In 2013, Shivam Shankar Singh, then a college student, volunteered for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign for the national polls the following year. He graduated from college in 2015 and began working for the BJP officially in 2016. Singh was mentored by Ram Madhav, a national general secretary of the BJP and a top ideologue of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Singh worked in the areas of data analytics and social media. In March 2018, he resigned from the party. In a blog post, Singh explained that he quit because of the party’s misleading narratives against the opposition and the media, the crackdown on political dissent, the dissemination of fake news and the deliberate communal polarisation of the Hindu majority, among others.
As Indian politics places itself firmly on the right of the ideological spectrum, some individuals who were previously members of right-wing organisations, have moved towards the Left—or at least away from the Right. Yet others, who hail from a notably right-wing milieu, never embraced it and have become the political right’s fiercest critics. What makes such individuals go against the stream? What events, situations and considerations shape their decisions? Abhimanyu Chandra, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, seeks to explore these transitions in a series of interviews, titled Converse Lens, being published by The Caravan. Chandra spoke to Singh about the final straw that led to his resignation, and the silent disillusionment with the current government within the BJP. He further discussed why opposition parties have failed to capitalise on this disillusionment.
Abhimanyu Chandra: It has been over two years since you resigned from the BJP. Has your opinion of the party changed in this time—or is it the same?
Shivam Shankar Singh: From what I can tell, the BJP has made more inroads over the last two years over systems. Initially, BJP was just a political party. That is no longer the case. At this point of time, they have extended way beyond only [being] a political party. The way the judiciary has been handling a lot of cases. What you get to see ultimately, is that the country has been taken over by one political party.
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