The suspension of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expulsion of the BJP’s Delhi media cell chief Naveen Kumar on Sunday amid a diplomatic furore between India and West Asian countries has created a major buzz within the BJP, not just in the social media ecosystem created immediately before and after 2014 but also within the party organisation over the manner in which the issue has been handled. The episode reflects an internal churn within the BJP on rhetoric, ideology, and rewards.
Twitter hashtags like #ShameOnBJP trended after Ms. Sharma’s suspension with many prominent BJP supporters, though not officially members of the BJP, expressing the sentiment that Ms. Sharma and Mr. Kumar had been abandoned by the party at a time when Ms. Sharma had also received death threats over her remarks.
“On our internal groups she [Ms. Sharma] has received a lot of sympathy and many are questioning whether to support a party that is so pusillanimous in helping out supporters, even terming the official spokesperson of the party as ‘fringe’,” a young social media right-wing influencer said. The top leadership of the party and the government, which has only received accolades from such groups till now, has been roundly criticised for the first time.
