The Arabian Sea breezes that drift through the open courtyards of Fort Kochi carry the weight of centuries of syncretic history. Located on the Malabar Coast of the southern Indian state of Keralam, this coastal enclave is a living museum where Portuguese colonial facades, restored Dutch bungalows, Jewish synagogues, and ancient mosques stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Hindu temples.

For decades, this cultural mosaic has been a point of fierce pride for the state, serving as a testament to an organic, lived secularism. Yet, in late October 2026, this carefully cultivated image of utopian coexistence fractured violently. The catalyst was not a riot, a political assassination, or a terrorist attack. It was a smartphone video recorded by a travel vlogger from Uttar Pradesh, an avant-garde metallic artwork forged fourteen years prior, and a cafe menu offering beef steak.

What began as an Instagram reel posted by a tourist experiencing profound cultural shock rapidly evolved into a sprawling political firestorm that consumed the highest echelons of the Kerala government, ignited a vicious digital war across the Indian subcontinent, and exposed the fragile, often contradictory fault lines of modern Indian secularism. The state’s Chief Minister deployed the formidable machinery of the criminal justice system against a content creator who merely filmed what was publicly displayed, raising profound questions about freedom of expression, selective political outrage, and the unhealed, intergenerational wounds of the 1947 Partition.

The investigation that follows traces the anatomy of this controversy in strict reverse chronological order. It begins with the heavy hand of the state in late October 2026 and travels backward through the viral ignition, the creation of the disputed artwork during the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the founding of the Kashi Art Cafe, and ultimately, to the blood-soaked summer of 1946 that birthed the ghosts currently haunting Fort Kochi.

Late October 2026: The Weight of the State and the Political Crossfire

By the afternoon of October 25, 2026, a local social media controversy had metastasized into a full-blown state-level political crisis. The Kerala government, led by Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan of the Congress party, mobilized the state’s police apparatus to crack down on the North Indian vlogger, Amrit Singh Darren. Darren’s crime, in the eyes of the state, was not vandalism, physical violence, or direct incitement to imminent lawless action. His transgression was the act of recording and narrating his visceral shock at finding a portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and a menu full of beef dishes in a cafe named "Kashi"—and subsequently weaponizing those visuals to question the demographic integrity of the state.

The Ernakulam City Police, operating out of Fort Kochi, registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Darren based on a formal complaint filed by Jude Vipin, a resident of Amaravathi in Fort Kochi, and bolstered by immense political pressure from figures like the Youth League’s Ernakulam district committee president, K.A. Shuhaib. The police invoked highly stringent sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the comprehensive penal code that recently replaced the colonial-era Indian Penal Code. The application of these specific statutes signaled the state's intent to treat the vlog not merely as offensive speech, but as a calculated, existential threat to public order and communal harmony.

The Chief Minister’s Declaration and the Accusation of "Hounding"

Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan took to the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to personally condemn the vlogger, placing the full moral, political, and legal weight of his office against Darren. Satheesan declared the video an unacceptable attempt to spread misinformation, divide communities, and portray the state in a negative light.

"Keralam stands united. Communal hatred has no place here," Satheesan wrote in a widely circulated post. "The recent Instagram video by a vlogger from outside the state, attempting to spread misinformation about Fort Kochi, portray our state in a negative light, and divide communities, is unacceptable. A case has been registered, and the law will take its course. The UDF government remains committed to communal harmony and justice without fear or favour. A New Era for God’s Own Country. No room for hate. We will not allow anyone to even lay a finger on our communal harmony".

However, national political analysts, civil liberties advocates, and right-wing commentators quickly pointed out the inherent paradox in the Chief Minister's stance. The Kerala government found nothing inherently problematic with the display of Jinnah’s portrait within an art context, nor did it take issue with the serving of beef—both of which are perfectly legal and culturally normalized within Kerala's societal framework. Yet, the state apparatus was brought down upon a vlogger for expressing his shock at these exact, verifiable facts. Critics accused the Chief Minister of "hounding" the vlogger to appease his political allies, effectively criminalizing the documentation of a reality that the state itself permitted and protected.

The LDF and UDF Find Rare Common Ground

In a rare display of political convergence, the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and the opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF) united against the outsider. Senior CPI(M) leader and former Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan echoed Satheesan’s sentiments, framing the vlogger as an agent of right-wing national politics seeking to destabilize the south.

