A common explanation to why BJP came to power in 2014 is given that people fell for its promise of 2 Cr. employment per year, 15 lac cash to every individual by bringing black money back to India from swiss banks and many other jumlas like this. It may be partially true, but it is not the complete picture. The other half of the story is its hidden and clever propaganda of Hindutva ideology and a parallel history of India. BJP came to power through deceit and lies. The lies about first Prime Minister Nehru, Sardar Patel and Shubhash Chandra Bose. They claim Bose and Patel were victims and did not get their due recognition in the Congress party. Hard-core BJP supporters believe that the history that is taught in school and university books is false. RSS shakhas and its affiliate schools preach to young kids to hate Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru. The entire premise of BJP’s ideology is based upon falsehood. All of this effort is done to discredit the Nehru-Gandhi family of its contributions to India’s freedom movement and after independence to India’s development. People start believing BJP’s false stories as they are repeated over and over in social media and mainstream media.
A new dimension to their propaganda has been added after 2019 which is psychological. Continuous repetition of not having an alternative or weak opposition. Bollywood celebrities, BJP sympathizer journalists, Godi media star anchors and other influential personalities continuously rant about weak opposition without any explanation as to why? This method employed by the BJP is nothing new. During Hitler’s rule in Germany, similar descriptions of not having an alternative were very common. “The voters, who might otherwise have resisted Nazism, were ‘mesmerised’ by a well-functioning propaganda machine”, writes author David Welch in his book The Third Reich.
After Jio was launched in India, internet access penetrated to a large population of India, even in remote rural areas. It was a good thing that people could access the internet. BJP by its nature of spreading falsehood suddenly found a new channel for propaganda dissemination. It employed more than 20,000 IT cell members whose only job was to spread falsehood in Whatsapp and Facebook groups. BJP’s former president Amit Shah once claimed that one single Whatsapp forward from its headquarter is sent to 3.5 Million Whatsapp groups across the country and then forwarded to common people.
