Masters of Spin

How the Modi government conducts information warfare

- PUJA SEN

The Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan’s digital version, Vikatan Plus, published a cartoon depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in handcuffs, sitting next to a laughing Donald Trump, on 10 February. Five days later, Vikatan employees suddenly found their website blocked, via a confidential order issued by the ministry of information and broadcasting. The magazine was not even made aware of the MIB directive until the next day, when it received the order.

The illustration referenced the mass deportation of Indians under the US president’s anti-immigration crackdown, during which over a hundred Indians were forcibly put on an aircraft, their hands and legs chained for nearly forty hours, with limited access to food and restrooms. The official MIB notice stated that the Vikatan website had been taken down on “emergency orders,” under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, which allows the government to remove online content on grounds such as the “interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement.” K Annamalai, the Tamil Nadu president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, had filed the complaint to the MIB, claiming that the news portal had published “offensive and baseless content” about Modi. This is all it takes today to take down a piece of content in Modi’s India: a notion of aggrieved sentiment.

In 2023, the government had used the same IT Act against the BBC Documentary India: The Modi Question, which looked at how Modi handled the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom when he was chief minister of Gujarat. The documentary never aired in India, but many clips were shared widely online, several of which the government banned, claiming that the documentary was a “propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative.” Last year,