked me the most. She is a friend of Arvind Gupta’s from Singapore and she took a sabbatical to come and help at the Ashoka Road oce. I went with her to Chandigarh to work on Kirron Kher’s campaign. [Barooah] came to my house to kickstart the “Chai Pe Charcha” campaign.

KN: Barooah posted on Twitter (http://www.rstpost.com/politics/days-after- swati-chaturvedis-book-on-bjps-social-media-tacts-whistleblower-sadhvi-khoslas- credibility-questioned-3179428.html) that you were not a part of the IT cell, and that you did not attend any strategy or management meetings. What is your response?

SK: She is bound to make the same claims as Arvind Gupta. I have never said to any reporter that I was any more than a volunteer; I have never claimed to be a member of the BJP or a paid employee of the NDOC. [Barooah] had come to my house to kickstart Chai pe Charcha and together, we hosted 50 other women. All this is proven by the several images and tweets on Twitter (http://www.rstpost.com/politics/days-after-swati-chaturvedis-book-on-bjps- social-media-tacts-whistleblower-sadhvi-khoslas-credibility-questioned- 3179428.html). Moreover, if I never had any involvement and I was nobody, then why does the PM still follow me on Twitter? Advertisement

KN: What was the professional background of most of the employees and volunteers at the NDOC?

SK: They were all educated people, mostly NRIs [non-resident Indians] that had taken a sabbatical. That was a big motivator: I myself am an MBA with a corporate background, to have people from similar backgrounds motivated by this really charged me up. Everyone was very keen on bringing Modi into power. Mr Modi being the great marketer that he is, he sold the Gujarat model to us very well. We all believed in his [campaign promises o] acche din and good governance.

KN: In her book, Chaturvedi mentions that you said that the work you were given was not what you expected you would be doing.

SK: I am a very peace-loving person. The only man I follow after god is Mahatma Gandhi. For someone [like me] to become a volunteer in a party where he is hated and abused, and doing something opposite to his ideology, was very disillusioning. I understand that in politics you have to attack your opponent, but spreading hatred in this way is wrong.

It is not that I was made to do any work in particular. A volunteer is a perfect person, or what Modi would call a yodha [warrior], because you do not own them. If you read the comments [made publicly by] the members of the BJP in the [the recent days], they all claim that they do not know me. That is very easy for them, because then they are not accountable; because you can then say that they [the volunteers] were all tweeting things according to their own wish.

What I disliked was that, in those groups, there was continuous hate directed at minorities, some journalists, and anyone else who has opposing views. When the head of the NDOC [referring to Arvind Gupta] sends me direct WhatsApp messages saying, sign the petition to remove Aamir Khan from the Snapdeal campaign, what does that mean? [Chaturvedi’s book includesa screenshot of a message (http://indianexpress.com/article/india/force-snapdeal-to-dump-aamir- khan-bjp-it-chief-told-social-media-cell-4446486/) that Arvind Gupta allegedly sent Khosla, encouraging her to sign a petition asking Snapdeal to remove Aamir Khan from their advertisements.] When the head sends you messages with hashtags for the day and targets for the day, what does it mean? No one is forcing me to do work, but it means that the heads of these organisations are endorsing such views. To me, it becomes the ocial line.

KN: Was there a marked dierence in the hate campaigns targeting women and those targeting men?

SK: When Barkha Dutt’s book came [Dutt’s book, This Unquiet Land, was released in December 2015], the entire [WhatsApp] group was full of posts and plans to make sure that her book was a op. It is not like anybody was made to tweet in any particular way. There would be targets and agenda, and the volunteers and employees would themselves go out and tweet. The PM till date follows some of the most abusive people online. Should a prime minister be doing that?

At that particular point in time, people who are at the helm of the BJP aairs managed those groups. When Mrs [Sonia] Gandhi was in the hospital, I read some of the tweets wishing her death—it was obnoxious. When [the senior Congress leader] Digvijay Singh’s daughter died, I felt very bad, being a parent [mysel], but there was so much abuse even on that day.

KN: Were the other campaigns similar to the Snapdeal campaign?

