I have been tracking reports of the grotesque trolling that India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has been subjected to on Twitter. While the language of that trolling is now quite typical of what happens on social media— the vilest abuse expressed in a semi-literate phraseology—what is not typical is that she has come under assault from those who would normally be considered warriors of broadly the same ideological persuasion as her.
Swaraj herself is seen to belong to a rapidly dwindling moderate fringe of her Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that still believes in a measure of civility. However, those who have attacked her represent a substantially more popular segment within the BJP-Hindutva universe who are unshakably devoted followers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an individual.
Having once known her very well during my political reporting days in the 1990s in New Delhi, I know for a fact that she is genuinely troubled by the politics of egregious vilification. She is more akin to the philosophy espoused by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee than the brass-knuckle combativeness of Modi. And that is where the rub lies. Modi’s fierce supporters see no virtue in the brand of politics of relative reasonableness that Swaraj stands for. Although a strong votary of much of the core of her deeply Hinduized party, Swaraj still retains some of her socialistic impulses of her early political career that run counter to the street-level discourse prevalent on social media.
She had been frequently seen as “prime minister-material”, an idea effectively upended by Modi’s virtually unchallenged rise on the national scene in 2014. The kind of masculine, barrel-chested politics that his supporters have pushed, including the ludicrous references to his “56-inch chest” as evidence of his male invincibility, makes space for Swaraj’s nuanced and reasonable approach impossibly constricted. No one should be surprised that barely any of her ministerial or party colleagues stood up for her in the face of some trolls virtually calling for her death over the transfer of a passport officer who allegedly harassed an inter-faith couple. So far it is not even clear whether Swaraj had anything to do with the transfer.
I would not like to waste this space on the kind of language that the trolls used because it is pointless. It is enough to say that social media discourse finds ever more abusive depths. It is true that more often than not these trolls are orchestrated by the BJP’s own IT cell against the party’s detractors outside. However, the fact that they turned on their most high profile leader other than Modi with such viciousness shows that the battle for supremacy within the BJP universe is in some upheaval as the 2019 parliamentary elections approach. So far, Modi seems well set to be the party’s choice to continue as prime minister but there have been some rumblings about a possible change of guard should the BJP fall short of a simple majority.
As of now, Modi along with his fellow Gujarati cohort, BJP president Amit Shah, seems to be in full control of the state of affairs within the extended Hindu political family. But his more loyal than the king followers on social media feel compelled to make sure that Swaraj gains no ground beyond what she already enjoys should push come to shove in the 2019 election results. Having been a creature of that ecology, which was always toxic on its fringes but has now traveled more deeply inside, Swaraj knows how to take care of herself. She does not need help from her party colleagues and certainly not from outsiders.
I am sure she sees some irony in the fact that she is being trolled by those very people whose abusiveness she overlooked or at least least resisted as long as it was directed outside their world. She knows that world all too well because she has operated in it her entire career without letting it tarnish her own reputation or erode her own principles.