Staffers and allies of India's BJP detail how they crafted posts for a vast network of WhatsApp groups aimed at exploiting the fears of the Hindu majority
MUDBIDRI, India — At first, the WhatsApp messages touted roads paved, schools built, free food distributed to the poor … X: @malavtweets , @digitaldutta , @mparekh , @gerryshih , @digitaldutta , @gerryshih , and @foundationtls Forums: r/mangalore and r/worldnews X: @malavtweets : The worst kept secret is now out in the open! Finally, Indian BJ Party-led government's abuse of power is being seen as a serious concern globally. What we hope is that these countries identify their supporters in their own backyard. Srinivas Kodali / @digitaldutta : During an election in Gujarat state, the party used software written in Python code that could hijack WhatsApp's web interface to spread attack ads to tens of thousands of recipients with just a few clicks https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Michael / @mparekh : Key ingredients: “Central to the success of the #BJP, a party with 180 million members, is a massive messaging machine built on top of U.S. social media platforms.” #Tech #India #Geopolitics #Markets #AI $META $GOOG #WhatsApp #Jio #Reliance https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Gerry Shih / @gerryshih : 2. How Facebook employees caught the Indian army spreading disinfo and targeting journalists in Kashmir, but didn't act for 18 months, citing fears about Modi govt backlash— a pattern with US tech giants in India W/ @josephmenn https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Srinivas Kodali / @digitaldutta : Indian army's Chinar Corps has been running a anonymous network of social media accounts on facebook and twitter targeting primarily against kashmiri journalists accusing them of separatisim. Facebook for long didn't take them down. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Gerry Shih / @gerryshih : 1. How the BJP and Indian right uses a massive whatsapp pyramid model to spread election material that is often inflammatory and impossible to monitor — a machine that it pioneered and mastered like no party in the world. We went to Karnataka to observe https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @foundationtls : A new article by @gerryshih brilliantly traces how Narendra Modi's BJP and its Hindu nationalist allies have built a massive propaganda machine. How did it happen that now 10000s are spreading disinformation and religiously divisive posts? https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Forums: r/mangalore : Inside the vast digital campaign by Hindu nationalists to inflame India r/worldnews : Inside the vast digital campaign by Hindu nationalists to inflame India
Context & Ripple Effects
Earlier coverage described Gujarat elections as a WhatsApp spam war between major parties and reported political organizations deploying “digital warriors” across large group networks. This report adds a more specific account of how BJP-linked participants shaped messages for those channels around majority-Hindu anxieties.
The story also fits a continuing arc: later coverage characterized the BJP’s WhatsApp operation as a way to campaign beyond public scrutiny. The significance is less any single post than the combination of centralized content creation and decentralized, hard-to-observe distribution.
First-order effects
- The reporting puts BJP staffers and allied message-makers under direct scrutiny for their role in producing divisive material, rather than treating the content as purely grassroots activity.
- WhatsApp’s group-based distribution becomes central to the issue: messages can be replicated through a large network while remaining harder for outsiders to observe than public posts.
Second-order effects
- Opponents and election monitors must contend with campaigning that can move through private groups faster than conventional public-message tracking can capture.
- For WhatsApp and other platforms, pressure shifts from moderating individual pieces of content toward detecting coordinated distribution patterns across ostensibly private channels.
Third-order effects
- If such pyramid-style networks remain an effective campaign tool, political influence operations may increasingly be organized around distribution infrastructure rather than high-profile public accounts.
- The broader governance challenge is whether platforms can apply consistent safeguards to private, encrypted, or semi-private sharing spaces without relying solely on public-feed moderation.
The trend: This is one instance of political campaigning migrating from public social feeds to coordinated private-message networks, where distribution is harder to audit and attribute.