By the time election day arrived right here in south India’s Karnataka state, Patil, a 25-year-old financial institution teller in a sleepy village exterior Mangaluru, stated he was receiving 120 political messages a day in six WhatsApp teams. “They were definitely a reminder,” Patil stated, to solid a poll for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that governs India.

The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and affiliated Hindu nationalist teams have been within the international vanguard of utilizing social media for political goals — to advance their ideology and cement their grip over the world’s largest electoral democracy. They have perfected the unfold of inflammatory, typically false and bigoted materials on an industrial scale, incomes each envy and condemnation past India’s borders.

Central to the success of the BJP, a celebration with 180 million members, is an enormous messaging machine constructed on prime of U.S. social media platforms. It is a part of a wider effort by the right-wing forces aligned with Modi to wield know-how in numerous methods — and prohibit its use by opponents — in pursuit of a Hindu nationalist agenda that seeks to marginalize spiritual minorities and suppress criticism.

As hate speech and disinformation in India have grown in recent times, Silicon Valley giants have at occasions tried to police this incendiary content material. But typically they’ve struggled — or willingly turned a blind eye.

The Biden administration, in the meantime, has been aggressively courting India as a counterweight to China whilst Modi has accelerated his nation’s descent into autocracy. Just this month, the world’s consideration was urgently targeted on the conduct of the Modi authorities, after Canada alleged that Indian brokers might have assassinated a outstanding Sikh separatist on Canadian soil, once more elevating questions concerning the efforts of Western nations to attract nearer to New Delhi.

This spring, Washington Post journalists spent a number of weeks in Karnataka because it was gearing up for elections and gained uncommon entry to the huge messaging equipment and the activists who run it. In in depth interviews, BJP staffers and the celebration’s allies revealed how they conceive and craft posts geared toward exploiting the fears of India’s Hindu majority, and detailed how that they had assembled a sprawling equipment of 150,000 social media employees to propagate this content material throughout an unlimited community of WhatsApp teams.

Using this infrastructure, the celebration was capable of ship messages touting the BJP’s accomplishments and denigrating its opponent, the Indian National Congress celebration, immediately into the pockets of a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of individuals.

But past the celebration’s official on-line efforts, there was additionally a shadowy parallel marketing campaign, in line with BJP staffers, marketing campaign consultants and celebration supporters. In uncommon and in depth interviews, they disclosed that the celebration quietly collaborates with content material creators who run what are referred to as “third-party” or “troll” pages, and who concentrate on creating incendiary posts designed to go viral on WhatsApp and hearth up the celebration’s base. Often, they painted a dire — and false — image of an India the place the nation’s 14 p.c Muslim minority, abetted by the secular and liberal Congress celebration, abused and murdered members of the Hindu majority, and the place justice and safety may very well be secured solely by way of a vote for the BJP.

Today, India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with greater than 500 million customers. Social media researchers, authorities officers and WhatsApp itself have acknowledged the platform’s potential as a instrument to fan polarization and stoke violence. But exactly what goes on throughout the BJP’s WhatsApp ecosystem has lengthy been a thriller to political scientists and opposition events, which have struggled to duplicate the celebration’s digital success.

“Other parties in India have tried this. We’ve seen it in other countries like Brazil. But WhatsApp was really mastered first, and at scale, by the BJP,” stated Rutgers University professor Kiran Garimella, who has studied WhatsApp’s position in Indian politics. “It requires resources, planning, investment, a top-down belief in building this infrastructure. But 99 percent of what’s happening in these groups is off-limits. We have no visibility at all.”

On the breezy, palm-lined coast of Karnataka, few trolls had extra affect than “Astra,” which suggests “weapon” in Sanskrit. Most BJP celebration employees stated they didn’t know Astra’s actual id, however many spoke glowingly about his fiery repute.

Astra cranked out polarizing WhatsApp posts that might be shared again and again in coastal Karnataka — like those who ultimately reached Patil, the financial institution teller. Astra was courted by native BJP candidates at any time when they launched their campaigns, though he hardly ever spoke at rallies. Astra was such a militant voice on the web that even BJP leaders feared being accused by him of being too average towards Muslims.

“Pages like Astra are much bigger than the official BJP accounts,” stated Sudeep Shetty, who heads social media for the BJP in Udupi district. “They’re our secret weapon.”

On a sultry morning in April, with the election nonetheless a month away, Astra emerged from his workplace, an airless, transformed school dormitory overlooking a dust cricket subject. He pressed his palms collectively in a conventional Hindu greeting and launched himself.

In individual, Astra wasn’t as fearsome as he was by repute. He was a willowy, bespectacled 28-year-old, and his identify, he stated, was Sunil Poojary.

