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For over a decade, the BJP’s digital dominance rested on two pillars: X (formerly Twitter), where it won the war of narratives, and WhatsApp, where it built a sprawling network of forwards and broadcast groups that reached millions of Indians directly.
That winning formula changed in a matter of just a few weeks – and not entirely on the party’s own terms.
On July 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared an unusual midnight selfie video. It marked several firsts. For one, it was the first time India saw its Prime Minister address the nation in a selfie-style video. (The camera angle itself became a talking point, but more on that later). More significantly, the video was posted on Instagram first before X, breaking with PM Modi and the BJP’s long-established social media playbook.
The catalyst for that shift is said to have been the unprecedented Gen Z-led student protests that swept New Delhi and other parts of the country, fuelled by a relentless stream of memes and reels on Instagram.
At the centre of that online wave was the Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP (the government claims otherwise, more on that later), a satirical youth movement that emerged from a stray courtroom remark likening India’s unemployed youth to “cockroaches”. It quickly snowballed into the nationwide students’ protest against the NEET paper leak, eventually forcing a union minister to resign.
The movement’s trajectory was a sign, mirroring Instagram’s growing political influence. What started as a meme on X exploded on Instagram, where the CJP’s account amassed millions of followers within days, reportedly surpassing the BJP’s official handle in follower count in less than a week. For a party that had spent years mastering the top-down choreography of X hashtags and WhatsApp broadcasts, watching an unregistered, leaderless internet movement outrun it on a platform it barely used was, by several accounts, a genuine jolt.
BUT BJP WAS DOING IT BEFORE IT WAS COOL, APPARENTLY
An executive at a digital communications agency that works closely with the BJP’s social media team rejected the suggestion that the party had been caught off guard. Speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid straining professional relationships, he said the BJP’s shift towards Instagram – away from static graphics and towards reels – had begun in February-March last year, well before the CJP protests. Since then, he claimed, the party’s daily Instagram output has grown roughly fourfold.
According to him, the government’s slow embrace of Instagram was less a blind spot than institutional habit. For years, X had functioned as the party’s “official mouthpiece,” attracting most of its time and resources.
Where he did acknowledge a weakness was relatability. The BJP’s challenge, he argued, is not with users who already consume political content, but with everyone else. Those audiences are more likely to engage with relatable, unscripted, phone-shot videos than official-looking graphics.
He also offered a broader explanation for why opposition voices often appear disproportionately loud online: dissatisfaction, he argued, is more likely to drive people to post and engage than satisfaction. That can make anti-government content seem more dominant on social media, he said, even when the BJP’s own engagement numbers remain strong.
REELING TO CATCH UP ON THE INSTAGRAM SCRAMBLE?
Arun Prasanth L, a digital communications strategist with I-PAC (the election consultancy that has advised opposition parties in multiple states) read the same shift very differently. In his view, the BJP is, for the first time in over a decade, “playing catch-up on a platform it does not yet understand properly.”
The party built its edge on X and WhatsApp; while Instagram’s grammar – visual, emotional, allergic to stage-management – rewards precisely the kind of decentralised, unscripted content that runs against the BJP’s traditionally disciplined, cascade-from-the-top messaging model.
He was careful, however, not to frame this as a simple BJP-versus-Congress story. The deeper shift, in his telling, is generational: X, he argued, is increasingly the venue for “elite arguments” among people already politically engaged, while Instagram is where ordinary young people move from passive scrolling to active participation, a transition he says the CJP protests demonstrated more decisively than any hashtag campaign could.
He was equally direct that any party (the BJP or otherwise) that tries to manufacture youth-coded content rather than discover leaders who are “already genuinely fluent online” risks the backlash that comes from being seen as inauthentic. The BJP’s early moves, including Prime Minister Modi’s front-camera videos (also his shift from mitron to friends), were, in his assessment, an obvious and understandable first step, even if the execution still reads as effortful rather than native.
To be honest, since his rare selfie video on Instagram last month, there have been multiple videos, shot in the manner which were dropped primarily on Instagram. The transition is palpable.
