Prime Minister Modi put himself at the centre of India’s foreign policy. Now the joke is on him

Comedian Pulkit Mani’s video mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi for how he interacts with foreign dignitaries had notched 16 million views on Instagram when it was taken down by the platform in mid-March on the orders of the government. Two days later, YouTuber Dhruv Rathee reposted it with a short introduction.

“If you praise Modi, they [the government] will get your films shown on big screens,” he said in the video, which has since been viewed over 36 million times. “But if you show Modi’s reality, even through comedy, they will not let your videos stay on social media.”

In recent weeks, there has been a proliferation of memes, videos and cartoons poking fun at the prime minister, particularly his overtly personalised approach to foreign policy, even as the government has taken down hundreds of social media posts and disabled the accounts of several users for sharing satirical content against it.

Some of the takedown notices have been issued under the Information Technology Act of 2000. Since they do not always specify reasons and give users time to respond before their post is taken down, legal experts have criticised them for being arbitrary.

The use of humour to target the prime minister isn’t just limited to comedians, cartoonists, content creators and journalists. As the ongoing conflict in West Asia has led to a shortage of cooking gas cylinders in India, the Opposition has also latched onto satire.

Youth Congress workers across the Hindi belt hit the streets with pipes and stoves to supposedly harness gas from sewers this month. They claimed to be inspired by a 2018 speech that Modi had made in which he had praised a tea-seller for developing such a technology.

In its online campaigns too, the Congress party has relied on humour, with Supriya Shrinate, its social media chief, claiming that nine AI-generated videos uploaded from Congress accounts had been arbitrarily removed from social media platforms.

“The more posts that this government deletes, the more convinced I am that we are getting under their skin,” Shrinate said.

Puncturing the ‘Vishwaguru’ narrative

The rise in humour targeting Modi’s foreign policy is easily explained by the war in West Asia, argued journalist G Sampath, who has been writing a satirical column for The Hindu since 2017. His most recent piece about India’s foreign policy and Modi’s “strategic use of hugs, medals, photo-ops” elicited considerable attention on social media.

The conflict in West Asia was, in his assessment, making many Indians, who believed that the country’s global stature had risen under Modi, question the “Vishwaguru” narrative.

“Is it really true if India is such an influential power?” he asked. “Are we getting what we want? Are we able to leverage our global stature to get the Indian people what they need at this time?”

Questions such as these were leading to what Sampath called “cognitive dissonance” for many people whose assumptions about India’s standing in the world have been seriously challenged of late.

Satirist Sunil, who goes by the name of Rofl Gandhi on social media and has had several of his posts taken down before, agreed.

“Satire about foreign policy hurts them [the government] so much because this is the one intangible thing for which the poor give them credit,” he said. “If the same poor people start questioning them about the increase in gas prices, they will have nothing left to show.”

Shrinate from the Congress party contended that this reckoning began last May in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor. US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims about stopping the war between India and Pakistan put Modi on the spot, she added.

Subsequently, the 50% tariffs imposed on India by the Trump administration further punched holes in the prime minister’s image. “The strongman with a 56-inch chest was not able to do anything,” Shrinate said.

The final straw, Opposition leaders say, was the way the Modi government handled the situation in West Asia. The prime minister visited Israel two days before the country launched strikes on Iran. His opponents contended that this reduced India’s leverage with Iran, making it harder to secure safe passage for Indian ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz, causing widespread disruption in gas supply.

“His [Modi’s] foreign policy is all about himself. He goes to countries where he gets medals,” said Shrinate from the Congress. She was referring to the prime minister’s address to the Knesset, the Israeli legislature, last month. Modi became the first recipient of a medal from the speaker of the Knesset during his visit.

Sanjay Singh, a Rajya Sabha MP from the Aam Aadmi Party who took part in street protests making fun of Modi’s gas-from-sewer claim, reasoned that the Opposition had to resort to such gimmicks because the government had stopped listening to it.

“In Parliament, I personally submitted four notices for a discussion on the war in Iran, but they were not accepted,” Singh added. “So what do we do? We have to expose how the government is misleading people.”

Déjà vu?

Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson RP Singh acknowledged that on social media his party appeared to be on the backfoot. However, he expressed confidence that things would get better once the gas supply improved. “Already, our ships have started coming in [from the Strait of Hormuz],” he pointed out.

Asked about the censorship of satirical content, Singh insisted that only factually incorrect information meant to “create panic” had been taken down by the government. He said that while the Opposition had the democratic right to communicate its point of view in whatever way it liked, its messaging on the subject of foreign policy had not been effective in the past.

In 2018, the Congress party had mocked the prime minister for “hugplomacy” – his supposed preference for hugging foreign dignitaries to establish familiarity. The criticism did not stick then and Modi came back to power with a bigger mandate in 2019.

But Seema Chishti, editor of The Wire, which had one of its satirical videos on the prime minister taken down in recent weeks, argued that the ground had shifted since then. Drawing an analogy with floods, she said the consequences of Modi’s foreign policy were now becoming apparent to more Indians.

“Earlier, it was the flooding experts who were telling you why it was wrong,” she said. “But now, I can see water trickling in from under my front door so I know it is flooded.”