Showing Muslims taking over Hindu homes, BJP ordered to remove controversial election video

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, known for promoting its anti-Muslim rhetoric has yet again sparked anger for a recent ad campaign in the state of Jharkhand, which depicts Muslim Bengalis invading the homes of locals.

 
Journalist Rana Ayyub shared the ad with the caption, “We blame the right-wing Twitter handles for targeting Muslims with hate and obscenity. This is an election campaign video for Jharkhand approved by the Prime Minister of India.”

The ad shows a huge number of infiltrators dressed as Muslims coming inside the house of traditional Hindus who are distressed by outsiders entering their homes. While the children are seen dirtying the sofas and women hanging clothes inside the house, the ad ends with the house owner saying, “You are destroying my house?” to which a man replies that, “the government you have voted for has made their entry possible, so, they should damage your home and not just our areas.”

"Modi’s BJP is using Islamophobic propaganda for election campaigning. India’s Election Commission has become too subservient to Modi to stop this madness," Indian-Swedish academic Ashok Swain posted on X.

Earlier, in September, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah referred to Bangladeshi and Rohingya immigrants as "infiltrators" and asserted during the speech that under BJP rule, "every infiltrator will be hanged upside down."

During the 2024 Lok Sabha general elections, a BJP-affiliated X from Karnataka shared a controversial animation alleging that the opposition party Congress was facilitating Muslim dominance over other communities in India.  

Additionally, BJP’s official Instagram account posted another animated video portraying Muslims as invaders, building the narrative that Congress is trying to redistribute wealth from Hindus to Muslims.  

Both of the above-mentioned posts were later deleted. 

The ad campaign that was released on Saturday and has since been criticised widely on social media prompting Election Commission of India to take notice and ordered the removal of the video from BJP’s social media platforms on Sunday. The commission stated that it appeared to violate the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) enforced during the elections.

The Election Commission also directed the local Chief Electoral Officer to ensure the video was taken down. 

Meanwhile, the BJP has since removed the ad from all online platforms.

The ruling party appointed Assam’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, its election coordinator for Jharkhand. He is a hardline politician accused of hate speeches and policies against Muslims. In one of his speeches, Sarma said his party would identify “the illegals” – as he claims he did in Assam – and “push them to Bangladesh”. He has also promised to replicate Assam’s controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Jharkhand if his party wins. The NRC, originally ordered by India’s Supreme Court in 2013, aims to identify and deport immigrants in India who do not have valid documents.

In 2019, BJP’s government, headed by Sarma locally, used the NRC drive to remove nearly two million people from the citizenship list – about half of them Hindus.

 
Al Jazeera reports that despite the BJP’s intent to implement NRC nationwide, the issue has been used selectively in some regions only.