If Twitter founder and ex-chief Jack Dorsey had hurled a live grenade into the middle of Indian politics, it couldn’t have created a bigger explosion. Politicians and their followers have come out with all guns blazing. Ironically, the biggest battleground is Twitter itself.

In a few crisp sentences, Dorsey outlined the barrage of pressure he had faced in India and other countries like Nigeria and Turkiye, as Turkey now likes to be called, over politically sensitive remarks posted by Twitter users. Even the US, he remarked, wasn’t above sending requests or calling him to face Congressional committees if it was displeased.

But Dorsey started with India and he didn’t mince his words. “India is a country that had many requests of us around the farmers’ protests,” he alleged. “It manifested itself in ways such as, ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’ -- which is a very large market for us. ‘We will raid the homes of your employees’ Which they did. ‘We will shut down your offices.’ And this is India, a democratic country.” Dorsey added with a wry smile.

The government represented by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and IT, has fired back angrily, accusing Dorsey of “outright” lies and saying Twitter committing “repeated and continuous violations of India law,” and said it often “weaponised misinformation”.

The BJP’s Amit Malviya also waded into the fight. “Under Dorsey, Twitter had turned rouge (a typo, presumably rogue), disregarding laws of the sovereigns (sic) they operated in, muzzling freedom of speech and in many cases promoting secessionist voices and those who were working to exacerbate social fault lines,” Malviya said.

Continuing in the same vein, Malviya called Twitter a lawbreaker, “Twitter was in violation of India laws for an extended period (between 2020-2022).” Clearly, it seems India’s been less riled by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk as Malviya carefully specified the dates when Twitter was a “lawbreaker’ and said the social media platform had been in compliance since 2022.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra displayed a visual titled A Tale of Puppetry which shows Dorsey as a puppet with Rahul Gandhi pulling the strings.

In 2022, Twitter told the Karnataka High Court that the government had ordered it to block several accounts at the time of the farmers’ protest. Also, the government had wanted to block criticism of its Covid-19 handling. Twitter argued before the court that under the IT act it could only block specific tweets depending on their content and not entire accounts. It said that the order to remove the tweets would fly in the face of “open and free exchange of information.”

The Opposition, meanwhile, has seized on Dorsey’s allegations, claiming they are evidence that India’s democracy is being run into the ground. “The BJP’s secrets are being exposed on the world stage,” said the Samajwadi Party. The RJD too, came out swinging its fists in the direction of the government, saying: “The world’s largest democracy is witnessing the largest dictatorship.”

And of course, most of these battles are being fought out on Twitter, which is still the best forum for heated political exchanges. “EXPOSED” declared the TMC’s Derek O’Brien, emphasising his point by putting the word in capitals. “Modi and his boys were not only intimidating farmers during the protests….”

The BJP got support for its stand from former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal. He sharply attacked corporate power and anyone who thought it had “unfettered right to tailor info based on personal beliefs & ideology, disregarding laws of foreign countries.” He said any effort by corporations to suggest that protecting their societies “is muzzling freedom of speech is rooted in self-importance/arrogance.”

Other anonymous Twitterati launched a broader attack. Said one Twitter user called Wokeflix: “Jack Dorsey is just another Raghuram Rajan for the left eco system (sic).”

Dorsey, who made his remarks on YouTube news channel Breaking Points, now is speaking freely without any worry about the effect of words on Twitter’s fortunes. He stepped away from Twitter last year and left it in the unpredictable grip of billionaire Elon Musk who’s just regained his title as the world’s richest man despite paying $44 billion for the social media platform, widely regarded as too much. Last Thursday, Forbes magazine reckoned that Musk was worth $220 billion which put him $4 billion ahead of luxury king Bernard Arnault. Musk has made it clear he will do as told if governments ask him to remove tweets.

Even though Musk spent an inordinate amount of time nursing Twitter last year, his Tesla shares have clawed back lost ground and have climbed 115 per cent since January. However, Musk has made it very clear Twitter will have to pay its own way and that he will not be splurging his money from Tesla on it.