BEYOND THE VIBE SHIFT
The sharpest critique came from an academic voice, Siddharth Deshmukh, the founder of a content studio called FableLab, who also teaches as a professor of practice at MICA. He argued that the BJP’s Instagram pivot has so far mistaken tactics for strategy — borrowing Gen Z vocabulary and visual grammar (vertical video, informal framing, internet slang) without doing the harder work of understanding the value system underneath it.
Repetition of a message, in this framing, doesn’t build trust; it builds “residue,” and residue built on borrowed lingo without an underlying authentic voice tends to read as hollow to the audience it’s aimed at — which, this source suggested, is part of why reactions to some of the party’s recent content, including Modi’s selfie-style videos, have skewed more mocking than admiring.
He is probably right, to some extent, because the reception to these videos isn’t quite desirable. It has been facing backlash and, not to mention, a lot of trolling.
On the question of whether the shift will produce a new generation of youth leaders, he predicted a steady trickle of young, internet-native figures rather than any dramatic changeover, much like what Prashanth had mentioned. However, he cautioned that Instagram fame is inherently transient, meaning any leader who breaks through this way is likely to have a short shelf life rather than become an institution.
DOES IT MEAN NEW GEN Z LEADERS?
Sayantan Ghosh, author of Battleground Bengal and a professor at St Xavier’s College, Kolkata, situated the shift squarely in electoral incentive. He spoke about a party leadership meeting at which the Prime Minister reportedly asked MPs to be more active on Instagram.
So, Ghosh expects outreach to influencers to become a continuous, year-round exercise for both the BJP and the opposition, rather than the episodic, election-triggered courtship which has been the case so far.
When asked whether this could lead to the emergence of Gen Z leaders, he seemed sceptical. He did not believe it would translate into any real generational handover of power within the BJP, noting that “young” in Indian politics still typically refers to politicians in their late thirties or forties, and that a party as organisationally cautious as the BJP is unlikely to promote genuinely ambitious younger leaders who might disrupt its hierarchy.
What he does expect to grow is the party’s reliance on outside, apolitical consultants and creative talent — the same model, he argued, that shaped Narendra Modi’s own 2014 campaign, which was designed largely by professionals with no prior political track record.
FROM MITRON TO FRIENDS
There is solid proof that the party has leaned into pop-culture references – including the PM dropping a ‘Hello friends’ reel (moving away from his trademark mitron). He is visibly being more informal, direct-to-camera as he addresses students, as part of a broader shift away from conventional political messaging.
When he posted his first video, it drew a fair share of criticism – but, more importantly, plenty of constructive feedback. For instance, several viewers pointed out that his camera angle felt awkward. He appears to have taken that feedback. In his very next video, the angle was noticeably adjusted, and so was the background. Social media was quick to pick up on the changes.
Interestingly, Parliament, too, became an unlikely showcase of the trend, cutting across party lines. During debate on an anti-paper-leak bill, BJP MP Bansuri Swaraj used the phrase “clock it” to praise the legislation, while other MPs, including NCP (SP)’s Supriya Sule reached for terms like “delulu”. Others used “FOMO” and “MIA“.
In fact, PM Modi’s selfie videos – four came in quick succession – drew a jab from Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who said the Prime Minister needed to change “the angle of his heart,” not the angle of his camera.
Commentary since has been split on execution: some observers frame this change as a serious structural response to a party that has “mastered” older platforms but is still finding its feet on a reel-driven one; others note that Gen Z reaction to some of the content has been closer to bemused than convinced.
HAS BJP CRACKED THE CODE TO GEN Z’S HEARTS?
Whether the BJP can loosen its own grip enough to build genuine credibility with an audience that can spot a script from a mile away – or whether it ends up, as one source put it, merely imitating spontaneity rather than embracing it – is likely to define the next phase of this digital shift.
The hustle is definitely there. Whether it pays off remains an open question. For now, the party appears to be attracting more roast than reward. But judging by the Prime Minister’s last four videos, the BJP is learning quickly.
– Ends
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