Wedged between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats mountain vary, the dual cities of Mangaluru and Udupi boast prime universities and historic temples. Along tidy village roads, Muslim girls cloaked in body-length black niqabs stroll previous Hindu clergymen resting underneath sacred fig bushes. Ethnically and culturally numerous however conservative, prosperous but a hotbed of non secular friction, the coast has at all times stood aside from the remainder of Karnataka state.

In the Nineteen Eighties, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the paramilitary volunteer group that serves as an umbrella for Hindu nationalist teams, swept in. The RSS constructed houses for poor tribes and fed the needy. It despatched aspiring politicians into the BJP, its political wing. It established camps for kids and indoctrinated them in Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist ideology.

It funneled them into hard-line activist teams, most notably the Bajrang Dal, a bunch that accosted and beat up Muslims accused of smuggling cows, thought of sacred in Hinduism. Gangs of Bajrang Dal members tracked down and forcibly separated interfaith {couples}, typically accusing Muslim males of waging “love jihad,” and often clashed with Muslim activist teams.

While younger males roiled the streets, political events jockeyed on the poll field. In the previous seven years, the BJP and Congress — the 2 largest events — have battled on WhatsApp. (While Congress attracts some Muslim voters, its management occurs to be predominantly Hindu.)

It was approaching midday in the future this spring, and Ajith Kumar Ullal, the BJP’s social media head in Mangaluru, had been up for seven hours, barking orders over a droning air conditioner that struggled to match the south India warmth.

Ullal, 59, labored out of a “war room” within the BJP’s gleaming downtown workplace, commanding a social media “cell” of 9 volunteers answerable for an space in coastal Karnataka inhabited by 1.5 million folks. The cell included his deputy, who serves as copywriter, and three graphic designers who mixed textual content with photographs and logos to craft rectangular image posts, extensively thought of probably the most attention-grabbing and shareable format on WhatsApp.

Volunteer fieldworkers, who had mixed telephone numbers from voter registration rolls with info collected going door to door, added as many residents as potential to WhatsApp teams. All instructed, the BJP had 150,000 employees staffing WhatsApp only for the state election, in line with Vinod Krishnamurthy, a former head of BJP social media for Karnataka.

Ullal, himself, belonged to 200 WhatsApp teams. Within an hour of seeding a brand new WhatsApp submit, Ullal anticipated it to be unfold to a whole bunch of 1000’s of residents in his coastal district. “Each and every BJP volunteer who has a mobile is a social media warrior,” he stated.

This revolution in political communications began to stir in 2016, when the Reliance conglomerate entered the telecommunications sector and supplied new prospects limitless free information, sparking a value conflict. Within three years, India’s cellular information went from among the many most costly to among the many least expensive on the earth.

Late that decade, BJP officers started assembling big databases of telephone numbers and in search of methods to streamline the messaging course of, three former marketing campaign officers recalled. During an election in Gujarat state, the celebration used software program written in Python code that would hijack WhatsApp’s internet interface to unfold assault adverts to tens of 1000’s of recipients with just some clicks, in line with an inside presentation seen by The Post.

WhatsApp’s engineers in 2018 launched new limits on message-forwarding in India after witnessing the rise of fast-spreading rumors, which had led to mob killings and different tragic penalties. They additionally made technical adjustments to curb mass messaging.

So the BJP turned to its largest energy: organizational self-discipline. “Everyone who wants to know how the BJP operates looks for hi-fi, extraordinary tech, and some of that exists,” stated a former BJP marketing campaign supervisor. “But the reality is, it’s mostly brute, manual labor.”

According to a subject research performed in 2020, Indian customers instructed Meta researchers they “saw a large amount of content that encouraged conflict, hatred and violence” that was “mostly targeted toward Muslims on Whatsapp groups.” “Anti-Muslim rhetoric … is likely to feature in upcoming elections,” warned the interior research, which was shared with The Post by whistleblower Frances Haugen. One former Meta worker who examined Indian elections stated that the issue has been acknowledged internally for years however that executives haven’t discovered an answer to observe or average a platform that’s by design personal.

In response to questions on what measures father or mother firm Meta has taken to handle divisive political materials on WhatsApp, Meta spokeswoman Bipasha Chakrabarti stated WhatsApp has restricted message-forwarding and used spam-detection know-how to forestall automated mass messaging.

When requested whether or not the corporate was conscious of the web campaigns in Karnataka, Chakrabarti stated: “WhatsApp provides end-to-end encryption by default to protect people’s conversations, and that means that nobody — including WhatsApp — can read or listen to your message.” She declined additional remark.

At the beginning of the marketing campaign season, Ullal added The Post to one in all his WhatsApp teams, and within the ensuing weeks, his group largely disseminated conventional marketing campaign messages about public companies and authorities achievements. But as election day neared, the tenor of the marketing campaign modified dramatically, and the WhatsApp group turned strewn with incendiary posts and appeals to non secular bigotry. Ullal in contrast it to cricket technique. “In the last few overs,” he stated, “that’s when you do the big hitting.”

