Dhruv Rathee, India’s premier Youtube content creator, recently posted a video titled “Is India Becoming A Dictatorship?” (The answer he provides is “Yes”). That video garnered 6 million views in a day, numbers a Shahrukh Khan movie trailer would be envious of. Now, I usually do not take it upon myself to react to videos being made online, but the sheer virality of this video and the “facts presented therein” require a counter, if for nothing else than one big reason.

As we move from a “search engine” world to a world dominated by generative AI, viral content, left without even a figleaf of a retort, will be consumed unchallenged by the Net-scrapers of the ChatGPTs and Geminis of the world. They will then become the new truth to be then built upon as a primary source. The fact that Gemini referred to Modi as a fascist and not Xi Jinping or Zelenskyy (Trump was kept out of Gemini’s analysis) is because of the corpus of “high-trust” media referring to Modi as a fascist (thanks to 500 dollars-an-article pieces produced for New York Times and Washington Post and al Jazeera). While one cannot prevent Al-Jazeera, the official state-sponsored media wing of an Islamic theocracy, from pretending to be progressive and using the bulwark of petro-dollars on one side and that of Amazon-dollars on the other paying for Washington Post to decide the very fabric of reality, one should at least try to present the “other side” while being cognizant of the asymmetric nature of the battle—- 6 million views per day on one side vs a blog that’s abandoned, words in long form scratched together for free versus an expensively produced video, extensively shared by other influencers whose politics aligns with Mr. Rathee.

This is a perfect segue to one of the points Dhruv makes to show that India is not a democracy under Modi. He says, “Fair elections mean that the politicians of the ruling party and the opposition get equal media time.” Dittoheads nod, except there is no such presumption in a democracy. Just because Dhruv will get 6 million views of his opinion in a day and mine will get 600 if I am lucky, does not mean that he is using illegitimate means to propagate his views. He has a bigger platform built on his own strategies (and kudos for that), and with that comes the immense power of any narrative he pushes. Just like Republic TV has a bigger platform than him and does exactly the same, except for the other side. In the US, for every Fox, there are multiple NBC, CBS, and ABC, and even today, when Trump is in opposition, they carry almost exclusively anti-Trump content, which does not, by implication, make America, not-a-democracy. Private channels choose to align based on the political alignment of their viewership and of their controlling bodies; it is a commercial decision; in India, Bengali media aligns with Mamata, and national media aligns with Modi—and none of this makes India a dictatorship. What does make a country a dictatorship is when you have state-owned television media and no other channel can operate—which is what India used to be till the early 90s, even though Dhruv Rathees of the day would still have called it a democracy.

Dhruv Rathee starts off by saying, “Elections are held in Russia and North Korea, but they are not democracies.” The difference is that neither North Korea nor Russia has states that are being ruled by opposition parties. Nor do they have opposition leaders accusing the leader of being corrupt and openly in the pocket of Adani-Ambani, and that is an obvious fact, except to those who are Bhakts of the opposite side. There was a time when the central government would routinely dismiss state governments ruled by opposition states and impose President’s Rule, but that was, once again, when India was ironically still a democracy, as per Mr. Rathee.

Dhruv Rathee isn’t making up facts. He just presents facts for one side. For instance, he brings up rigging in a mayoral election in a city while not bringing up elections in Bengal where the ruling party (not BJP) wins about 10% of local Panchayat seats without opposition or where supporters of BJP (the opposition there) are systematically culled and killed or their huts burned after assembly elections. Surely in Russia and North Korea, Kim’s opposition or Putin’s would not be able to kill Kim or Putin’s supporters. It is also interesting that Dhruv does not bring up China or any of the petro-theocracies as examples of dictatorships. I am inclined to dig deeper here, but I realize that it is a privilege only for Mr. Rathee to cast aspersions and explore hidden intentions.

While bringing up how the BJP is using law enforcement to target opposition leaders, he does forget a few facts. Like the leader of the opposition, a current shoo-in to win the next elections, being fined 360 million dollars for fraud in a loan where the bank from which he took the loan deposed in his support (i.e., there actually is no case of fraud), where the judge openly expressed his hatred of the opposition leader, where the chief prosecutor was elected on the promise to prosecute the leader of the opposition, in short, a systemic stacking the decks against a person. I am, of course, talking about Donald Trump being systematically destroyed, through multiple cuts, in courts (in the US, judges and district attorneys are elected) in states controlled by Democrats. But that still does not make America not-a-democracy. Neither is America a dictatorship when the FBI whistleblower who brings up charges against the current US president of having been bribed by a Ukrainian energy corporation is charged with lying and himself becomes subject to prosecution, while Biden spends billions of US dollars pursuing the interests of Ukraine. Nowhere am I saying that the US is a dictatorship or not a democracy. Just pointing out how other democracies, too, work.

But why can’t Dhruv cherry-pick facts? Sure, he can. But you cannot then turn around and say his hypothesis of India being a dictatorship is being supported by facts. Facts are not facts in support of a hypothesis if you ignore any facts that undermine your hypothesis. This is why in a drug trial, there is a control group provided a placebo, the “anti-hypothesis,” and you are obliged to report that, too, if you want to make an argument for the efficacy of your drug. A counter to his argument is the presentation of facts that run counter to his hypothesis, which can be summarized as follows:

The existence of states ruled by the opposition who are “actual opposition” and not rubber stamp, where BJP has been consistently decimatedThe exact same symptoms of dictatorship at the center are being manifested in the states ruled by opposition parties.The government frequently loses in The Supreme Court, which they would not have in a dictatorshipThe existence of anti-government commercial media in many statesMany democracies, like the US, have biased media, opposition leaders under prosecution, and evidence of misuse of power, which makes them flawed but not dictatorships.

There is a larger point that “Centrists” like I have made for decades—the dictatorial tendencies of Indian political parties when they come to power, be it BJP or Congress or TMC or DMK or AIADMK, their misuse of arms of government, the “win at all costs” election system and the systemic corruption that makes business houses susceptible to being arm-twisted by the politician. We have been accused of both-siding it, whereas the facts support exactly that—not just a both-sides in India, but that every democratic country has serious flaws, for greater or for worse. The universe of all facts, not the ones cherry-picked by Mr. Rathee, would support the hypothesis that India is and has always been a flawed democracy, just like the US. Yet people like Dhruv Rathee will make this a partisan issue, focussing only on BJP, because they are looking for popularity (and the sweet cash that comes as a result from the sheer Youtube revenue of 6 million views, leaving aside the official sponsor of the video). It is far easier to pander to one’s echo chamber, show up one’s country to be way worse than it actually is, and monetize it in the way the Republics of the world monetize the flip side of the same coin—jingoistic nationalism.

Which brings me to how I started this post. In today’s world, user-generated content, like Dhruv Rathee’s is deemed to be “trustworthy”, by the algorithms of Big Tech, purely on the basis of likes, engagements, and in-links. Letting them uncountered, giving in to the “it’s one man’s opinions why are you so triggered” is ultimately ceding the ground of objective reality to people with great social media capital, who use that privilege to define what truth is, cast in the mold of their own prejudices and affiliations.