{"id":203269,"date":"2024-05-01T14:08:35","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T08:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/?p=203269"},"modified":"2024-05-03T13:03:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T07:33:47","slug":"bjps-2024-poll-campaign-is-riding-on-disinformation-and-muslim-vilification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/bjps-2024-poll-campaign-is-riding-on-disinformation-and-muslim-vilification\/","title":{"rendered":"BJP’s 2024 poll campaign is riding on disinformation and Muslim vilification"},"content":{"rendered":"

How big a part will disinformation play in the 2024 election campaign? The question has been asked by so many people on so many platforms. As the big fat Indian election season reaches its climax, the answer is quite clear. At the moment, the BJP\u2019s Lok Sabha 2024 election campaign stands firmly on falsehoods, disinformation and communal hate. These are tools with which the party has always sought to create propaganda in its favour — it is the raison d\u2019etre<\/i><\/em> of the IT cell and Amit Malviya — but with the election season at its peak, the BJP has decided to use them in a no-holds-barred manner.<\/p>\n

Modi Leading the Way<\/h4>\n

Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Banswara speech<\/a> on April 21 — in which he served his audience a cocktail of disinformation and communal hate — was just one example. His denigrating reference to Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ and \u2018those who produce more children\u2019<\/a> out to take away the wealth of the Hindus drew sharp reactions from the Opposition and the international media while Right Wing trolls like OpIndia editor Nupur J Sharma celebrated it. And then he claimed that the Congress manifesto had said the gold owned by women, particularly their mangalsutra<\/em>, would be taken away and given to Muslims. Alt News has already shown<\/a> that the manifesto does not say anything remotely similar to this, by any stretch of the imagination.<\/p>\n

Other than deepening communal polarisation, what Modi’s speech was also able to achieve was to steer the entire political discourse, bang in the middle of the elections, to what he saw as a Congress-Muslim nexus to harm Hindus. Every top BJP leader has repeated the trope since. And this villainisation of Muslims — their projection as a devil out to devour the jobs and wealth of Hindus — fits well within the RSS-BJP’s larger communal agenda of ‘Hindu khatre mein hai’ <\/em>(Hindus are in danger in this country).<\/p>\n

On April 23 in Rajasthan’s Tonk-Sawai Madhopur constituency, Modi repeated the falsehoods that he had resorted to in the Banswara speech. He said<\/a>, referring to his words two days earlier, \u201cWhen I came to Rajasthan the day before, for 90 seconds in my speech I presented some truths before the country. It created so much panic in the entire Congress and INDI alliance… I presented the truth before the nation that the Congress has hatched a deep conspiracy to snatch your property and distribute it among their special favourites. I exposed this a couple of days back.”<\/p>\n