Vijayan asserted that Fort Kochi and Varkala were historical meeting points of diverse cultures, shaped by trade, migration, and the peaceful exchange of ideas. "Now, a vlogger peddling hate for profit seeks to paint these vibrant destinations in communal colours," Vijayan stated vehemently. "Having failed to divide Keralam, the Sangh Parivar is outsourcing its hate campaign to online provocateurs. But Keralam’s secular spirit will not yield to their politics of hatred." Vijayan demanded that the state government take the strictest legal action against those spreading communal enmity.

The IUML Factor and the BJP’s Retaliation

The unified front of the Congress and the CPI(M) was immediately attacked by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which framed the state's draconian actions as a textbook case of minority appeasement and political hypocrisy. BJP MLA and senior leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar launched a blistering critique, accusing both the Congress and the CPI(M) of practicing a dangerous form of "selective secularism".

Chandrasekhar posed a provocative counterfactual designed to test the state's commitment to equal sensitivity: "Imagine Kerala CM’s tweet and response if someone opens a restaurant named after a Muslim holy city and served Pork? He will find himself being an Ex-CM or fleeing for his life or both". He further questioned why the political culture in Kerala tolerated the glorification of a man who partitioned India on religious lines, while simultaneously giving a "free pass" to radical elements. Chandrasekhar asked, "Why do some politicians justify, defend and encourage proscribed Terror organisations like Hamas and their violence? Why do political parties like Cong and CPM have political alliances with avowed anti-secular, anti-constitution organisations like Jamaat E Islami?".

The controversy invariably dragged the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)—a key constituent of the ruling UDF coalition—into the unforgiving national spotlight. The IUML’s historical baggage as an offshoot of Jinnah’s original All-India Muslim League made the defense of a Jinnah portrait politically radioactive. Critics of the Satheesan government argued that the rapid crackdown on the vlogger was executed strictly under pressure from the IUML, forcing the Chief Minister to prove his loyalty to his Muslim voting bloc.

Chief Minister Satheesan was forced onto the defensive, attempting to publicly sanitize the alliance. At a highly publicized event, the Kerala CM defended his party’s alliance with the IUML by characterizing the latter as a necessary bulwark against radicalization. He described the IUML as a "necessary evil," arguing that if the IUML were weakened or removed, its political space would inevitably be consumed by genuinely extremist outfits like the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) or the Jamaat-e-Islami, both of which have been under the intense scrutiny of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for spreading terror and radicalism in Kerala.

"This is not the 1940s’ Muslim League," Satheesan argued, attempting to sever the historical tether to Jinnah. "The Indian Union Muslim League is a different party. They are having a secular approach. They have been with us for the last four or five decades." He adamantly clarified that his government was not acting under the pressure of the IUML, describing them as an integral, secular partner in Kerala's democratic framework.

The political crossfire thus transformed a localized law enforcement issue into a national referendum on the boundaries of Indian secularism, the limits of freedom of expression, and the enduring weight of historical memory.

October 23–24, 2026: The Digital Inquisition and Collateral Damage

Before the police formally intervened with FIRs and penal codes, the controversy was violently adjudicated in the court of public opinion. The digital landscape of Kerala, known for its highly literate, politically conscious, and ferociously protective user base, erupted. The video went viral across Instagram, Reddit, and X, generating tens of thousands of comments, reaction videos, and deep-dive analyses.

The online battle lines were sharply drawn, reflecting a deeply polarized nation. On one side, progressive Malayalis, contemporary artists, and left-leaning commentators mounted a fierce defense of Kashi Art Cafe. They pointed out that the vlogger had fundamentally misunderstood the contemporary art installation, the cosmopolitan nature of Fort Kochi, and the basic culinary realities of a state where beef is widely consumed by all religious communities. On the other side, right-wing handles from across the Hindi heartland amplified the video, viewing it as undeniable, terrifying proof of the "Islamization" of Kerala, the denigration of Hindu culture, and a looming demographic catastrophe.

The Curious Case of Diya Krishna and the Mob

In the crossfire of this algorithmic war, collateral damage was inevitable. Diya Krishna, a prominent local social media influencer known for lifestyle content rather than political commentary, viewed the video and left a seemingly innocuous, two-word comment under Darren's inflammatory post: "Sad Reality".

Within hours, Krishna became the target of intense, coordinated cyber-bullying. Furious Malayalis interpreted her comment as a wholesale endorsement of Darren's Islamophobic claims, his attack on Kerala's secular fabric, and his denigration of the local Muslim community. The backlash on platforms like Reddit (particularly in subreddits like r/malalayiInfluencers) and Instagram was so severe, immediate, and personal that she was forced to disable comments on her platforms and issue a rapid, highly emotional clarification video.

