Twitter Has an India Problem
In recent weeks Twitter has earned the wrath of the members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.) over allegations that the platform is arbitrarily purging accounts of its supporters and muzzling conservative voices. The Hindu nationalist party attacked the social media company for being prejudiced against it and summoned its top leader to New Delhi to seek an explanation.
As the countdown to the multi-phased Indian general election has begun, pro- and anti- government voices are growing shriller on social media. Twitter has been caught in the din, with questions being raised about the company’s ideological bias and commitment toward freedom of expression. India is an important market for internet companies given its young demographic, which comprises a sizable portion of its population of 1.3 billion.
The outcome of the polls to be announced on May 23 will decide the political fate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the B.J.P. His verified Twitter handle is regularly used for communication with his 46.5 million online followers. This is significant because he seldom grants interviews to news publications; he has not held a press conference since he took office in 2014; he connects with fellow Indians through frequent radio broadcasts and fewer television addresses. Twitter is a very closely monitored space in India — one of its fastest-growing markets — making it hard for the company to ignore concerns of the right-wing support base of India’s ruling party.
Colin Crowell, Twitter’s vice president of global public policy, recently represented his employer before a panel of the Indian Parliament to discuss the issue of “safeguarding citizens’ rights on social/online news media platforms.”
According to a Reuters report the parliamentary panel sought written responses to specific questions from Twitter after that meeting as the Indian government is scanning social media content to check misinformation in the run-up to the election. The company has also been asked to work with the Indian election commission to resolve any conflicting information related to the election as fake news is becoming an insurmountable problem in India.
In an interview to the Hindustan Times, a leading English daily in India, Crowell responded to the allegations of political bias against Twitter by saying that, “We are so unbiased that we don’t even categorise users on the basis of their political beliefs.” He also noted, “Any assertion that Twitter factors in political beliefs or viewpoints in developing or enforcing our rules is false.”
The company has 126 million daily active users worldwide. It is not the first time that it has been accused of being biased by politicians or their supporters. In July 2018, President Donald Trump tweeted that Twitter had been “shadow banning” prominent Republican politicians.
What Sparked B.J.P.’s Outrage Against Twitter?
Things boiled over for Twitter in India after a group that identified itself as “Youth for Social Media Democracy” held a protest outside the company’s office in New Delhi on February 3. Protesters accused Twitter of an “anti-right wing attitude,” according to the verified Twitter handle of Asian News International (ANI), an Indian news agency. “They block our accounts & impressions of the tweets. We won’t tolerate this, they have to change their policy,” said members of the group in protest.
Online investigation by our team revealed nothing about the Youth for Social Media Democracy. There is no information available about what the group stands for, its members, or its motivation to organize the protest. A reverse image search of the protest pictures posted on Twitter showed results with more images from the same protest. The fact that there was no online trace of these images prior to the date of the protest indicates that they are legitimate rather than fabricated. One of the men prominently featured in the protest pictures was Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, a spokesperson of the B.J.P. from Delhi, which is interesting because it establishes that the group received support from members of the ruling party.
Although the right-wing leanings of the protesting group were obvious, it is not exactly clear whether “Youth for Social Media Democracy” is a proxy for the B.J.P. or its members. However, it was immediately after the protest that the parliamentary panel on Information Technology called upon officials from Twitter to raise their concerns against the platform.
The angst against the social media platform continued online even after its public rebuke. The disgruntled right-wing claims that the platform is suppressing conservative posts as well as stanching the spread and recognition of conservative thought.
For example, on February 11, Vijay Chauthaiwale who identifies himself as in charge of B.J.P.’s foreign affairs department tweeted from his verified Twitter handle that hashtag #MeraParivarBhajapaParivar — a phrase in Hindi that translates to “my family B.J.P. family” — with 223K associated tweets was trending below a hashtag about a Bollywood movie with only 4.3K tweets linked to it.
