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— Swati Chaturvedi (@bainjal) October 25, 2020 To clear everyone’s doubts on who this ‘fraud’ is, Swati next named and shamed the alleged ‘Washington Post plagiariser’. So as Ms Ayyub has blocked me. TL do tell her we live in the 21st century. Frightening for an alleged journalist writing for @washingtonpost to get even centuries wrong. Twitter has to realise that slander is not sport and women who are treated horrifically in Indian streets get similar treatment in the virtual world. Swati Chaturvedi @bainjal. The writer is a. Swati Chaturvedi attacks Rana Ayyub As everyone was enjoying a relaxed afternoon after stuffing their mouths with the favourite festival food on Dussehra, a little battle was brewing on Twitter between abusive troll masquerading as a journalist Swati Chaturvedi and conspiracy theorist masquerading as a journalist Rana Ayyub.

Anyone from India who has spent any time at all on Twitter is aware of the overpowering presence of a troll army, mostly representing a set of conservative, right-wing ideas. These warriors violently attack those who tweet news, views or opinion that runs contrary to their world-view. The viciousness, crudity and arguably criminal nature of such attacks – threats to rape and murder, for instance, are routine – is visible to everyone.

What is perhaps less known is the sheer scale on which this army operates. No individual on Twitter can fathom the widespread reach and intensity of this activity. This is where journalist Swati Chaturvedi’s book I Am A Troll: Inside The Secret World Of The BJP’s Digital Army comes in. It’s one thing to come across these tweets in ones and twos and threes, over several days or weeks, but it’s another altogether to turn the pages of a book and see them stacked up continuously. It makes you physically sick, in need of retching.

Little of what Chaturvedi has put together between the covers of her book is actually unknown. What she does, though, is to try to join the dots, and establish that behind this army of abuse lies the planning and strategy of both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

It’s not just tweets, but also those ubiquitous Whatsapp forwards that people now receive as a matter of course and pass on without a second thought, assuming they’re telling the truth. Chaturvedi contends that generating these is also part of the daily operations of the “BJP’s digital army”. She also asks a crucial question: why does Prime Minister Narendra Modi follow so many members of this army of abusers on Twitter, giving many of them the opportunity to flaunt the fact that their tweets make it to the timeline of the prime minister of the country?

In fact, the book shows that the idea of conquering through social media, bypassing the natural resistance of the mainstream media in India, which is more liberal than conservative, originated in the RSS well before any other political party realised the potential of the force.

The troll who came out

Chaturvedi’s piece de resistance, so to speak, in the book is the testimony of Sadhavi Khosla, a technology entrepreneur who spent two years volunteering for the BJP’s social media efforts, but gave up eventually in disgust at what she – and many others like her – were being asked to do, and chose to tell her story to Chaturvedi. Almost predictably, the BJP IT cell, through its former head Arvind Gupta, has denied that Khosla was part of the party’s social media cell.

Khosla, too, reveals, what was already known: for instance, that attacks on certain journalists – among them Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghosh, and Rajdeep Sardesai – and the concerted campaigns against Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan were carried out under instructions. Khosla is a case study for a specific reason: she tells Chaturvedi she belongs to a family loyal to the Congress, and embraced the original offer to join the BJP’s campaign – but was gradually disillusioned as she was asked to target individuals.

While this is a somewhat naive, even theatrical, moment of discovery, it also points towards the sheer motivating power of the narrative with which the troll army has been – and continues to be – assembled. Chaturvedi’s book does not close the loop on this point, but it makes the reader think, and worry, about the compelling power of a story that can make people turn into abusive monsters online.

Channelling resentment

Swati Chaturvedi Twitter Page

This is the real story in the book, though not spelt out in as many words. Chaturvedi conducts interviews with three members of this army, revealing a pattern of low confidence, tentative articulation, and an inferiority complex vis-a-vis an upwardly mobile urban society. The RSS/BJP have been prescient enough to channel these into the creation of engines of resentful energy that manifests itself through the tweets we see.

In doing this, of course, the genie has been let out of the bottle. It may only be a matter of time before the violence building up within this tweeting army spills over into the physical world. It will be too late by then.

The strategy behind the use of torrential abuse is clear: either provoke the subject into retorting in kind, or bully them into silence and, perhaps, even off twitter altogether. Chaturvedi has fallen victim to the first impulse too, as she said in an interview: “When I got serial rape threats in September 2014 I called the hyena pack ‘fuck wits’ which the Oxford dictionary defines as ‘stupid or contemptible.’”

Others have responded to abuse with abuse too, playing into the hands of a strategy to split people into taking hard positions on one side or the other, with hatred and anger, rather than rational thought, as the ammunition of this war. But with individuals arraigned against battalions, there’s no prizes for guessing which side is likely to win.

It would probably be wrong to examine Chaturvedi’s work by the conventional standards of a book. This is a piece of extended journalism, put together with an eye on immediacy, which rules out the possibility of sociological, political and psychological analysis.

There’s no doubt that those books will be written too, once a historical perspective is acquired on what is probably a first-of-its-kind social media war in the world, if the scale, violence and filthy language are anything to go by. For now, this quick package is chilling enough.

I Am A Troll: Inside The Secret World Of The BJP’s Digital Army, Swati Chaturvedi, Juggernaut. Adobe photoshop download for free mac.

“Bowed down to media, secular and liberal bullies? We work for you tirelessly, selflessly. This is the reward,” tweeted @RitaG74, who is “blessed to be followed by Modi”. This was an attack on Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad for saying, “I strongly condemn and deplore the messages on social media expressing happiness on the dastardly murder of Gauri Lankesh.” The troll was upset that she was being scolded for celebrating a brutal murder.

