The Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday used various “art vs artist” memes to mock the Aam Aadmi Party and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal ahead of Assembly elections. The memes showed the allegedly bad state of roads, traffic jams and riots under the Kejriwal regime in Delhi, depicting the chief minister as the “artist” and such problems as his “art”.
On the other hand, the memes also displayed the construction of roads and highways by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his government’s action of scrapping the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and dividing it into two Union Territories, displayed by a new map of India.
However, social media users hit back at the BJP with memes of their own, ridiculing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and icons the saffron party holds in high respect, such as Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. One meme showed Savarkar’s letter apologising to the British India government.
Another meme linked the mob attack at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi on January 5 with its “artist”, Amit Shah.
Another meme appeared to target Modi for his alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, during which he was the chief minister. The meme used a picture of the burning of a train in Godhra, which triggered the riots. On December 11 last year, the Nanavati Commission cleared Modi, the then-chief minister of Gujarat, his government and Cabinet colleagues of involvement in the riots. The riots had killed over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.
Yet another meme made fun of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the supposed “artist” of the faulty Goods and Services Tax system. It also simultaneously praised former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
User @bhatvicky73 made a meme showing the BJP’s shrinking footprint across India:
Another Twitter user targeted Sitharaman for the decrease in the rate of growth of the economy under her watch. The Indian economy grew at just 4.5% for the June-September 2019 quarter, and is projected to grow at just 5% for the 2019-’20 financial year, the lowest pace in 11 years. The International Monetary Fund has predicted that the Indian economy will grow at just 4.8% this year.
The Delhi Assembly elections are scheduled for February 8, and the results will be announced on February 11.
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