Assam CM Sarma's Deleted Video Row: How Polarisation Became Part of BJP's Election Playbook

The now-deleted video posted by the Assam unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party—showing Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma firing at figures identifiable by skullcaps—has sparked outrage across the political spectrum. The clip, shared on the party’s official social-media account before being removed, showed Sarma taking aim at two figures marked by religious symbols, with captions such as “Point blank shot” and “No mercy.”

Opposition leaders called the imagery dangerous and demanded legal action. But the importance of the episode goes beyond the immediate controversy. It shows how deeply polarising visuals—sometimes direct, sometimes indirect—have increasingly become part of election campaigning in India.

Navaid Hamid, who is a community leader and former president of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, a federation of over a dozen of Muslim organisations, took strong exception to the action of Assam BJP. But he said that demonising Muslims to win elections has become normal in today’s India.  

“Demonising Muslims to garner votes has been normalised and institutionalised.  BJP gets encouragement also because when there is no accountability from the judiciary,” Hamid said. 

“Such behaviour gets encouragement from weak judiciary which does not take cognisance. For some reasons best known to them only, judiciary is under tremendous pressure from the government. In a civilised society for the national party to spread hatred against a religious minority community, would have provoked  some sort of action which would have discouraged the organisation to repeat it,” said Hamid, who used to be a member of National Integration Council, a government body for national harmony during the UPA.

According to Aman Wadud, an Assam-based leader from the Congress party, the video was “deeply disturbing”. “BJP has proven time and again that it has absolutely no regard for law or even basic decency.” He also said that this episode is evidence of BJP’s “desperation.”

“This also shows desperation of BJP. They are losing the plot in Assam. The wise people of Assam are ready to defeat this politics of hatred and division,” he added.

Communal signalling has long existed in Indian politics, but earlier it was mostly done through speeches rather than dramatic visuals. Political leaders often relied on hints and coded language—references to “appeasement,” demographic change, or cultural grievance—rather than explicit imagery.

The roots of today’s style can be traced back to the 2014 election, when social media began to play a central role in national campaigns. Online networks became a major way for parties to reach voters and shape political conversation. During that campaign, Narendra Modi repeatedly used the phrase “pink revolution” to criticise previous governments for encouraging beef exports—an argument that carried clear communal overtones in the Indian context.

In the years that followed, cow-protection campaigns—often justified through similar rhetoric—were linked to several incidents of violence, showing how symbolic political messaging can spill over into real-world consequences.

By the 2019 general election, digital campaigning had become far more organised. Coordinated WhatsApp groups and structured social-media campaigns were able to spread political messages across the country quickly. Researchers found that many of these messages portrayed minority communities as demographic or security threats, often without using openly abusive language.

The period also saw controversies over political symbolism. BJP candidate Pragya Singh Thakur’s description of Nathuram Godse as a “patriot” caused national outrage and forced the party to distance itself from her remarks. The episode showed another recurring pattern: provocative statements generate attention, are later partially disowned, but the broader message continues to circulate.

Studies of social media during the same period also found that political messaging increasingly used sharper and more confrontational language, suggesting that intense, polarising communication had become a common campaign tactic.

By the 2024 general election, the messaging had moved even further. An official BJP campaign video warned that opposition policies would “snatch” wealth from non-Muslims and give it to Muslims. The clip was later removed after complaints that it promoted hostility between communities.

At the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeated a similar claim in several speeches. He referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and suggested that opposition governments would redistribute people’s wealth away from the majority population. Reports after the election found that such references appeared frequently during the campaign.

A recent report by the India Hate Lab, a project of the Washington, DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate, found that India had recorded 1,318 hate speech events in 2025, an average of more than three per day. At least 98 per cent of the events targeted Muslims and explicitly so in 1,156 cases, the report added.

Modi himself has been accused of using inflammatory language about Muslims to generate fear among Hindu voters. Human Rights Watch said in a report published in August 2024 that Modi and several party leaders “frequently used hate speech against Muslims and other minorities, inciting discrimination, hostility, and violence” during campaigning for the 2024 general election.

“Indian Prime Minister Modi and BJP leaders made blatantly false claims in their campaign speeches against Muslims and other minority groups,” said Elaine Pearson from Human Rights Watch said while analyzing his speeches.

“These inflammatory speeches, amid a decade of attacks and discrimination against minorities under the Modi administration, have further normalized abuses against Muslims, Christians, and others.”

Human Rights Watch analyzed all 173 campaign speeches by Modi after the election code of conduct took effect on March 16. The code forbids appealing to “communal feelings for securing votes.” The HRW said that in at least 110 speeches, Modi made Islamophobic remarks apparently intended to undermine the political opposition, which he said only promoted Muslim rights, and to foster fear among the majority Hindu community through disinformation. 

Looking across the elections of 2014, 2019 and 2024, a clear pattern emerges. A politically charged claim is introduced—sometimes directly naming a community, sometimes using symbolic language. The same message is then repeated in different forms—speeches, videos, and social-media posts—until it becomes part of everyday political conversation.

It would be wrong to say that everyone accepts such messaging without objection. Each incident is criticised by opposition parties, civil-society groups and many voters. Yet the repeated use of similar tactics across elections suggests that polarising communication has become a regular feature of political competition.

Rights groups have argued that constant claims portraying minorities as economic or demographic threats can gradually make such narratives seem normal in public debate. At the same time, the continued electoral success of campaigns that use this language indicates that the political cost of such rhetoric remains limited.

The Assam video, therefore, is not an isolated event but part of a longer shift in how election campaigns are conducted. Indian politics has moved from indirect verbal signals to a system where speeches, images and short videos work together to deliver emotionally charged messages.

When election campaigns rely more and more on imagery that presents certain communities as threats, the nature of democratic debate begins to change. The contest is no longer only about policies or governance but also about identity and fear. Whether future elections continue along this path—or whether stronger public or institutional pushback sets new limits—will shape the tone of Indian politics in the years ahead.