The social media posts include caricatures of people in skull caps and burqas, and imagery likening Muslims to rats, pigs, and mosquitoes
NEW DELHI — The Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media campaign around the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has sparked widespread outrage for dehumanising Muslims as “infiltrators”. The BJP campaign features caricatures of Muslims and likens them to animals, drawing sharp criticism for fuelling Islamophobia.
The posts, circulated across the Delhi BJP’s official platforms, include caricatures of people in skull caps and burqas, and imagery likening Muslims to rats, pigs, and mosquitoes.
Critics slammed the BJP’s attempt to portray Muslims as a threat, using the SIR exercise meant for updating voter lists. Despite lacking official data, the BJP projects the drive as a crackdown on “illegal infiltrators”, collapsing distinctions between Indian Muslim citizens and migrants.
A sampling of the Islamophobic media the BJP’s Delhi unit has shared under the pretence of the ongoing SIR. Collage courtesy: The Wire Hindi.
Rights groups condemned the campaign as a “targeted communal narrative”, undermining the SIR’s purpose and fuelling suspicion against the Muslim community.
With the Election Commission yet to provide consolidated figures, analysts question the scale of the “infiltrator” narrative, pointing out that foreign nationals accounted for a mere 0.012% of Bihar’s electorate.
Analysts say this undermines the scale of the “infiltrator” narrative being promoted.
The ‘infiltrator’ discourse escalated on December 1 when the Delhi BJP’s official X (formerly Twitter) handle shared a movie-style poster portraying opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, and Mamata Banerjee in Muslim attire implying that questioning the SIR equates with siding with “infiltrators.”
Other visuals show Prime Minister Narendra Modi blocking holes from which rats are peering out, pig-like figures fleeing a harvesting machine labelled “SIR,” and a Muslim family escaping smoke from a mosquito coil symbolising voter verification process. These depictions have been widely condemned as dehumanising.
Similar messaging has also emerged from other BJP-led governments and party handles. In Assam, Minister Ashok Singhal posted an image hinting at the 1989 Bhagalpur massacre, imagery critics say taps into violent histories to incite prejudice.
Assam BJP’s official accounts have repeatedly shared Islamophobic content, indicating coordination in narrative across the party’s digital networks.
Political observers argue that the term “infiltrator” has long been weaponised in electoral rhetoric, especially in border states.
But during election cycles, they say, such rhetoric often spills over into a broader attack on Muslims and the political opposition.
