The Dhruv Rathee intervention

In the world of Hindi political messaging, Dhruv Rathee has created more of a narrative than the struggling Opposition parties.

In an age when broadcast media is one-sided, when newspapers try ‘balancing’, when the reach of courageous online news portals does not cross a certain threshold, the big intervention in Election 2024 is coming from long-time vlogger Dhruv Rathee.

More than the political speeches of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s opponents, Rathee's strong political videos on YouTube are going viral this election season in towns across the Hindi-belt states. When the 29-year-old released a smartly crafted half-hour vlog headlined "Is India becoming a DICTATORSHIP?" more than a month ago, a new audience beyond Rathee's youthful fan base for instructive videos started to take notice.

The easy-to-understand Hindi and direct messaging made it trend, and at the time of writing had 23 million views. That is a stratospheric number of viewers for a video, especially when compared to the YouTube channels of traditional media houses and the successful news programming in the courageous and independent Hindi YouTube space.

Rathee then followed that up with a show on electoral bonds titled ‘The Biggest Scam in the History of India?’ that got 15 million views as it worked as an explainer. He also possibly most effectively told us the story of the protests in Ladakh that have not been adequately covered in Indian media (9.8 million views).

That there was a political purpose to the messaging was most explicitly stated in another video dropped in the first week of April, after the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the freezing of the Congress accounts. This too was about the slide in democratic indices, and in a few days got 22+ million views. It was a political intervention as Rathee asked viewers to spread the message far and wide saying that citizens must vote as India was on the eve of an election that would determine whether a quasi-dictatorship stays or goes.

Rathee who lives in Germany and India gave an interview to fellow Youtuber and satirist Akash Banerjee. His motivation, said Rathee, was patriotism and love for his country at a time when many traditional media houses were not doing their job.

Rathee and Banerjee are both vocal about the fact that they could soon be silenced due to the ongoing process of consolidating all existing laws and policies relevant to the Internet space, OTT platforms, and social media, under one law. Three new legislation give the Union government power to censor news, shut down websites, pull down specific stories, and intercept communication.

The controversial farm laws were also three sets of legislation that had to be reversed after a year-long farmers’ protest. In the case of the broadcast laws, there is no mass movement but great alarm and concern among those who value freedom of speech and expression.

The clock is ticking for critics of the regime in the Internet space, and hence the urgency about fighting against the loss of freedom. Last week, a Hindi YouTube channel, Bolta Hindustan, with about 300,000 subscribers was removed from the platform, without being given any reason beyond the Google-owned platform receiving instructions from the information and broadcast ministry.

Although many provide a compelling counternarrative, the BJP/Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has so far dominated the Internet space in terms of political messaging. I have always maintained that the BJP's historic high number of Lok Sabha seats in 2019 was not just a Pulwama-Balakot mandate, but also capitalised on the telecom revolution Reliance-Jio ushered in.

The BJP understood the importance of mobile technology and before the 2019 national elections, it began creating content for specific constituencies and regions to be shared on social media and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. Communal content was also circulated in this ecosystem besides the constant messaging that there is no alternative to Narendra Modi.

The Internet and mobile phones have, therefore, been the most effective tools in the hands of ideologically-motivated cadre to re-engineer consciousness. That is part of the larger civilisational project of the RSS, which celebrates its centenary in 2025.

While some Opposition parties are fighting robustly in distinct regional zones, in the world of Hindi political messaging, Rathee has created more of a narrative than the struggling Opposition parties.

He belongs to the world of influencers who did not set out to be radical in their orientation but are role models for aspirational youth. Internet influencers cannot replace political parties, but they can be part of the narrative. Rathee is relentlessly highlighting the economic wrongdoings of the Union government while the principal campaigners of the BJP are still talking about finishing off the corrupt in other parties.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.