One submit likened Congress politicians to Tipu Sultan, an 18th-century Muslim king who is usually vilified for allegedly butchering Hindus. Another submit defended as a “victim of conspiracy” a Hindu vigilante who was arrested in March for allegedly beating a Muslim man to dying.

Typically, BJP staffers didn’t create the inflammatory content material, stated Akshay Alva, Ullal’s deputy. But they unfold it, anyway. “There are things we may not say, but the troll pages say it,” Alva stated.

Sunil Poojary pounded on his workplace desk.

“I don’t want beautiful videos. I want only content!” he shouted towards the subsequent room, the place Ashwini, his video editor, was struggling to maintain up with the tempo.

On today in April, the BJP’s nominees for state meeting had been registering their candidacies, formally kick-starting the election season, and Poojary, who led a group of 4, was overwhelmed. New computer systems and streaming gear for YouTube had been nonetheless sitting unboxed in his windowless workplace. Using his three Android telephones, Poojary wanted to churn out a gentle stream of picture posts, stamp them with the Astra brand and blast them out to 30 WhatsApp teams.

In the previous few days, Astra had scored a string of viral hits. Poojary had in contrast the election to a battle between nationalists (the BJP) and terrorists (the Congress celebration). He disseminated a photograph of a Muslim man groping a statue of a goddess worshiped by a neighborhood that’s thought of a swing vote within the state. He additionally edited down a speech of a neighborhood Congress candidate, he admitted, to make it falsely appear that he was praising Muslim kings.

Poojary didn’t generate profits from the Astra posts, he stated. But his social media exploits and his attain helped garner him an uncommon degree of affect for a Tenth-grade dropout who had by no means held a daily job: The chief minister of Karnataka shared Astra posts on Facebook, and Poojary stated he would get calls from different prime authorities and celebration officers.

Poojary, who hails from an ethnic group that historically tapped coconut bushes for sap, by no means anticipated this type of success. When he was 7, Poojary recalled, the RSS arrived at his household’s distant two-acre farm carved out of the jungle. They requested to recruit him. His father stated sure.

In the native RSS department, younger Sunil discovered Hindu chants and nationalist songs. He carried out navy drills and practiced yoga. His formal education was derailed within the Tenth grade when his father died, leaving him adrift, he stated. But he had already discovered a household within the RSS and function in hard-line Hindutva.

Elders in Poojary’s RSS chapter diverted him into the Bajrang Dal, however he shortly knew he didn’t slot in with muscle-bound bruisers. When his Bajrang Dal gang would begin ingesting by the freeway to metal themselves for ambushing cow transporters, Poojary wouldn’t drink or be part of within the beatings. When they roamed round seeking to break up circumstances of “love jihad,” Poojary would urge what he thought of restraint: “I would tell others, ‘Don’t hit the women.’”

Instead, he turned to writing, penning prolonged essays about Hindu mythology and Indian historical past, and self-publishing three books.

But nothing gave him the eye he desired till he discovered WhatsApp. In 2020, Poojary launched Astra and three different troll pages and discovered to craft headlines, insert photographs utilizing the free Android app Blend Collage and tweak colours for optimum virality. He reveled in the truth that folks assumed the person behind Astra was a “gangster.”

“If people see me, they’ll see I’m slim and diminutive,” he stated. “But I have a gift from God: Goddess Saraswati holds my hand and tongue.”

In April, the BJP’s state management despatched shock waves alongside the coast by tapping a neighborhood businessman named Yashpal Suvarna as a candidate for the state meeting. In 2005, as a neighborhood chief of the Bajrang Dal group, Suvarna had turn into recognized after stopping two Muslims transporting cows in a truck, stripping them bare and parading them earlier than reporters whereas police appeared on.

Given Suvarna’s previous as a thug, his marketing campaign group hoped to make use of WhatsApp to melt his picture and showcase his “humility.” But Suvarna’s private assistant Yatish felt not sure, so he referred to as up one of the best social media whiz he knew: Astra.

Poojary instructed the marketing campaign that the technique wouldn’t work. Up to a 3rd of voters had been younger males, who appreciated an aggressive candidate, he reasoned. Furthermore, the Congress celebration was hinting that if elected, it might ban the Bajrang Dal. Suvarna’s group pivoted. It started sharing to about 1,000 WhatsApp teams strident posts bearing Suvarna’s face subsequent to a menacing Lord Bajrangbali, the deity after which the Bajrang Dal is known as, and boasting of his ties to the group.

Poojary additionally jumped into motion. To enhance the BJP marketing campaign, he exploited quite a lot of communal killings that had rattled Karnataka the earlier summer season.