SK: As I mentioned, there were campaigns against Shah Rukh Khan and the journalists Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai. This was what made me disillusioned with the [NDOC’s] work. Their policy was that they would bring down opponents and people with diering views to such a low level, and present themselves as larger than life. For me, the biggest shocker was that suddenly Aamir and Shah Rukh— among people like my friends, who are apolitical—have become “Muslims.” I have watched [the actors] while growing up, and they were our stars. I never thought of them as Muslims.

KN: How involved do you think the prime minister was with the other party members’ online campaigns?

SK: I am only assuming that he was. I was told that he was overseeing all social media campaigns because there was so much at stake for him. I give a lot of credit to the social media army for Modi’s victory. I was also told [by people at the NDOC] that he had frequent phone calls with Arvind Gupta and other seniors at the NDOC.

KN: During your time at the NDOC, did you raise objections to some of the tweets that were put out by abusive trolls?

SK: Yes. I had tweeted that (http://pllqt.it/nQzD2O) the same social media army that led to his victory will bring him down one day. I had very seriously objected to these hate campaigns and was never a part of any myself. I wrote my objections on Twitter and tagged the PM and the NDOC. I said on a public platform that this is wrong and we should not be doing this. Even while supporting Modi, I consistently raised objections. I did not have the sort of access where I could complain to anyone directly.

KN: Was there a tipping point or a moment that nally made you quit?

SK: In my mind, I had quit at the beginning of January 2015. I am an activist and I tweeted to the PM about the drug-abuse issue in Punjab. I have also made a documentary on the issue [Khosla’s documentary, titled Fading Glory, was released in early 2016]. The PM’s silence when I reached out to him was the beginning of my disenchantment. I think the Aamir Khan case was the tipping point for me.

KN: Gupta claimed that (https://twitter.com/buzzindelhi/status/813926686211178496) you joined the Congress after the BJP rejected your request to work for their Punjab campaign.

SK: This is all rubbish, he has to say something now that I have come out and spoken. If there is an assumption that I worked for the Congress in Punjab, you can check with the Congress.

KN: What has been your involvement with the Congress party in Punjab?

SK: At the time that I was screening my documentary, I, as an activist, had invited everyone including the prime minister and the home minister to come and see the documentary. But none of them came, and Rahul Gandhi—whom I have publicly criticised for two years—chose to attend. That was the only time I met him.

Advertisement Punjab is my home state; I want my state to recover from the drug problem. I had written to the PM and other senior members of the BJP on Twitter many times asking them to break their ties with the [Shiromani] Akali Dal and set up their own base there. I received no response for them. I have explicitly stated that my family has been a supporter of the Congress for generations, but I have never been a part of the Congress in any capacity. I am from Patiala and so is [the senior Congress leader in Punjab] Captain Amarinder Singh, and our families have known each other for a long time. Does this mean I am volunteer, a party member, a person asking for a ticket or the head of the social-media cell of the Congress? No, it does not at all.

KN: On your twitter prole (https://twitter.com/sadhavi/status/712524171411079170), you referred to Rahul Gandhi and Captain Amarinder Singh as guests of honour at the screening of the documentary.

SK: Rahul Gandhi and Captain Amarinder were the only ones that accepted the invitation. Had the PM, home minister and other leaders come, they would have also been guests of honour.

KN: Since your departure from the NDOC, have you received any threats?

SK: You have to see my Twitter page to see the kind of slandering that has been going on there, especially in the past few days. I have become one of the main targets on their hit list—there are so many threats and sexual remarks.

After [Rahul Gandhi] attended my documentary screening, I wrote a blog post (http://www.sadhavikhosla.com/my-rst-meeting-with-rahul-gandhi/) about how I had misconceptions about him. After I wrote that—oh my god, if I send you the screenshots of the abuse I have received. All this actually only proves my point.

KN: What made you decide to speak up about this?

SK: I have been associated with the BJP, so I can speak about their social media. I do not know how it works in other parties. Social media can be a boon or a bane, and I have been witness to the way the BJP has used it negatively. I wanted to come out and share my views so that everyone who does not have any specic political leaning applies their mind and does not blindly listen to what they see on social media.

KN: Has this experience eroded your faith in the prime minister and in the BJP?

