Slight, unassuming and cerebral, YouTube star Dhruv Rathee doesn’t give off insurgent vibes. But the Berlin-resident Indian social media star may well have helped overturn Indian PM Narendra Modi’s majority, thought of as unassailable just a week ago.
Despite the grandiose rhetoric, it’s unlikely that Modi will have viewed last week’s Indian election result as a win having lost his supermajority. The chatter among local media is that 29 year-old Rathee, and other young people with large social media followings disenchanted with this current brand of strongman politics, helped wrench power from Modi’s grip. In an environment increasingly inhospitable to unfavorable media, Rathee has asked pointed, daring questions like: “Is India becoming a dictatorship?”