In the tweet, Chauthaiwale insinuated that since members of the B.J.P. and its supporters were promoting and engaging with tweets marked with that hashtag it was not trending at the top spot despite its popularity. In that tweet he had tagged the accounts of Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey, the company’s official account as well as the one used for its India operations, and that of Anurag Thakur, chairman of the parliamentary committee that summoned Twitter’s leadership to India.
Just a few days before Chauthaiwale’s tweet, Bagga, the B.J.P. spokesperson who appeared frequently in photos of the protest against Twitter, shared a video clip featuring his appearance on an Indian news show from his verified Twitter handle. He argued that Twitter India had actively suspended right-wing accounts citing reasons such as copyright infringement, although the same content from left-leaning accounts led to no action from the social media platform.
Bagga’s comment on the television debate about the suspension of an apparent B.J.P. supporter’s account by Twitter roughly translates from Hindi to: “Ankur Singh’s account was suspended, he never had any abusive or vulgar tweets. When approximately 20,000 people tweeted in his support with hashtag RestoreAnkurSingh — anyone can check that — Twitter was forced to restore the account and communicate to him that ‘your account was suspended by mistake.’ I just want to ask how such a big company can make a mistake of this sort.”
In the video, Bagga went on to describe an image circulating on Twitter that he noted was offensive to Hindus but the social media company had not taken it down. He seemed to be referring to a caricature which depicts Hindu gods Ram and Krishna tied to a tree and being whipped by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India’s first law minister and author of the Indian constitution. Dr. Ambedkar was a fierce critic of the hierarchical caste system of Hinduism.
The image has been shared through various accounts on Twitter with different messages attached — some were overtly critical, few merely observational, and some others are satirical.
A reverse image search of the controversial caricature on Google Images linked the same image to multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as to blog posts. Eventually it could be established that the picture was the cover image of the Kannada language translation of Dr. Ambedkar’s book “Riddle of Rama & Krishna.”
For the B.J.P. members to invoke this image to make an argument about Twitter’s bias against conservative thought is particularly interesting because it is seemingly making a broader case about Twitter’s supposed bias against Hindus and Hinduism. In a country where about 80 percent of the population is Hindu, an argument around faith provides a significant addition to the discourse surrounding a supposed political bias.
The same picture was also part of a video circulated to promote the anti-Twitter protest by the social media team of the B.J.P. as well as by party supporters. The video is a montage of pictures set to a Hindi song that is akin to a war cry. The images insinuate that Twitter is being driven by the Indian National Congress (INC), the left-leaning party leading the opposition in India. Use of the term “Twitler” in the video and misrepresentation of the company’s logo to make it resemble a cartoon of Hitler are some examples of the attack on Twitter by members of the B.J.P.
Right-wing and Twitter: An Antagonistic Relationship
The offensive against Twitter launched by conservative Indian users hasn’t emerged from a vacuum. In the United States, Trump and fellow Republicans have been at loggerheads with the platform for what they perceive as a bias against their political thought by the site.
It is interesting to note that the current governing parties in the world’s biggest democracies — India and the U.S. — are both right-wing and are pushing Twitter to toe their line. This speaks to a larger debate about the threats that platforms are facing from populist governments in democracies and how that could skew the content featured on social media platforms if they buckle under the pressure.
According to news reports the parliamentary panel that summoned Twitter, had earlier this month met with top executives from Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram to discuss their concerns about the content shared on these platforms ahead of India’s election to be held between April 11 and May 19.
Twitter is a particularly fascinating platform as it bridges the gap between formal and casual discourse and connects everyday online users with global leaders and political representatives. The B.J.P. is clearly no stranger to utilizing the platform to mobilize its base. The party’s frequent arguments against the platform illuminate the scope of how bias — and claims of bias — can potentially feed into a conversation of disinformation. This also calls into question the accountability and responsibility of platforms such as Twitter for the content they carry.
The protest against Twitter may merely be the beginning of a backlash that appears to be more deep-seated and systemic than is evident on the surface level. It’s important to continue observing developments in the narrative of Twitter’s role in the Indian election. After all, these protests could turn into a situation with a far greater scope — and a potential element of harm — than previously imagined.
