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Politics and Self-representation of Online Muslim Youth
This article is an exploration into the self-representation of online Muslim youth and their engagement with contemporary politics. It is based on an analysis of responses to tweets on the recent Bihar assembly election.
On 11 November, immediately after the Bihar election results were declared, the Twitter community became active in analysis. Why did the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)–Janata Dal (United) (JD[U]) win and why did the Mahagathbandhan lose despite all polls strongly suggesting otherwise? A well-known Delhi journalist, Shivam Vij (2020), tweeted, “AIMIM was supposed to be the vote cutter but won five seats. A vote cutter is not supposed to win seats only cut votes. Either AIMIM is not the BJP-backed vote cutter Congress accuses it to be or it is a bit over-efficient!”
In response, I tweeted “Owaisi realizes that nobody but Muslims are going to bat for Muslims … he has no other option left but to go at it alone. The Congress has always been a disappointment to Muslims and no one else is stepping up” (Kaur 2020).
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