How to unleash a hate campaign, Ram Madhav style

The tweet is indicative of how vested interests conduct their campaigns: Make an accusation without bothering to verify facts. When proved wrong, apologise about a "genuine" error, withdraw and delete the offending tweet.

Meanwhile, all hell breaks loose on social media. The faithful have been mobilised with 140 pithy characters, and this beast will not easily be tamed. Motives are attributed. Patriotism is questioned and the damage is done.

The tweet in question was put out by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav who is the RSS' nominee to the party. The now-deleted tweet questioned vice-president Hamid Ansari's absence from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's International Yoga Day function on Sunday, June 21. It also questioned tax-payer funded Rajya Sabha TV's decision to "black out" the event. Ansari, by virtue of his office, is the ex-officio chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

That there was a problem with a tiny matter of facts soon became apparent. Rajya Sabha TV CEO clarified that there had been no "black out" as claimed and the event had been covered live. Meanwhile, Madhav, having realised that he had goofed up, deleted his original tweet and issued a new one stating, "I am informed dat d VP was unwell. I withdrew [sic] my tweet. My apologies because d institution of VP deserves respect."

But there was a problem here too. The clarification was still absent of fact. It was vice-president Hamid Ansari's office that quickly set the record straight: Ansari in fact practices yoga. If he was missing, it was simply because he hadn't been invited.

But the conspiracy theories were already spinning wildly. Was the "slip" designed to spoil Modi's party and an attempt by the RSS to rein the prime minister in? Or was the falsehood an attempt to deflect attention from #LalitGate?

Motor-mouth politicians are hardly new to, or for that matter, the monopoly of, any one party. As the party in power, the BJP has had its hands full reining in the likes of assorted yogis and sadhvis. Once hot topics - who remembers the "absolute truth" about love jihad? - have been shelved once it became clear that they were detracting from the government's development agenda.

But Madhav is not an ordinary politician. As a general secretary of the party, he certainly should have exercised greater caution and restraint. And to cover up an original mischief with a blatant lie was just bad politics. If nothing else, he is left with a serious dent to his credibility.

This is not the first time that the vice-president has been under fire from the right wing. This year's Republic Day parade was marred by an unseemly controversy over why he did not salute the Indian flag. On social media, tags like "jihadi" and "unpatriotic" were freely used - never mind that protocol does not require the vice-president to salute.

But protocol also limits Ansari's responses and ability to fight back. While he let the controversy over Republic Day slide, this time his response was swift, brief and limited to facts.

The fact that Madhav himself has withdrawn his series of tweets has not deterred Twitter's enthusiastic right-wing supporters. Some took a five-year-old's standard plea: but they started it, referring to how the "liberals" (a very bad word in the right-wing dictionary) also twist and contort facts. Others asked for restraint for a "genuine" mistake (or to quote someone on my Twitter feed: "badly worded"). And still others like Kiran Bedi and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra suggested on TV that the focus ought to be on the message of peace rather than this controversy of the BJP's own making.

Meanwhile, in Jammu, Madhav himself issued a plea: "See, I want yoga event to be remembered. Millions and millions of people participated in it. I do not want any further controversy. The matter closes here," he was quoted by news agency PTI.

If only...