SK: They have become very arrogant. I will support the PM as and when he does anything in the national interest. I came out publicly and put out a tweet expressing my support for demonetisation. But I am against any kind of hatred being spread because I feel that we do not realise that freedom is very hard-earned. For me, a united India is way more important than 100 smart cities and bullet trains.

What we cannot aord is communal disharmony. I do not think that religion has divided us as much as politics has. Times were dierent even under the previous BJP government. Now it is either you are with Modi or [you are] anti-national—I do not support this at all.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

KEDAR NAGARAJAN (/AUTHOR/941) is a web reporter at ḎǴ Qǀ ẃǀ Ỵǀ Ṏ.

KEYWORDS: BJP(/tag/bjp) twitter(/tag/twitter) social media(/tag/social-media)

2014 Lok Sabha elections(/tag/2014-lok-sabha-elections) Trolls(/tag/trolls)

Social media campaign(/tag/social-media-campaign) Sadhavi Khosla(/tag/sadhavi-khosla)

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SUBMIT READER'S COMMENTS nav rattan singh It is very obvious that the article as well as the interview/phone talk is a paid 19 Sep, 2017 job.

Bbabu People losts thier senses to understand this dirty games and hatred 17 Aug, 2017 spreading...

Himy Misra its always better to wise up. better late than never. 07 Jan, 2017

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Careers Syndication NEWS / POLITICS Former BJP data analyst on how the party wins elections and inuences people THE CARAVAN

29 January 2019

Shivam Shankar Singh, a former data analyst with the BJP explains how the party used technology to fuel casteist and communal strife to win elections. COURTESY SHIVAM SHANKAR SINGH

In June 2018, Shivam Shankar Singh, a former data analyst with the Bharatiya Janata Party, wrote a post (https://medium.com/@ShivamShankarS/why-i-am-resigning-from- bjp-43b489d97777) on the online blogging platform Medium, titled “Why I am resigning from BJP.” In it, he said he took the decision to leave the party as “the negatives of this Narendra Modi and Amit Shah government now outweigh the positives for me.”

Singh worked for the BJP ahead of the assembly elections in Manipur and Tripura, held in 2017 and 2018 respectively. He used data to help chalk out election strategies and target voter-groups through social media. During this time, he wrote, he noticed that the BJP was “spreading some specic messages with incredibly eective propaganda.” He also noticed drastic dierences between what the party promised and what it was delivering. Singh began to grow disillusioned with the party. He wrote in his post that the BJP was “pushing the national discourse in a dark corner.”

Singh is now working with the mahagathbandhan, a grand coalition of political parties in Bihar, which opposes the BJP. Earlier this month, Tushar Dhara, a reporting fellow at The Caravan, met him in Delhi. Singh detailed how the BJP used technology to fuel casteist and communal strife to win elections. An edited excerpt from the conversation is reproduced below.

When I rst campaigned for the BJP in 2013, there was a narrative about corruption in the country as the 2G, Coalgate, Commonwealth scams had just come to light. Modi presented himself as a great administrator, and at that time, that is what the country was looking for. There was a group set up by the election strategist Prashant Kishore, called Citizens for Accountable Governance. Young professionals from technology and consultancy services, such as KPMG and Ernst & Young, had also left their jobs and joined the CAG to work for Modi’s campaign.

That is the background in which I joined the BJP. I worked for them informally— wrote a few articles and social media posts. The BJP’s data set-up was very strong in 2014. But the structure soon collapsed because the party felt that they had won the election because of Modi. The party’s opinion was that data was not needed. Then something major happened—in 2015, it lost the assembly elections in Delhi and Bihar. The prime minister went to Bihar and said at a rally, “Have you got electricity? Have you got roads?” He expected people to say no, but the crowd said, “Yes!” Even a basic survey would have told you to not raise this issue. The BJP ran blind and lost miserably. This is when they started to build their data structure again. By 2016, they became strong again.

That year, I joined Kishor’s political advocacy group, the Indian Political Action Committee, and worked in Punjab for for a few months. [For the then upcoming Punjab legislative assembly election, the IPAC was campaigning (https://www.indianpac.com/our-work/punjab-elections) for the Congress.]The perception was that the Congress’s chief ministerial candidate Amarinder Singh, who was called a “Maharaja,” is lazy and does not work too hard. The Congress’s biggest weakness has been that their cadre does not exist in most places and where it does, it does not work because they are not emotionally driven.

