A Germany-based Indian-origin YouTuber, Dhruv Rathee, is facing massive backlash in India after he described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an “80 percent dictator” and a “coward” in an interview to Indian publication The Wire this week.
Rathee, who has been in Germany for over a decade, called upon Indian voters to "throw out" Prime Minister Modi from power in the upcoming Lok Sabha election in order to "save the country".
"During my recent visit to Delhi, most of the people I spoke to said that they were afraid of speaking up against the government... But the people will exercise their power during the voting," said the Youtuber, who is known to have backed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his comment on India's farmers' agitation in 2020.
New Delhi had back then lodged a formal protest with the Canadian High Commission over Trudeau's remarks.
Rathee's comment have been widely cited by supporters of India's opposition Congress party to try and whip up anti-incumbency ahead of the first round of voting for the Lok Sabha elections on 19 April.
Senior Congress politician and a former federal minister Shashi Tharoor described Rathee's interview as "worth watching".
However, Rathee's comments on Modi have riled up a sizeable section of Indian public, including those on social media.
"Election interference— by foreign governments, the Deep State agencies, spiteful haters like George Soros and his disruptive Open Society Foundations that funds anarchists and insurrectionists — comes in many shades and forms," remarked Kanchan Gupta, a senior advisor at India's Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Gupta warned that "devious, destructive and disingenuous forces" were at play in India as the nation headed into the election season.
Many other social media users echoed Gupta's concerns, as they accused the Indian-origin Youtuber of being a "Deep State asset".
The political row surfaces amid ongoing concerns in India about the "electoral and judicial interference" in internal matters by the governments of US and Germany in the wake of the arrest of Indian opposition politician Arvind Kejriwal on corruption charges.