Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday made a statement that indirectly suggested the BJP and the wider Sangh parivar have a right to dominate the social media space by virtue of the party’s larger electoral clout.
Prasad, the law and information technology and communications minister, was on Tuesday questioned at a media conference about The Wall Street Journal report that has suggested that Facebook condoned hate speech by the Hindutva ecosystem to protect its business interests in India.
“It’s a hard fact we need to know that people whose political base has shrunk like anything seek to dominate public discourse on these platforms. That’s not right,” Prasad replied.
In saying so, the minister appeared to be linking electoral dominance to the right to control social media, and suggesting that ideological and political opponents of the BJP who have been defeated in polls have as a consequence also lost their right to dominate the discourse.
Prasad stopped short of bluntly putting in the public domain what many Sangh parivar leaders have been saying in private: that the two consecutive electoral wins of Narendra Modi mark a decisive victory of the Hindutva ideology.
Modi’s laying of the foundation stone of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on August 5 is being seen in Sangh circles as the “liberation” of India from “anti-Bharat” ideologies.
At the media conference, Prasad expressed dissatisfaction with Facebook for removing 700 accounts of “BJP supporters”.
On the WSJ report on how Facebook had condoned hate content uploaded by those associated with the BJP to prevent a fallout on the company’s business in India, Prasad remained evasive, saying it was for the social network behemoth to look into the allegations according to its “policy and system”.
“Seven-hundred pages of BJP supporters were removed. This is also a fact,” he said, going on to hold forth on every individual’s right to be heard, which he then himself contradicted by linking it to electoral clout.
“I want to say one thing without taking the name of any platform,” Prasad said. “If the platform in question is a public platform, then every Indian regardless of his ideology or commitment has got the right to convey his or her views.”
“Isn’t it a fact that some people think they should have monopoly on these platforms?” Prasad asked, siding with a theory floated by sections of the BJP that Facebook was dominated by people with Left and Congress ideologies.
The minister proceeded to launch a political attack on Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Prasad said if the issue was of “hate speech”, then Sonia’s “aar paar ki ladai hogi (there will be a decisive battle)” and Rahul’s “desh ke log pradhan mantri ko dande marenge (people of the country will beat the Prime Minister with sticks)” were “textbook cases for instigation of violence”.