Bowed down to media, secular and liberal bullies? We work for you tirelessly, selflessly. This is the reward? https://t.co/tlc03FBM5j

— Rita (@RitaG74) September 6, 2017

This is the mindset of scores of handles – I’d like to say ‘individuals’, but there is no way of knowing who is behind these Twitter identities and whether they represent real people or have been spawned on an industrial scale for political purposes – that Prime Minister Narendra Modi follows. In my investigative book I Am a Troll: Inside the secret digital army of the BJP, I have written about this phenomenon in detail. Modi follows such people and, despite international opprobrium, has not unfollowed a single handle that routinely tweets hate. Some of the handles he follows send out rape threats, death threats and indulge in communal incitement. Modi is the only leader in the world to follow such handles.

Also Read: It’s Not What Modi Is Tweeting – It’s What He Is Reading

After a person followed by Modi and photographed with information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani tweeted “a bitch died a dog’s death” on the Lankesh murder and three other handles followed by Modi drew huge condemnation, critics of this abuse trended the hashtag #BlockNarendraModi on Twitter.

No doubt the prime minister is too busy to take note, but the campaign did prompt Amit Malviya, the BJP’s national head for information and technology, to offer an explanation. Malviya said, “Modi is a rare leader who believes in freedom of speech and has never blocked or unfollowed anyone. PM following someone is not a character certificate and is in no way a guarantee in how a person would conduct themselves. However, PM also follows Rahul Gandhi who is an accused in loot and fraud. PM also follows Arvind Kejriwal who abused him and told a woman settle kar loh.”

Word portable for mac.
Malviya is lying when he says Modi has never unfollowed anyone. Yes, he has not unfollowed a single troll despite the Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien holding my book up in parliament and calling out the prime minister for following hate mongers.

U get jobs in bjp if u harass molest a woman n troll them till they die @narendramodi@AmitShah@rajnathsingh@BJP4Delhi .

— Dr Jwala Gurunath (@DrJwalaG) March 15, 2017

However, Modi unfollowed Jwala Gurunath, a staunch supporter, when she complained to him repeatedly on Twitter that she was allegedly sexually harassed by Tajinder Bagga, who has now been made a BJP spokesman. Bagga was earlier caught on camera assaulting the well-known public interest lawyer Prashant Bhushan. Bagga is, of course, followed by Modi.

Malviya claims that Modi is a passionate believer in the freedom of expression. This is a laughable claim, as during his tenure as Gujarat chief minister, Modi banned former BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah and Joseph Lelyveld’s bookGreat Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India.

And if it is kosher to call a brutal murder “a bitch dying a dog’s death” as part of the freedom of expression, as implied by Malviya, then why did the BJP and Modi’s government make such a hue and cry over last year’s fracas at Jawaharlal Nehru University, going to the extent of labelling the entire university “anti national” and pushing for sedition cases to be filed?

Swati Chaturvedi Twitter Pictures

A well-known spoof on Modi, Mitron, was pulled by Radio Mirchi – the FM channel of the Times of India group – after senior BJP leaders complained about it to the owners of the group. So freedom of expression for Modi and the BJP is selective. It clearly does not apply to JNU and those who lampoon the prime minister. Nor does it apply to scores of tweets and handles that the government wants Twitter to block – including some that talk about political gossip and human rights violations.

Also Read: Modi Sarkar Doesn’t Want You to Read Lutyens’ Gossip, Tweets on #KashmirUnrest

Modi’s understanding of freedom of expression is pretty faulty. The US has the freest speech laws in the world, yet hundreds of people are prosecuted and sent to jail every year for hate speech and for actionable threats of the kind the handles that Modi follows make routinely. Incitement, rape and death threats are not entitled to the protections of freedom of expression.

The way Malviya tried to drag in Gandhi and Kejriwal is puzzling. Both are public figures. Gandhi is the vice president of the Congress party and Kejriwal is the chief minister of Delhi. How can Malviya compare following them with the trolls Modi follows, many of whom spew venom and hatred? Besides, do Gandhi and Kejriwal make rape and death threats? Do they incite others to commit crimes? This is a nonsensical claim.

Modi was called out for following violent handles. He continues to follow more than a dozen handles that are trolls and, going by Malaviya’s statement, is absolutely obstinate in his determination to keep following them. Modi earlier held a tea party with his troll army at the prime minister’s official residence and the 150 invitees got photographs taken with him and used it as their display pictures.

Twitter Bainjal

Also Read: Gauri Lankesh Assassination: How the Right Wing Is Trying to Spin the Narrative

Swati Chaturvedi Twitter Profile

As Arun Shourie pointed out, this is direct encouragement to the trolls to attack those who threaten the BJP’s agenda in any way. The IT cell of the BJP has a “hit list” of journalists who are meant to be relentlessly targeted. Anyone who is remotely critical of Modi is immediately attacked.

Can we call ourselves a democracy when the party in power and the government, including the prime minister, are accomplices in this kind of vile abuse and intimidation of citizens?

Modi is reportedly obsessed with social media and in reply to an RTI petition, the prime minister’s office said that he managed both his Twitter handles himself. So brace yourself, Modi is determined to keep bestowing his “blessings” on trolls and it’s going to get even uglier in the run up to the general elections.

Swati Chaturvedi Twitter Images

Swati Chaturvedi is a senior journalist and author based in Delhi. She tweets at @bainjal.