In July 2022, a Muslim teenager was killed in an altercation with members of the Bajrang Dal. That led to the revenge killing of a BJP volunteer by native members of an Islamist militant group, in line with Indian legislation enforcement. Poojary and a number of other different right-wing influencers then unfold materials agitating for the volunteer’s dying to be avenged.

Days later, round sunset on July 28, Mohammed Fazil, 23, was hacked to dying by 4 masked males as he walked close to a busy freeway crossing north of Mangaluru. Police stated Fazil was randomly focused as a Muslim. At a Bajrang Dal rally, a Hindu nationalist chief brazenly boasted that Fazil was killed out of revenge. The position of the heated WhatsApp discourse within the violence stays unclear.

A perpetual ‘civilizational battle’

Looking again months later, Poojary stated he believed that the anger circulating on WhatsApp had contributed to the bloodshed and that violence may very well be justified within the service of Hinduism.

Santosh Kenchamba, who runs the extremely influential Rashtra Dharma troll web page, stated he additionally referred to as for the revenge killing. He defined that it was a part of a perpetual “civilizational battle” by on-line activists to assist remake India right into a Hindu state the place Muslims knew their place.

As the election heated up in April, Poojary doubled down on spurious claims on WhatsApp that Muslims, abetted by the Congress celebration, had killed dozens of different Hindu activists.

One of the voters who obtained these pre-election messages was Patil, the financial institution teller. Lounging with associates exterior a barbershop not removed from the place Fazil was killed, Patil, a middle-class younger Hindu man with a style for flower-print shirts and new iPhones, stated he had recognized Fazil from faculty.

Patil stated that whereas rising up, he didn’t suppose Fazil, or most Muslims, posed a lot of a risk. But over the previous 5 years, Patil had turn into more and more troubled by what he was seeing on WhatsApp concerning the hazard Muslims allegedly posed, he stated. He had heard nameless voice recordings on WhatsApp that presupposed to be of Muslim extremists plotting to kill Hindus. As the May election approached, he obtained warnings about extra violence if Congress received.

Patil didn’t query any of this disinformation. Instead, he and his associates, who stated they consumed information solely from WhatsApp, arrived at an inevitable conclusion.

“Hindus are in danger,” Patil stated.

With the marketing campaign reaching fever pitch firstly of May, Modi landed on the coast to guide a teeming rally. Poojary stood within the warmth, largely bored as his hero spoke concerning the economic system. But after an hour, Modi’s voice started to rise. His arms reached for the sky. Finally, he unleashed his fury over the Congress celebration’s proposal to ban the Bajrang Dal.

“When you press the button in the polling booth,” Modi thundered, “punish them by saying, ‘Hail, Lord Bajrangbali!’”

The crowd, together with Poojary, erupted in rapture.

But even with the prime minister’s last-minute intervention, the statewide election proved to be a disappointment for the BJP. Television analysts stated the celebration had been weakened, partly, by infighting amongst its leaders, and the Congress celebration gained sufficient seats to take management of the state legislature in Karnataka.

On a quiet road north of Mangaluru, Patil — who in the end had voted for the BJP — nervous about Hindus’ security. With Congress now working the state, he stated, “Muslims will be emboldened.”

But the shrill warnings that left Patil so alarmed had truly helped carry the day for the BJP alongside the coast. In this a part of the state, the place operatives resembling Poojary and Ullal had crammed voters’ screens with their divisive content material, the BJP swept all however two of the 13 contested legislative seats. Down by the ocean, roads had been blanketed each 100 yards by banners congratulating one of many area’s rising stars, “Yashpal Suvarna, Member of the Legislative Assembly.”

Up within the pink clay hills, Poojary appeared relieved. Five native BJP candidates he had supported on social media all received. But he was additionally nervous, he admitted, that with Congress now controlling the state police, he is likely to be charged with libel or spreading pretend info.

Still, Poojary couldn’t assist persevering with to stir the pot. The election had barely ended, and he was already spreading posts that in contrast the brand new Congress state authorities to Tipu Sultan, the Muslim oppressor. He warned, utilizing a picture of splattered blood, {that a} Hindu holy man had already been murdered close to Bangalore.

In his windowless workplace, Poojary was nonetheless giving instructions to his video editor and graphic designer each couple of minutes. His telephone was nonetheless lighting up continually with WhatsApp notifications.

“The Muslims have won,” he stated, “for now.”

He excused himself, pressed his palms collectively in entrance of his coronary heart, and went again to work.

Mohit Rao and Shams Irfan contributed to this report.

Design by Anna Lefkowitz. Visual enhancing by Chloe Meister, Joe Moore and Jennifer Samuel. Copy enhancing by Gilbert Dunkley and Martha Murdock. Story enhancing by Alan Sipress. Project enhancing by Jay Wang.