(/covid-19?ref=article&id=4900) Advertisement

But things changed with an expensive and energetic campaign, “Punjab da Captain”—Punjab’s Captain. The campaign did two things. Firstly, it transformed Singh from a “Maharaja” to a “Captain.” Secondly, it took him to every constituency, which convinced the party cadre that he is not that disconnected from the ground—the cadre became emotionally driven. After the stint in Punjab, I realised that I am interested in politics, not just consultancy and branding.

I then got in touch with Ram Madhav—the national general secretary of the BJP. He asked me to move to Manipur for the assembly elections in the state, scheduled to be held in 2017. There was absolutely nothing there—no oce, no party structure. We hired graphic designers, researchers, built a campaign team and commissioned some surveys. Then all the emotional issues started to go against the BJP. They could not commit on inner-line permits (https://scroll.in/article/847256/as-the-inner-line-permit-demand-returns-in- manipur-the-state-government-treads-with-caution); the blockade on Manipur that had been enforced at the time; and a secret accord (https://thewire.in/government/revealed-rss-draft-plan-nagaland-accord) with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah). The BJP needed 31 seats, but they won 21. In March 2017, they formed the government with the help of smaller parties. After that, I came back to Delhi and started proling constituencies using data, beginning the exercise with the northeast. The idea was for a campaign to yield the maximum return on investment—if the BJP wanted to win a constituency, these were the booths to focus on, and in the constituencies where the possibility of winning was less, it should not put in eort on the booths there.

We collected data regarding three previous parliament and assembly elections from the Election Commission and combined it to see the trend of votes. In the northeast, the BJP did not exist, the Congress and regional parties did. The analysis showed us which booths in Tripura were against the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which was then ruling the state. We combined the analyses with the socio-economic, caste and survey data. We then conducted focus-group discussions to see which caste and tribe was voting for whom.

The BJP’s strategy with respect to elections is that if you win the booth, you will win the constituency, and the state. We looked at prior voting data at the booth level. Data from the Election Commission’s Form 20 tells you how the votes in that booth were distributed—this gives a good idea of the core votes and the shifting- votes of each party. We digitised the electoral roll and then mapped mobile numbers to the names on the electoral rolls to deliver messages via social media. The BJP’s panna pramukh is in charge of 60 names, which form one panna, or page, of an electoral roll. Her responsibility is to go to these houses and deliver the BJP’s messaging and report their reaction to the party.

While we formed the government in Manipur, we lost the battle of narratives in the state. So, we were careful in Tripura. For instance, it was true that the former chief minister Manik Sarkar brought peace to Tripura. We countered that with a campaign that all of northeast had become peaceful in the previous 15–20 years. Hence, Sarkar’s achievement was not exceptional. We identied the Seventh Pay Commission as a major issue, because the government employees in Tripura were getting paid according to the Fourth Pay Commission. We promised an additional Rs 20,000–30,000 to them, which made a major dierence. The BJP won hands down.

The BJP also used this strategy in states such as Uttar Pradesh, where, in most cases you can gure out people’s caste and religion based on their names. With that, after you have linked phone numbers to electoral rolls, you can send personalised messages. For instance, the Yadavs—a community within the Other Backward Classes, or OBC—are the core voter base of the Samajwadi Party. So, the BJP targeted the non-Yadav OBCs and the non-Jatav Dalits. It sent personalised messages on social-media to the non-Yadav OBCs, which said that the Yadavs have taken the benet of reservation, and until the Samajwadi Party is in power they will not get any reservation. These messages would never be sent from the ocial BJP channels, they would come from random WhatsApp groups titled “NaMo Supporters 2019 Banaras,” “Kattar Hindu Sena” or “Hindu Mahasabha.”

The BJP also identies the Hindu communities that are strongly anti-Muslim across the state. For them, the messaging is that the Muslim population will overtake the Hindu population—this is not true, but through their narrative the party tries to intensify that sentiment. Fake news is combined with this—for instance, a video from Syria or Bangladesh is circulated with text that says, “Look at what’s happening in Muzaarnagar.” People cannot tell the dierence because the men in the video have beards and are wearing skull caps.

