Dhruv Rathee, the popular YouTuber, has been trumpeted as the biggest hope of the Indian Opposition this election season. His anti-Modi government videos have been clocking millions of views in no time. Also a vlogger, he has garnered 21.56 million subscribers across all channels and 4.1 billion total video views.
In a social media post, columnist Sadanand Dhume found fault with the Opposition and the anti-BJP media promoting Rathee as someone who can wean away fence-sitting voters from the BJP. "It says a lot about India’s ramshackle opposition parties that the most effective BJP critic today is a 29-year-old YouTuber who got his start 10 years ago with a video of a water park in Germany," Dhume commented.
Online BJP supporters argue that Rathee's popularity is inflated. "He is articulate and the quality of his videos is extremely good. But his viewership has multiplied all of a sudden in recent months. It doesn't look organic. There must be forces in other countries who are driving up his traction. They want the NDA government not to return to power," a social media user wrote.
"The Congress party-led Opposition first began propping up JNU students like Kanhaiya Kumar as Modi's biggest intellectual opponents. They latched on to Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee and even Uddhav Thackeray. When nothing worked, they started promoting Dhruv Rathee," another Netizen opined.
