The second phase of the 2024 general election is over.  According to the Election Commission, a voter turnout of nearly 64 percent was recorded in 88 constituencies across 13 states and Union territories. Generally speaking, there has been a dip in voter turnout compared to 2014 and 2019. This may affect the BJP's fortunes more than others because it’s a cadre-based party; and, unlike the others, its target is 400 seats. 

For the first time,  a non-politician is having a considerable sway in this turn of events. Dhruv Rathee, a young man sitting in Germany. His video posts have been like missiles and they hit the target with consistent precision.

In the last few months, Rathee, a YouTuber with 18 million subscribers, has posted commentaries that rip apart the BJP’s politics. Almost all his political commentaries take down what is generally considered to be the party’s greatest political asset, Narendra Modi. Rathee has been relentlessly exposing the prime minister whom he often calls a coward and a liar. These are words that the  PM does not like to be associated with. 

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Dhruv, a YouTuber, has 18 million
subscribers | Photo Facebook

For example,  in a fact-checking video, he made a direct comparison of Modi to Hitler. The point at issue was a speech Modi made in which he said the Congress Party, if voted to power, would ‘redistribute’ wealth, and most of it would go to Muslims. The prime minister allegedly sourced his information from the Congress manifesto and an old speech made by Dr Manmohan Singh.
Rathee called it the Big Lie technique that Hitler used to great advantage in the 1930s and proceeded to show what was written in the manifesto had nothing to do with what the PM alleged.

His social media posts and videos have become so popular that in North India, people are watching Rathee on makeshift screens in public places. One such video included his defense of the AAP now in trouble over the liquor scam.

Rathee’s videos are not investigative. He brings to the fore nothing new. What he does is to put together various instances and make a forceful case for his argument. The essence of this is that the BJP should not return to power because of its Hindu supremacist politics. 

Rathee’s good looks and power of articulation, pitch, and delivery help. But where he scores the most is in registering with the viewer a rare and new urgency. This has little to do with the subject. Last fortnight, for instance, he posted a 30-minute animation video on the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a dead-as-a-dodo subject. But he delivered his commentary as if  World War 3 was taking place now, and all of us were about to go up in smoke. 

The urgency in his voice is the drama. If Rathee spoke about the ingredients that went into the making of, say, Rasam, it would be edge-of-the-seat entertainment. In fact, he almost did. Last week, one of his videos was about the presence of cancer causing ethylene oxide in Indian spices. What’s the government doing about it, he asked, and answered himself, by connecting the neglect to electoral bond politics.

What Rathee seems to be doing is to capture the Modi-struck, credulous lower middle-class North Indian viewer market. In a recent article, The Economist said one of the challenges that Prime Minister Modi faces is to bring into his fold South India, whose education and wealth equip them to be relatively immune to the dangerous charms of the BJP. 

In 2014 and 2019, the party and its undisputed leader Modi were successful in brainwashing the heartland. Modi’s personality and oratorical skills — his ability to pitch a line over the head of the urban intellectual to the rural poor— were in full evidence. 

But it is the same audience that Rathee caters to with great effect. A recent video going viral shows a boy explaining to a reporter that he got to know about the weaponization of the Enforcement Directorate by watching Rathee.

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Narendra Modi

What Rathee is doing is a deconstruction of the Modi image, so painstakingly cultivated by the PM. As a result, his strengths appear as excesses.  

Modi likes to project the image of a strong man. Rathee takes it down as dictatorial inclinations. Modi likes to associate himself with the idea of development. Rathee interprets it as the development of a few billionaire businessmen. Till recently, the BJP had made it out that criticizing the party and the PM is tantamount to being anti-national. Rathee believes that  that  propaganda is anti-national. In almost all his videos, he reminds his viewers to ‘think’ about what they are being told. 

Last week, Rathee said he would bust the fearsome IT cell of the BJP, manned by thousands, by floating his own WhatsApp channel, with a target membership of 100 crore.  One can foresee a megalomaniac streak in this idea. But that is in the near future to worry about.  

The only driven and effective Opposition leader of national standing just now is Rahul Gandhi, who has reinvented himself as a grassroots politician. But, in the last count, he is a politician.

Rathee’s advantage is that he isn’t one. He has no connection with any of the Opposition parties. This gives him credibility. He comes across as your friendly neighbourhood superman without his flowing cape and strange underwear.

That he is sitting safely in Germany, of course, helps. That he is young and good-looking contributes to his popularity. But nothing can take away from the fact that Rathee is probably the first new-generation communicator from India who is helping to shape  its political destiny by just switching on his cell phone.