Her public retraction revealed the hyper-reactive nature of the digital age and the immense psychological toll of internet mobs. In a nearly panicked defense, Krishna explained that she had only watched the very beginning of the video and was solely reacting to the display of Jinnah's portrait in an Indian cafe. She claimed she had not seen the latter half of the video where Darren made sweeping, derogatory demographic claims about the local Muslim community, nor his earlier video targeting a mosque in Varkala.

"Putting Mahatma Gandhi's head there is okay, he is the Father of the Nation. If Jawaharlal Nehru's photo was placed, I could understand. But I didn't understand why Jinnah's picture was there," Krishna pleaded in her Malayalam-language video, visibly distressed. "When I saw Jinnah's photo, my mood was ruined, and that is why I commented 'Sad Reality'.".

She profusely apologized to the Muslim community, desperately trying to decouple her brand from the vlogger's toxicity. "If anyone misunderstood me because of that mistake, I am really sorry for that. I have no hatred or disagreement with any religion. Of course, I am a Hindu, I love my religion. I have no shame in saying that... But I have no objection to any other religion". She lamented that in the digital ecosystem, positive acts like charity go unnoticed, but one misconstrued comment leads to a coordinated effort to destroy a person's life and "aura."

The Diya Krishna sub-plot underscored the volatile emotional stakes of the controversy. It demonstrated how the historical trauma associated with Jinnah could provoke immediate, unnuanced reactions even from apolitical locals, while simultaneously highlighting the fierce territorial pride Malayalis hold against perceived North Indian cultural imperialism.

October 22, 2026: The Incendiary Broadcast and the Anatomy of an Exposé

The spark that ignited this sprawling conflagration was struck at approximately 6:00 AM on October 22, 2026, when Amrit Singh Darren, operating under the Instagram handle littichokha_up_, posted a video titled "Keralam is in Danger".

Darren, who identifies as a North Indian travel vlogger, began the video with a chilling caveat, anticipating the backlash that would soon consume him. Gazing into the camera, he stated ominously that if something untoward happened to him after posting the video, the Kerala government would be directly responsible for his safety.

The footage presented a highly edited, emotionally charged, and cinematically tense narrative of his visit to Kashi Art Cafe on Burgher Street. The visual storytelling relied on the jarring juxtaposition of seemingly irreconcilable concepts—Hindu sacred nomenclature, Islamic separatism, and bovine consumption—to generate maximum algorithmic shock value.

The Three Pillars of Darren's Exposé

Darren's narrative hinged on three primary observations, each serving to build a broader, terrifying conspiracy theory about the demographic and cultural shifts allegedly destroying Kerala from within.

1. The Nomenclature and the Menu: Darren expressed profound, almost theatrical shock that a cafe bearing the name "Kashi"—a term universally synonymous in the north with Varanasi, the holiest city in Hinduism and the spiritual abode of Lord Shiva—was unapologetically serving beef. The camera aggressively panned over the cafe's menu, explicitly lingering on items such as "Beef Steak," "Minced Beef Omelette," and the "Asian Fried Beef Bowl". To a North Indian demographic conditioned by strict cow protection laws, violent vigilantism over cattle transport, and religious dietary mandates, the visual of beef being served under the banner of "Kashi" was presented as a deliberate, egregious insult to the Hindu faith. He aggressively demanded that the owner change the name of the cafe from "Kashi" to "Karachi," implying the establishment was a front for Pakistani sympathizers.

2. The Portrait of Partition: Moving deeper into the cafe’s gallery space, Darren filmed an artwork mounted on the wall. "When I entered the cafe, I was shocked to the core," Darren narrated over the footage. "This was the first time I saw Jinnah’s picture openly being displayed in India". He correctly identified the portrait as Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan. Darren questioned why the Kerala government allowed the open glorification of a man who was, in his words, "responsible for thousands of Hindus and Sikhs being slaughtered and women being raped during the partition". The video alleged that a silver statue of Jinnah had been installed alongside one of Mahatma Gandhi, portraying it as an equalizing of a patriot with a butcher.

3. The Demographic Conspiracy: In the latter half of the video, Darren departed from the confines of the cafe to make sweeping, deeply incendiary, and unsubstantiated claims about the demographics of Fort Kochi. He asserted that the area was overwhelmingly and dangerously Muslim, claiming that 95% of business owners, taxi and autorickshaw drivers, fruit and vegetable vendors, and small business owners selling items like jhumkas belonged to the Muslim community.

