The trolls of the Bhakt genre are haunting the progressive
and dissenting voices over the internet, especially on the social media
platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Most of the time when anyone dares to type
few lines against the Modi government, they are lambasted by a flock of upper
caste Hindu men, and men disguised as women with a photograph of some random
model in the profile. The dissenting voices are targeted as per their
socio-economic position. A mere blogger and journalist like me, who has no fan
following, will not draw the flak of the RSS mob as much like that of someone
who is popular over the social media or in the world outside. This clearly
indicates that the Bhakts wants to make their voice heard loud and clear to not
only their target but also to them who follows their targets. They expect a
fear psychosis to develop among the followers that will stop them from making
their anti Modi voices public, which will again mean that there is no dissent
in the country, an idle fascist dream.
I was closely observing the pattern of attack on the targets
of trolls since the end of 2013, and over this period I found that these troll
attack does not comes from mere BJP or RSS supporters who are online the whole
day to threaten and intimidate the opposition. Do you remember how fast and how
rapidly the Modi supporters called names to those who opposed Modi during the
election campaigns of 2014; they will launch their attack as soon as something
is posted against Modi. How could the mediocre and often technically
handicapped knickers clad RSS Pracharaks do such things within fraction of
seconds?
Later my investigation revealed that these activities are
done in a systematic and organised way, under the commandership of the RSS
headquarters (and their mass organisations along with BJP leadership) through a
chain of IT service companies that have entered into a pact with the BJP and
the saffron camp to promote their vision, win over supporters, spread
misinformation, polarise the Hindu majority, targeting specially urban and
rural upper caste Hindus on internet and moreover threaten and humiliate
dissenters, Muslims, Dalits, Christians or anyone else who is not considered suitable
to be in the ambit of ‘Bharatiya’ by Nagpur.
The curiosity increased over time regarding the modus
operandi of these Bhakts that creates so much tremors in the social media and
internet, so the investigation continued into further depths and took me to the
outskirts of the national capital of Delhi, parts of outer Mumbai and I have to
use contacts in and near Bengaluru to get the clear picture of how Modi Bhakts
operate in the online kingdom.
BJP outsourced its online campaign management in parts to
several IT and digital marketing companies under the leadership of Piyush
Goyal, companies like Ogilvy & Mather's Piyush Pandey, McCann World group's
Prasoon Joshi and Sam Balsara of Madison World worked overtime since BJP roped
them to build brand Modi before the 2014 polls. While leading advertising
agency, Soho Square, part of the WPP Group, handled television, radio and print
campaigns with catchy slogans such as "Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar,"
several small scale local IT companies and digital marketing firms, mostly with
low to medium level turnover and with saffronist elements in their management,
got the job of opposition bashing throughout the election campaigning days.
Manned with only 5-10 employees, these organisations started
creating numerous fake Facebook and Twitter accounts to post and share the
contents approved by Nagpur based RSS and Delhi based BJP leaders. The numerous
accounts created were often linked with each other and the content posted by
one profile was shared with another. Moreover, through these methods, the troll
gang inflated the fan following of each profile on Twitter and Facebook, to
ensure their profile looks very genuine. Next target was to befriend or follow
liberal, democratic, left-right-centre and everyone opposing Modi’s bid for the
premiere’s position. The job was to bully and oppose any anti Modi posts made
by the opposition forces on the social media, which a special team of each
company took care of to ensure that seeds of fear are implanted in the social
media to warn and keep off the dissenting anti-fascist voices.
Once the contents were developed and approved, they were published
with blitzkrieg pace by these agents on the internet. These contents were
mostly misinformation, fake news, photo shopped images, briefly a complete
package of lies and deceptions developed with monstrous creativity to confuse
and the majority of urban Hindu people. Whilst some clippings will show Muslim
men butchering Hindu men, raping Hindu women, then some other will show
fabricated news articles on Pakistani involvement in Madrassas, etc.
After the elections, with Modi emerging victorious, many
such Twitter handles and Facebook profiles that once created a ruckus in their
attempt to support Modi’s bid to premiership, suddenly became silent, some
vanished from internet space and many went inactive. This sudden change was
discussed for few weeks in the social media space, however, very soon people
moved on.
By December 2014, the Modi government faced its first major
crisis with the Sangh family launching the vicious anti-Muslim, anti-Christian ‘Ghar
Wapsi’ agenda to forcefully convert the religious minorities in Hinduism. The
reluctance of Modi to speak up against the atrocities committed on the
minorities created a protest clamour all over the nation, the progressive and
democratic voices started raising their voices by overcoming the powerful
propaganda waves launched in Modi’s favour by the big corporate capital.
