It is not easy being a bhakt these days, as diehard supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are finding out. Whataboutery muscles are being tested to the limits, the ability to blame criticism on conspiracies is being stretched now that industrialists and international agencies are also speaking up and the old bugbear of internal sabotage from within the Bharatiya Janata Party has refused to go away.

Now, Madhu Kishwar is no bhakt. Kishwar, a noted scholar and activist, has been one of the prime minister's staunchest supporters, while also speaking her mind on the areas where she thinks Modi has done a bad job or picked the wrong personnel. Yet Kishwar's twitter audience, so to speak, does reflect a section of the digital population that venerates Modi, and so her conversations can often be enlightening.

Over the course of 10 consecutive tweets yesterday, Kishwar explained just how difficult it is to attempt to interpret the current political climate if you have held Modi in high esteem in the past. The tweetstorm began as a response to an interview of former Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Shourie, who has clearly soured on Modi.



The tweets begin with "all due respect" to Shourie, who for a time was one of the stalwarts of the right-wing establishment and was even lionised online because of his ability to call out hypocrisy on the left. Over time as he has refused to fully endorse Modi's policies, alongside not being delegated any power, Shourie has not only turned into a villain for the prime minister's many supporters but also effectively been kicked out of the BJP.

So Kishwar's all-due respect turns into an opportunity to claim Shourie didn't condemn the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, a cardinal sin for the right, not just because of the carnage but because it was perpetrated by Congress leaders, as Kishwar's next tweet reminds us.


This is where things get confusing though. Kishwar has just endorsed a statement by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who wrote that Modi has been the "worst victim of ideological intolerance" since 2002, in a blogpost that also included claims that the Dadri lynching was just a stray incident and the intolerance debate has been the result of organised propaganda by Modi's opponents.

Endorsing that statement, Kishwar follows it up with a different sentiment altogether.


This is the classic conundrum with having pitched Modi as the strong leader that India needs. If he was so strong and so good at messaging, why have the tables turned when it comes to national and international discourse? The answer can only be internal sabotage (but again, if Modi was so strong, how could he be fooled by a saboteur?).

In consecutive tweets Kishwar both endorsed Jaitley and then insinuated that he is behind the current intolerance debate.

The remaining three cover familiar ground: Modi has picked the wrong people to surround himself with, the Congress is conspiring to have more disasters that will make the prime minister look bad and how those alienated by Modi are now helping the Congress.