He escalated his rhetoric by claiming that local right-wing Hindus were "quiet" and "scared" to speak out against this demographic dominance, begging him not to reveal their locations in his videos out of fear of violent reprisal. Darren further alleged that he was told by locals that the Kerala government was receiving immense, illicit funding from Arab nations specifically to promote Islam and marginalize Hindus in the region. He concluded the broadcast with a dire warning to his followers and the central leadership in New Delhi, urging the Union government to intervene because "Kerala is a gone case; Kerala has slipped out of our hands".

The video was a masterclass in algorithmic provocation. By seamlessly weaving together deep-seated anxieties regarding dietary taboos, unresolved historical trauma, and modern demographic replacement theories, Darren ensured the video would bypass rational discourse and plunge directly into the emotional core of the Indian culture wars.

December 2012: The Canvas of Coexistence and the Biennale

To understand the profound tragedy of Darren's mistranslation, one must abandon the hyper-partisan lens of 2026 and trace the history of the artwork back fourteen years. The controversial portrait was not a piece of political propaganda stealthily hung in a restaurant by separatist sympathizers. It was a celebrated artifact of one of South Asia’s most vital and ambitious contemporary art movements: the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

In December 2012, the state of Kerala launched the inaugural Kochi-Muziris Biennale, transforming the disused colonial warehouses, crumbling Dutch bungalows, and sprawling public squares of Fort Kochi into an immense, international canvas. The initiative, conceptualized by visionary artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, was heavily backed by the state government to position Kerala on the global cultural map, celebrating its history of trade and tolerance.

"Blood Brothers: Two Fathers from Gujarat" and the Art of Riyas Komu

It was within the intellectual and creative ferment of this era that multimedia artist and curator Riyas Komu exhibited the installation that would eventually ignite the 2026 controversy. The artwork, featured in an exhibition titled Duroohatha/Condition, is named Blood Brothers: Two Fathers from Gujarat.

The piece features alternating, juxtaposed metallic/aluminium reliefs of Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Rather than a tribute to either man, the installation is a powerful, deeply melancholic reflection on shared history, fractured identity, and the enduring, unhealed agony of the 1947 Partition. Both Gandhi and Jinnah hailed from the exact same region—erstwhile Gujarat—and both fought relentlessly against British colonial rule. Yet, they went on to represent two drastically different nations, deeply and permanently divided by religious and political ideologies.

Art critics, curators, and the local intelligentsia have long understood Komu’s work as a devastating critique of how the "divide and rule" policies of the colonial past continue to haunt the subcontinent. By placing their faces together in cold, unyielding metal, the artist forces the viewer to confront the agonizing duality of brotherhood and rivalry, and the catastrophic human cost of their political divergence.

"He has juxtaposed metallic imagery of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi to represent the division in society," one art analysis noted during the exhibition. "He feels there is this hangover from the past which is recurring and that we continue to live in the same agony". The repetition of the reliefs creates a powerful visual exploring the lasting consequences of their decisions—and the millions of lives extinguished because of them.

Darren, viewing the artwork through the narrow, hyper-nationalist lens of a North Indian content creator in 2026, suffered a catastrophic failure of visual literacy. As local commentators pointed out with a mix of amusement and horror, Darren "missed the point and saw only the obvious. Apparently, ultranationalism kicked in, and he understood only Jinnah and ‘Pakistan’". The immense nuance of the critique was entirely lost, replaced by an immediate assumption of anti-national malice.

The Role of Kashi Art Cafe and the Price of Provocation

Kashi Art Cafe served as a vital, pulsating satellite venue for this artistic renaissance. In 2012, the property underwent a meticulous, loving restoration by its new owner, Edgar Pinto, working alongside restoration architect Karl Damschen and designer Marc Delrome. They preserved the Old Dutch heritage of the structure—including its signature red oxide flooring and open courtyards—while modernizing its capabilities as a premier art gallery and culinary destination.

Pinto ensured that Kashi remained an integral partner of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, hosting collateral events, critical conversations, and rotating exhibitions of contemporary work by local and international artists. The presence of Komu's Blood Brothers on its walls was a testament to the cafe's unwavering commitment to challenging, thought-provoking contemporary art, not an endorsement of separatist ideologies.

Art in Fort Kochi has always been provocative, and the cafe was no stranger to the dangerous intersection of art and religious sentiment. Artist Jalaja P.S. recalled a previous painting exhibited at Kashi Art Cafe in 2013 that depicted the revered Hindu social reformer Sree Narayana Guru draped in a saree. The artwork infuriated many conservative factions, and members of the prominent Ezhava community issued severe threats against the cafe, prompting a police probe at the time. Kashi had long established itself as a space where boundaries were tested, making Darren's outrage seem late and entirely unmoored from the local context.