In 2015, the Modi government started showing its UPA
syndromes very fast, the inflation started sky rocketing, BJP faced poll
debacle in Delhi, the people of the country started expressing their anguish
against the government, its utmost failure to deliver promises made by Modi
during his campaigning, and Amit Shah admitted that the BJP election campaign
promises on black money were mere ‘joomla’ (rhetoric) mongering by Modi. The
failures of the BJP to bring down prices, provide any assistance to the
suffering peasantry, the corporate appeasements by Modi and his ‘India selling’
campaigns overseas, along with exposure of the nexus between tainted former IPL
chief Lalit Modi and BJP ministers like Sushma Swaraj – Vasundhara Raje, the
Vyapam scam of Madhya Pradesh, followed by the beef ban and beef murders
committed by Sangh activists brought the Modi government at the forefront of
the firing squad of the dissenting opponents of the regime. The opposition bloc
included everyone from aggrieved right winger to radical left, and social media
became the most popular place to express dissent and reach out likeminded
people. Suddenly, the ‘Bhakts’ or the Hindi speaking Hindu male trolls started wandering
the social media turf to hunt dissenters.
The writers of anti-Modi statements were selectively targeted
basing on their stature in the social ladder, fan followers, religion, gender
and even language. The females who spoke and wrote English were targeted and
cyber molested by the troll force of ‘Bhakts’ who felt inferior to the urban
English speaking women whose communication skills and intellect sounded better
than the ‘Bhakts.’ Abusing and threatening continued and suddenly it was found
that many of the profiles that went blank after the election results were out
last year were back.
An employee of such a firm disclosed to this writer that the
business was bad since the project of promoting Modi ended in May 2014 and
these cyber trolls had to do normal SEO jobs like link building, social media
marketing and worse than everything else, search and close deals with new
clients for digital and social media marketing campaigns. However, by the mid
of 2015, the BJP was back with business as their client through their local
leaders and RSS organisers. The job this time is to search and read for top
stories and trends in the social media, find where the government and
particularly Modi is attacked by the dissenting voices. Their other target is rationalist
and logical writers who oppose Hindutva campaign and the RSS endeavour of
saffronising every aspect of the Indian society. Following the example of the
Islamic troll of Bangladesh (infamous for the lynching of Avijit Roy, an
eminent blogger and rationalist), the Hindu Bhakt started looking for prey in
rotational shifts, working from three different corners of the country.
A normal employee in the social media bullying campaign will
never identify himself as a BJP supporter or activist; this is rule number one
as stated by one of the sources who spoke to this writer on the condition of
anonymity. Secondly, more than supporting the policy issues of the government
the troll force will be liable to assault, threaten and bully the dissenters.
Thirdly, they have to look for anything and everything that can be treated (or
transformed) into an insulting object for Hinduism and then make out a hate
campaign using such objects or articles. Fourthly, these employees were to
research on Wikipedia for information on everything they do not know, then
write their plagiarism filled response on the articles where Hindu supremacy,
Brahminist tyranny or RSS dogma is opposed by any writer. Fifthly, they have to
abuse someone or anyone from the opposition camp, targeting specifically
leftwing forces, feminists, and journalists who dare to differ.
During the whole exercise the teams work in tandem with each
other, as their territories on social media and internet space is demarcated,
each individual team member has a particular assignment, set of targets and of course,
they are paid for their performance, hence, they get their testosterone high
and plunge on the preys as soon as they get them. The teams make sure that they
do not cross each other’s territory, the employees are careful that they do not
waste their time behind a single person for very long but collectively bully as
many person they can.
Some of the team members are experts in Photoshop, and
others are in search techniques, they try to reach their targets fast and
promote their content and bully their targets at a fast pace. Mostly these
agents use their mother tongue to abuse their targets, and they have limited
ammunition till date to use against their targets as they were those which were
provided by the BJP – RSS before 2014 elections, like, ‘go to Pakistan’, ‘sickular’,
etc. As these days the troll activities are organised and led by local level
RSS organisers, hence the corporate decency behind bloody attacks are missing
and the assaults have turned more heinous than ever.
The Bhakts provide a great service to the BJP and its RSS bosses, as these troll force consists only of fake ids, they cannot be associated with the Sangh Parivar and its numerous terror cells, the misdeeds of the Bhakts does not makes the BJP responsible, as the Party has made it clear through its social media policy that it does not promotes any form of cyber bullying, moreover, the Bhakts themselves will never identify the BJP as their Party as a tactic arrangement of the cyber bully exercise. Hence, the Bhakts can continue to create a nuisance without causing indigestion to the BJP, unlike Sakshi Maharaj and his breed of holocaust worshipers.
It is very hard really to fight the Bhakts and their troll, as it will be a futile exercise to combat those who does not exist in real life, and are just temporary beings made to live a cyber life to promote a particular dispensation that wants to indoctrinate, enslave and rule the major part of the Indian populace by commanding their minds and thoughts. The tool of the RSS is to make the Indian people, who are more or less uneducated at large due to the high amount of poverty that rules the countryside, to believe that it is the saviour of the country from the menace of Islam and terrorism, and everything that is shown to the people over the internet or television, must be considered as gospel truth.
The next time you come across the Bhakts calling you names
on the social media, block them, do not try to answer them or shame them, as
these people do not exist in real. They are as their employers, fly by
operators, whose specific job is just to propagate anything their masters ask
them to share. Their hatred and their abuses are as fake as their own
existence. So just keep moving on, declare your views openly and without fear,
because only 5-10% of the troll regiment are real human beings.
