A middle-aged suburban couple’s home in Jharkhand is ransacked by a mob of purported hoodlums who break into the house and steal what they can while destroying what they cannot take. The trespassers-both men and women-are dressed in skullcaps and headscarves, implying their religion and some of them refuse to leave the house, claiming its theirs now. In the end, the couple is blamed for their own loss, implying they brought such a situation upon themselves when they voted for the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM).

The inflammatory and openly Islamophobic video is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral campaign and was posted on the party’s Jharkhand unit social media handles ahead of the assembly elections that took place in two phases across the state. Despite such campaigning, the party now finds itself on the backfoot in Jharkhand where counting of votes of the recently concluded Assembly election are underway and the JMM-led INDIA bloc is surging towards a win.

The controversial ad left the party in the midst of a political slugfest after Opposition leaders called for action against the video, prompting the Election Commission of India (ECI) to take note. The ECI found the video to be in violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), based on complaints by the Congress and the JMM, and ordered the video be taken down. The poll panel has also sought an explanation from the state unit of the BJP over the incident and an FIR has been registered at the cyber-crime police station under relevant sections for violation of the MCC.

The party has previously released videos depicting actors playing the role of Opposition leaders, including Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Kalpana Soren and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav. The leaders are shown as “corrupt” outsiders plotting to take over Jharkhand with the help of other “outsiders”, (indicating alleged Bangladeshi Muslims). The video drew sharp criticism from multiple quarters.

The adverts have received harsh criticism from Opposition leaders. Addressing the EC, the JMM posted on X: “Will elections be held like this in the country now? How far will you allow the country to fall in the name of Hindus and Muslims? Have some shame and wake up. Show me some courage. Today BJP has crossed all limits of shamelessness and vulgarity.”

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the video “brazenly and blatantly violates the ECI's Model Code of Conduct” and is also “an act of serious criminality”. Others like Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti also hit out at the BJP for putting out the advertisement, calling it “deplorably communal” and against the “secular fabric of the nation”.

While the videos have since been removed from the party’s official handles, they continue to be shared on social media via proxy handles and organic user accounts and have acquired millions of views by the time of writing. It is in line with and augments the party’s communally charged poll rhetoric this time in Jharkhand where the party has been trying to win over the tribal majority votes by portraying Muslims as illegal “Bangladeshi” immigrants.

“Such videos serve only one purpose: to alienate the minority community and create fear psychosis among the majority,” says Ranchi-based activist S. Ali. “Such content is routinely used to induce fear and promote division between communities, ensuring that masses remain busy with ‘Hindu-Muslim’ while the real issues of the electorate remain missing from election campaigns,” Ali adds.

Ali claims this is the first poll since 2004 when the assembly elections were first held in Jharkhand that has seen such a communally divisive campaign by a political party, run on the basis of communal polarisation and targeting of one community.

It isn’t just Jharkhand that has seen a polarised poll campaign by the BJP. In Maharashtra, the party has been focusing its narrative on “Aurangzeb vs Shivaji”. A Facebook page called “Maha Bighadi” that regularly posts pro-BJP content has emerged as a source of communally charged content and fake news meant to target leaders of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance.

The page, which has been flagged by fact-checking platform Alt News, runs aggressive and misleading advertorials targeting leaders of rival parties in an attempt to malign them. These include ad videos depicting Uddhav Thackeray as a ‘Muslim appeaser’ and Rahul Gandhi as ‘anti-Hindu’. These ads use polarising language that is aimed at swaying public opinion by targeting specific communities. One such video, for instance, says Thackeray as shuns Hindu festivals like Ganeshotsav while celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid.

Another video misquotes his statement about providing proper representation to Muslims, using his words out of context to falsely suggest that he is only offering political tickets to Muslims even though his core cadres are Hindu. In yet other doctored videos and images, leaders are seen wearing the skullcap, symbolising their alleged allegiance to Muslims.

Some videos are used to villainise Muslims as a community by referring to them as “jihadists”, terrorists and/or illegal interlopers. These ads are intended to invoke a sense of fear among majority Hindu community and also appeal to them by “othering” the minority to foster social division.

