Wow, super based Modi has his own cyber warriors to counter not just local campaigners, but international ones, and frequently attacks Soros.

The Modi government is notorious for spreading disinformation through its social media campaigns. With over 500 million active users, Whatsapp’s most significant base is India, making it a breeding ground for mis-and disinformation.

Although very little is known about BJP's Whatsapp machinery, it is well-documented that it forms an integral part of its digital campaign, often filled with propaganda to incite hate.

“Other parties in India have tried this. We've seen it in other countries like Brazil. But WhatsApp was really mastered first, and at scale, by the BJP,” Kiran Garimella, a Rutgers University professor who researched WhatsApp's role in Indian politics, told The Washington Post. “It requires resources, planning, investment, and a top-down belief in building this infrastructure. But 99 percent of what's happening in these groups is off-limits. We have no visibility at all.”

Modi government officials, experts said, act like “social media warriors.”

"Each and every BJP volunteer who has a mobile is a social media warrior," Ajith Kumar Ullal, 59, the BJP's social media head in the port city of Mangaluru, told The Washington Post.

Mangaluru, situated in the southern state of Karnataka, falls under what is often called the “Hindutva lab.”

Ullal, who is also a member of some 200 Whatsapp groups, “operates out of a ‘war room’ in the BJP's gleaming downtown office, commanding a social media ‘cell’ of nine volunteers responsible for an area in coastal Karnataka inhabited by 1.5 million people,” The Washington Post reported.

Several BJP groups held their national social media workshops in recent months as the Hindu Party streamlines its social media strategy ahead of the general elections in 2024.

“An important source of BJP said that work of the Narendra Modi-led government of 9 years have to reach the public...through social media and conveying the message to the public through digital means," Asian News International reported. “Social media teams will be made at various levels including district, state and divisional. A team of five to six people will be formed at all fronts with one social media coordinator and two co-coordinators.”

Many campaigns are geared toward improving BJP's image at home and abroad. One such campaign is the “Disinfo Lab,” which claims to be "investigating Info-warfare & Psy-war" and has systematically been targeting the Modi government's critics in the U.S.

In April, the Disinfo Lab published a report criticizing the New York-based Hindus for Human Rights Founder, Sunita Viswanath, a human rights group critical of Modi's Hindutva policies.

The report linked Viswanath to Soros's Open Society Foundations for receiving funding for a nonprofit she launched to help female Afghan refugees.

Amit Malviya, the head of the BJP's social media team, posted on X: “Who is she exactly? She is nothing but a proxy of George Soros, who has committed $1 billion to meddle in India's internal affairs, through a network of opposition leaders, think tanks, journalists, lawyers and activists.”

“In 28 reports it has published so far, the organization has often painted a picture of an India under attack by a sprawling "nexus" of conspirators funded by Pakistani intelligence, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Soros," The Washington Post reported in its recent investigation on lab.

The Disinfo Lab also insinuated that Rep. Pramila Jayapal, an Indian-American Democrat from Washington State who is critical of Modi, received funds via this “nexus.”

The Disinfo Lab has gone after the Indian-American activists who criticized the Modi government for discrimination against Muslims and Dalits, members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedoms (USCIRF), a bipartisan organization that recommended the state department assign India a “country of particular concern” on account of how the religious minorities are being treated in the country under Modi.

I do not agree with a lot of his domestic policy but the guy sure is not going to take anything lying down in cyberspace.

#India #cyber

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^{Manmeet Sahni (Religion Unplugged)}