Inside the BJP’s WhatsApp Machine https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/inside-bjps-whatsapp-machine
Abhishek Kumar, a senior fact-checker at the Indian nonprofit Alt News, told Rest of World that “the information spread with this particular Old video of polics shown immediately after Ram Mandir inauguration, claiming to be current) video is not only false, but it also glorifies police brutality and is being shared praising it.”
Kiran Garimella, an assistant professor at Rutgers University who researches WhatsApp in India, told Rest of World the app reaches people that other platforms don’t, including remote communities. “There are a number of people in India who only use WhatsApp,” he said.
According to a report in the Deccan Herald, there are now at least 5 million WhatsApp groups operated by the BJP in India. Unnamed party leaders told the Herald the BJP’s WhatsApp infrastructure is so powerful that it can disseminate information from Delhi to any location in the country within 12 minutes.
Garimella, the Rutgers researcher, said the BJP’s “extreme coordination” and prowess on WhatsApp could benefit them. The closed nature of WhatsApp — only people in a group can see the content shared there — is also a concern. Unlike social media platforms such as X or Facebook, conversation in WhatsApp groups is usually hidden from public view, and largely goes unmoderated and unscrutinized.
There is a strict hierarchy to the BJP’s operations. Every day, the party’s offices in New Delhi send messages to be shared across groups at regional and local levels. Bragta, who is based in Himachal Pradesh's capital city, Shimla, said he religiously looks at updates from Delhi in the morning to understand what narrative-building is supposed to be done for the day. He also hosts daily half-hour meetings with workers across the state. “We discuss issues and get feedback,” he said. “While sitting in Shimla, I will not get to know about Himachal. They will tell me.”
Garimella, the Rutgers University researcher, told Rest of World the lack of pro-Congress or anti-BJP WhatsApp messages was consistent with his findings from previous research on WhatsApp in a village in the state of Jharkhand, which is known for frequent incidents of communal violence. “We have also seen in our database that pro-Congress or anti-BJP content does not exist. It is less than 1%,” he said. “These guys [the BJP] are so well-coordinated that the opposition doesn’t have any comparable infrastructure.”
Singh, the former BJP consultant, told Rest of World that by dominating WhatsApp, the BJP had effectively completed its capture of mass media in India. “It is concerning, because it distorts the level playing field,” he said. “The narrative of other parties is not reaching the public because they do not have distribution in place. Better narrative does not ensure a win, better distribution does.”