Despite the BJP claiming it’s not an anti-minority party, its top leaders have been regularly using increasingly polarising language and content to sway elections.

During an election rally on April 21 in Banswara, Rajasthan, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was criticised for alleging that if the Opposition led by the Congress came to power, they would give the hard-earned money of Indians to “infiltrators” and “those who have many children”. The narrative was replicated in states where the BJP was not in power. In Karnataka, which the Congress wrested back from the BJP in the 2023 Legislative Assembly elections, communal identity politics remained the BJP’s central poll pitch. There too, a video vilifying Congress and Muslims was posted by the party’s Karnataka wing on social media, leading to similar outrage. The video was eventually taken down after intervention from the Supreme Court based on multiple complaints by BJP’s rivals, but voting had concluded by then. Just like the ad in Jharkhand, the Karnataka ad depicted the Muslim population in derogatory light and implied that the Congress was working to benefit one community alone by siphoning public money into Muslim organisations and aid, while projecting the BJP as the saviour of Hindus. In fact, during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, at least three such videos put out by the BJP depicted Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ and people who ‘snatch’ the resources of others.

Delhi-based veteran journalist Qurban Ali was one of the critics who decided to take matters into his own hands and on April 23, he approached the Nizamuddin Police and lodged an FIR against alleged “hate speech” by Modi. He states that the case has not progressed much. He adds that the quality of electoral and political discourse has become restricted to communal polarisation and identity politics. “Hate has become a normalised language for electoral campaigning today. As we are seeing clearly in Maharashtra and Jharkhand,” Ali states. “When the prime minister is not held accountable for hate speech, it empowers the party’s lower strata to engage in the same”.

He adds that at a time when parties are blatantly flouting the model code of conduct and acting in contravenes to rules of the EC as well as the values enshrined in the Indian Constitution, “merely sending a notice as the EC has done in the past will not work as it has no efficacy in holding perpetrators accountable. Those responsible for spreading hate should not only be suspended but booked for criminal acts,” Ali says.

Jharkhand Defies Hate Politics

In Jharkhand, in terms of the outcome of hate, many like S Ali feel that the tactics of polarisation backfired on the BJP. “I think Jharkhandis including Adivasis, Hindus and Muslims, collectively did not like the divisive politics of the BJP," Ali observes. “Moreover, the party failed to articulate any of the issues that the people had with the JMM -RJD government. There was room for anti-incumbency. But I feel such hate speeches and videos are alienating voters here since such narratives are new in Jharkhand elections and hurt the idea of ‘Jharkhani Asmita’. 

Incidentally, a row over communal political ads broke out in Kerala on the eve of the Palakkad by-polls earlier this week when the Left Democratic Front was accused of using communally charged content on ads targeting Sanjay Varier, who recently joined the Congress, to sway voters. The ad read, “"The communal propaganda endorsed by Sandeep Varier on social media and channels was frightening. The Congress received this pot of communal poison by expelling P. Sarin, a truly secular person." Taking a dig at both his rivals, Varier has said that the CPM may have published the advertisement, but it was funded by the BJP, as quoted by a report in Onmanorama.

The BJP is known for its heavy spending on advertisements. The party has topped in running ads on Google. Of the total Rs 117 crore spent by all political parties and their affiliate entities on the search engine since January 1, the BJP alone has spent Rs 39 crore, or one-third of the total amount, on Google ads from January 1 to April 10, The Economic Times reported. The second biggest spender is the Central Bureau of Communication (CBC), the government’s nodal agency for advertising, which spent Rs 32.3 crore on the same.

Facebook emerged as the second platform where parties spent on advertising and promotions. As per Facebook India’s Ad Library Report, the platform collected Rs 105 crore from political ads in a three-month period ahead of Lok Sabha 2024 polls in May-June. BJP was once again the biggest spender, shelling out Rs 21 crore on ads. Additionally, individual political candidates/leaders and pages affiliated to the party also spent substantial amounts to increase their voter outreach. Facebook, which is owned by Meta, has often been questioned by critics for not acting against or taking down communally offensive content from the platform despite its policies prohibiting posting of such content.