The funding ecosystem of social media is outside the ambit of what the Election Commission tracks. But it should be tracked—a major part of their social media campaign is being outsourced to groups which do not have anything to do with the BJP ocially. It is equivalent to advertisements on TV or radio. I know of groups that work out of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh which control 20–30 pro-BJP Facebook pages. “We support Indian Army,” “We support NaMo”—pages with names such as these have 10–15 lakh followers. A group like “Nation with NaMo,” which claims to have 15 lakh followers, continuously advertises on Facebook, recruits graphic designers and video editors. The only way to become so huge is if you pay Facebook to boost your posts. So, someone is funding them, but it is not clear who. Parties claim the pages are not theirs, but created by some supporter, which is not a valid defence for a page that spends Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore a month on promotions.

An ecosystem has been created on the other side as well. On Facebook, a lot of new pages have emerged that have nothing to do with any political party, such as, “Beef Janta Party,” “India Resists.” All of them post content against the BJP. Advertisement

Other parties, too, have adopted strategies similar to the BJP’s, and have caught up with the BJP on social media. The Congress digitised electoral rolls and created a database of their party workers, which they earlier did not have. They have a database of panchayat-level people who have won elections and are supportive of the Congress. The Congress’s messaging has improved, but their reach is still a problem.

A lot of parties are trying to create more WhatsApp groups, but they will never be able to match the BJP because of the app’s recent policy changes. Back when the BJP created most of its groups, someone could save all the numbers in their phone, write a script, and add them all to the group. If you get a new number now, and create too many groups, then WhatsApp will block the number. It is not a stated policy and there is no ocial communication about this, but it happened around six months ago, around the same time the limit on the number of messages one can forward was introduced.

There are ways around this, and some parties are doing it—they create a shareable link for the group and forward it to people who can click on it and join the group. If someone joins a group by clicking on a link you do not get blocked because the administrator is not adding people. But that is way more time-consuming than adding people directly. Foreign numbers were used since they did not have a limit to the number of people you can forward the message to—but a few days back, WhatsApp globally restricted forwarding messages to ve (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/after-india-whatsapp- to-globally-limit-forwarded-messages-to-5-chats-at-a- time/articleshow/67623266.cms). You cannot create groups at the same scale as earlier. The old groups that existed are still there, WhatsApp did not shut them down. Due to this, the BJP retains its presence on WhatsApp.

A crucial change that has happened in the past few months is that the BJP IT cell has died. Some of the trolls, who were working independently of the IT cell, no longer support the party—some are dissatised with the government, some have fought with Amit Malviya, the chief of the cell. The cell by itself will never have the reach to deliver messages on a wide-scale, especially on a platform like Twitter. What you need is the support of inuencers—create WhatsApp groups where you tell them that this is the hashtag, make it trend. The BJP’s IT cell used these inuencers rst, but then began ignoring them because they thought the Modi magic was enough. The party is in trouble because just the IT cell, fake accounts and bots do not achieve what needs to be accomplished through social media.

The BJP will frame its narrative for the 2019 general elections through the government’s advertising budget, which has increased substantially from when the Congress was in power. Its strategy is about creating a customised enemy for every group. With the JNU controversy, they created an enemy for anyone who feels they are nationalist. They coined the term “urban naxal”; if they say someone is a leftist academic who sympathises with Naxals, no one will connect, but once you use the term “urban naxal,” people think it is someone who is bad for the country. The BJP’s internal campaign will be one of polarisation that tries to tell people to forget caste, and vote as Hindus to save the country.

As told to Tushar Dhara.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Shivam Shankar Singh worked with the Citizens for Accountable Governance in 2013. In fact he worked for the BJP informally that year. The Caravan regrets the error.

KEYWORDS: Elections 2019(/tag/elections-2019) BJP IT cell(/tag/bjp-it-cell)

Bharatiya Janata Party(/tag/bharatiya-janata-party) Manipur(/tag/manipur) Congress(/tag/congress)

Tripura(/tag/tripura) Assembly Elections(/tag/assembly-elections)

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