It is important for us to introspect on whether a mere tweet was what caused the current Rihanna phenomenon!
A celebrated U.S. based pop-singer called Rihanna, tweeted on the Punjab farmer's protest in India, tangentially expressing concern at the repressive tactics employed by government against the protesters. Despite her stardom, to be honest, I didn't even know that a person called Rihanna existed before her tweet become a talking point, and this is likely to be the case for a majority of those involved on either sides of the current twitter war that is attributed to her. This being the case, it is important for us to introspect on whether a mere tweet by a celebrity with little connection to India was what caused the current twitter storm.
Rihanna is indeed influential and she is definitely bound to have a considerable number of Indian fans. She might have either tweeted merely based on news articles or through recommendations from an Indian contact. In any case, it was a mere tweet that didn't deserve the attention it got. Some of Rihanna's followers who are supporting the farmer's protest would've shared her tweet and those supporting the government would've objected it and resorted to mild abuses against her, and that would've been it. The tweet wouldn't have got even 1% of the engagement that it currently has, and it would've disappeared from memory as instantly as it went in, just like the million other tweets that we come across everyday.
Then, what is it that made the tweet to stick around and percolate into mainstream media? Well, it is the seemingly coordinated and structured response from the pro-government cyber warriors, that wanted the Indian masses to see Rihanna's tweet as an external conspiracy to destabilize India. The hashtags
#IndiaTogether and
#IndiaAgainstPropaganda were meticulously promoted by pulling all possible strings. Nothing else can explain the twitter handles of even shy and politically inexpressive Indian celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar tweeting on this issue. It is likely that he and the likes of him received requests from the offices of the very higher-ups to send out statement for India's sake.
The counter campaign against the government has now gone into a tizzy by accusing people like Sachin as puppets in the government's playbook. Well, in my view, they were just doing what they saw as their patriotic duty. Besides, considering the usual basic instinct of celebrities, which is not wanting to antagonize the bigwigs, their options were also limited. Apart from the celebrity handles, the official twitter handles of the government departments, and even Indian missions abroad had been pressed into the campaign, all for one inconsequential tweet by Rihanna. With this kind of strong fire-power at play, it isn't a surprise that a mere tweet got nucleated to gravitate a political storm.
Now, that the reason for the outsized impact is quite clear, what could've been the motive for the government to get overzealous in its campaign? The answer lies in the Modi's style of politicking, which is rooted in the aggressive polarization of those with him and those against. The act of polarizing involves stigmatizing the other to the extent of deepfelt hatred, and the BJP IT wing is doing precisely that since the initial days of the protest. They've been trying to stick the Khalistani label on the protesting farmers in a effort to project the protest against the laws as a proxy campaign by Sikh secessionist forces. By doing this, the BJP seems to be succeeding in discrediting the views of the protesters and restricting the spread of the Punjabi farmer's sentiment against the farm laws into its strongholds in the Hindi heartland.
The Republic Day vandalism at the Red Fort by a group, apparently from within the protestors, was another shot in the arm for the BJP's strategy. It subsequently pressed on with more aggressive measures of repression as its support base was now polarized enough against the protesting Sikh farmers to allow such measures. In this context, Rihanna's tweet has been put to good use by the BJP to gain more leverage for further strengthening its 'the patriots vs the rest' narrative. Interestingly, alongside its polarizing campaign, the BJP has all along maintained that it is open for talks with the farmers. This is the same as continuously slapping the protestors with one hand and patting their back with the other, an arrangement not intended to resolve the conflict, but to insult and weaken the spirits of those in the protest.
The government could've pacified the protests by treating them with respect and scrapping the laws in at least the regions that is seeing resistance. It could've then launched a strong confidence building campaign on how the laws could benefit farmers. But considering BJP's sheer majority in Parliament and the political arrogance of the Modi-Shah duo, such notions are wishful thinking. Besides, as polarization is a key tool for BJP's electoral success, any effort at confidence building isn't politically prudent for it. At stake in this bloody game is the social fabric of our beloved mother India!
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