Khera, chairman of the Congress’s media and publicity department and a Rajya Sabha member, shared a screenshot of the BJP Karnataka post on X on Saturday and said the party’s newly organised social media operation had moved beyond abusive rhetoric to what he described as open intimidation.
“The mask is finally slipping,” Khera wrote. He said the BJP had created “a brand-new social media team” because the language and tactics of the previous operation were apparently not enough, adding that it had now “graduated to openly threatening youth with violence”.
The BJP Karnataka post, published on August 27, carried the caption, “No slowing down – taking on ‘Dimaagi Naxals’ with full force!” It used a gun-firing sequence from the Kannada film KGF: Chapter 2, a visual choice that triggered accusations from critics that the party was associating political opponents and young protesters with targets of armed violence.
The Karnataka unit’s video formed part of a wider social media push by BJP state accounts centred on the “Dimaagi Naxal” label. Several state units have been reposting, tagging and responding to one another with film clips, memes and other pop-culture material, creating a coordinated digital campaign aimed at amplifying the phrase and attacking political adversaries.
The online dispute unfolded as the BJP sought to turn Modi’s formulation into a campaign theme across platforms. A Jammu and Kashmir post used a reality-show clip featuring actors Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt and Jackie Shroff, casting three BJP state units as adversaries of the “Dimaagi Naxal ecosystem”. Madhya Pradesh later joined the exchange, while Delhi used a separate film clip. Party figures described the cross-posting approach as a way to connect state-level digital teams and widen the reach of content.
The terminology was used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day address from the Red Fort on August 15. Modi said armed Naxalism had been curbed but warned that “Dimaagi Naxals” were trying through various methods to pull society in the wrong direction. He said such people needed to be identified and isolated while young people should be brought together for the goal of a developed country.
The phrase has since generated political argument over who falls within its scope and whether it risks branding dissenting voices as extremists. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju sought to draw a distinction this week, saying critics and people who disagree with the government should not be labelled “Dimaagi Naxals”. He said the expression was intended for those who support separatism or seek to obstruct development.
BJP social media accounts, however, have continued using the term in posts targeting what they describe as an opposition ecosystem. The latest campaign has included exchanges among state units and clips drawn from popular films, with party functionaries presenting the strategy as an effort to make political messaging more accessible and shareable, particularly among younger audiences.
Khera’s intervention focused specifically on the violent imagery in the Karnataka post rather than the broader debate over the phrase. His allegation was echoed by Saurav Das, who also criticised the video and said it amounted to a threat against young people. Das said the ruling party was “openly threatening to shoot the country’s youngsters dead”, calling the messaging unacceptable.
The criticism concerns the political meaning attached to a fictional film scene, and there has been no indication that the Karnataka BJP post announced or advocated an actual act of violence against any identified person. The controversy instead centres on whether the combination of gunfire imagery and the “Dimaagi Naxals” label constitutes threatening political communication.
