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India’s Prime Minister Modi could be re-elected for the third time in June. However, the opinion in the country is characterized by disinformation and one-sided reporting. Modi is partly to blame for this.
The largest elections in human history began in India on April 19th. Around 970 million Indians – around twelve percent of the world’s population – can elect their parliament. People from different territories and states will vote one by one on more than a million electronic voting machines until June 1st. The results are to be announced three days later.
The favorite of the election is the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He and his party, the BJP, enjoy great support among large parts of the predominantly Hindu population. His goal: a third term in office and a two-thirds majority in the lower house Lok Sabha, which would give him freedom of action for constitutional reforms and legislative changes.
“With changes to civil law, Modi could curtail the rights of religious minorities,” says Christian Wagner from the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP). The Prime Minister’s Hindutva ideology, which envisages an authoritarian and nationalistic orientation towards a politically and culturally understood Hinduism, particularly affects the approximately 200 million Muslims in the country.
Hatred against Muslims is being stirred up
Modi’s re-election seems to be a mere formality these days. The opposition was unable to agree on a common candidate; critical voices from the media and the public are difficult to find. One reason for this is media companies close to the BJP. “In the Modi years since 2014, many traditional TV and print media have sided with the government,” says Wagner. When Modi gives one of his rare interviews, they usually consist of long monologues without questions.
Another reason is a network of online disinformation spreaders that is difficult to regulate. According to one, there is a Washington Post research a network of more than 150,000 social media workers who create social media campaigns for the so-called “BJP IT Cell”. Fear of and hatred against Muslims is being stirred up online, which has consequences offline. Disinformation has already led to violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims and lynchings.
According to that Global Risks Report 2024, published by the World Economic Forum, India is the country where the risk of dis- and misinformation is rated as highest in the world. This is a greater threat to the population than infectious diseases, illegal economic activities or financial inequality. The EU Disinfo Lab also published research in 2019in which more than 750 fake media outlets covering 119 countries and spreading falsehoods on over 550 registered web domains could be attributed to Indian origin.
Low Media literacy
Joyojeet Pal, a professor of information at the University of Michigan, specializes in the use of social media and disinformation by politicians in India. He sees the increased Internet use by Indians with low media literacy as a reason for their susceptibility to disinformation: “The price of Internet access has fallen dramatically in the last decade. As a result, the range of multimedia content on offer has multiplied. People have started using non-formal sources to consume for which there are very few quality controls.”
Disinformation would be used in different ways in India. “They usually put a party or a personality in a positive light by highlighting achievements that are not true,” says Pal. It would work the same way the other way around: statements made by politicians would be selectively edited to put them in a negative light. According to Pal, the problem is not just fake news per se, but also content that contains innuendos designed to polarize people on important issues.
“Mr Modi” is said to have stopped the war in Ukraine
The example shows which patterns of action the BJP, its sympathizers and the IT Cell use to put, promote and take up certain narratives online of a video guess, which was uploaded in March on Modi’s official YouTube channel with 23 million followers.
The one-minute Bollywoodesque glossy production reminds us that “Modi ji” (“Mr. Modi”) stopped a war to enable Indian students to return home safely – a claim that was first made a few weeks after the start of the Russian war of aggression about Ukraine was circulating on social networks.
News anchors from media loyal to Modi reproduced the statement at the time, as did high-reach influencers on social media and the BJP’s official X account. Ravi Shankar Prasad, a popular party colleague of Modi, said that Modi had suspended the war for three hours. Interior Minister Amit Shah even spoke of a three-day ceasefire.
To remind voters of Modi’s “influence” on world politics, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh picked up the story again in the election year. He was sure that thanks to Modi, the war paused for four to five hours. There is no evidence that India’s prime minister actually stopped acts of war in 2022. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson even denied the claim.
However, for many Indians this seems unimportant. One came in 2018 BBC study concluded that for some in India, facts were less important than the emotional desire to strengthen national (Hindu) identity. Even then, the rise of nationalist tendencies drove ordinary citizens to spread disinformation. There was also overlap in their sources on Modi’s social media and support networks.
“Very well organized social media strategy”
“The BJP has a very well-organized and coherent social media strategy, ranging from the top leaders to new party members,” says Pal. Problematic content is usually distributed by smaller and more radical channels.
One who belongs to Modi’s network of multipliers is Mahesh Vikram Hegde. Almost 200,000 people follow him on X, including Modi himself. He has “Modi Ka Parivar” behind his username, which means “Modi’s family”. In 2018, he was arrested as the operator of a fake news page on Facebook in the Congress Party-run state of Karnataka. At that time, various BJP politicians campaigned for his release.
Today, in his posts, he describes opposition figures as terrorists and shares posts that claim that “Bangladesh and Rohingya Islamists pose a danger to Hindu girls in Mumbai.” He is not an isolated case.
Opposition also uses Disinformation campaigns
However, disinformation campaigns in India are not just a tool of the BJP. Opposition parties also use them. “Most parties have similar strategies because social media professionals move from one party to another,” explains Pal. Many of them would also work with foreign parties. So what is happening in India will also happen in an organized manner elsewhere in the world.
If Modi is re-elected, he would be the first head of government since India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to achieve this three times in a row. Nehru was considered an advocate of secularism and wanted an India for all religious communities.
With Modi, this idea is moving further and further into the background. There are currently some political commentators on YouTube and various online media who use fact-checking to combat disinformation. But they too could soon give way. “The government is trying to control more social media content and ban the dissemination of information that it considers to be false or misleading,” says Wagner.