Furthermore, the menu that so deeply offended the vlogger was merely an expression of the cafe’s cosmopolitan, continental fusion philosophy. The offerings included Lebanese Style Duck Roast, Spinach & Aubergine Lasagna, Tuna Sandwiches, and various beef dishes. In Kerala, a state where nearly half the population belongs to minority Christian and Muslim communities, and where a vast, overwhelming majority of Hindus also consume beef, the presence of bovine meat on a menu is a mundane culinary fact. It is entirely devoid of the sacrilegious weight and threat of violence it carries in the Gangetic plains.

1997: The Luminous Beginnings of a Cultural Hub

The origins of the physical space that would eventually become ground zero for this explosive cultural clash trace back to 1997. Fort Kochi, at the time, was a sleepy, slowly decaying heritage precinct, a melancholic shadow of its former glory as the epicenter of the global spice trade.

It was here that Anoop Scaria and his wife, Dorrie Younger, purchased a dilapidated Old Dutch house on Burgher Street. Conceptualized with the help of Tanya Abraham, they founded the Kashi Art Cafe. Their vision was deeply romantic and dual-purpose: to create a verdant sanctuary serving slow, honest food (including their soon-to-be-legendary, dense dark chocolate cake) and to establish a desperately needed launchpad for contemporary visual artists in Kerala.

At the time, young artists in the state had virtually no affordable gallery spaces to exhibit their work. "At the time, young artists like us had very few spaces to exhibit our work, and we couldn't afford to use many existing spaces," recalled artist Jalaja. "It was in this context that places like Kashi emerged, providing a platform to showcase and celebrate visual artists". Kashi emerged as a fierce patron of the arts, famously instituting the 'Kashi Awards for Visual Arts' to promote amateur talent and hosting heated intellectual debates over freshly ground coffee.

The naming of the cafe, which became the central, foundational grievance for Amrit Singh Darren nearly thirty years later, was a product of linguistic serendipity and aesthetic choice, rather than religious provocation. While "Kashi" is widely recognized in northern India as the ancient name for Varanasi, the founders adopted the word from its Japanese meaning (菓子), where it translates to "pastry," "sweets," or "confectionaries". Alternatively, in Sanskrit, it translates to "luminous". The intent was to evoke light, creativity, and culinary delight, not to co-opt a Hindu pilgrimage site as a Trojan horse for a beef-serving establishment.

The cafe's seamless integration of diverse foods—beef, pork, seafood, and vegetarian fare—was simply a reflection of Fort Kochi itself. Since the 14th century, the port city has absorbed the cultural, architectural, and culinary practices of the Arabs, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British, blending them with the indigenous traditions of the Malabar coast. In Fort Kochi, a Jewish synagogue, an ancient mosque, a Catholic basilica, and a Hindu temple can exist within a one-mile radius, and their respective adherents have shared food, commerce, and daily life for generations.

When Darren stood in the cafe in 2026, pointing his camera at the menu and demanding the Union government intervene to save Kerala from its beef-eating, multicultural reality, he was not witnessing the sudden, insidious "Islamization" of a Hindu space. He was witnessing a 600-year-old cosmopolitan continuum that the Kashi Art Cafe had spent thirty years preserving and celebrating.

August 1946 – August 1947: The Bloody Genesis

To fully grasp why a metallic portrait hanging quietly in a Kerala cafe could trigger state-level political warfare and absolute internet hysteria in 2026, one must turn to the earliest known events in this chronological chain: the apocalyptic violence of 1946 and 1947 that forever bound the legacies of Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah in blood.

In July 1946, as the exhausted British Empire prepared to exit the subcontinent, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leading the All-India Muslim League, definitively abandoned constitutional methods in his ruthless pursuit of a separate Muslim homeland. He famously and chillingly declared, "We shall have India divided... or India destroyed".

Following this rhetoric, Jinnah called for "Direct Action Day" on August 16, 1946. Intended nominally as a general strike (hartal) to press for the creation of Pakistan, the demonstrations in Calcutta (now Kolkata) rapidly and predictably mutated into unprecedented communal slaughter. The Great Calcutta Killings left thousands of Hindus and Muslims dead in the streets, setting off a chain reaction of retaliatory violence across Noakhali, Bihar, and Punjab that made the vivisection of India an absolute, terrifying inevitability.

A year later, in August 1947, the Radcliffe Line was arbitrarily drawn through the heart of the subcontinent. The ensuing Partition displaced over 14 million people in the largest mass migration in human history, and resulted in the slaughter of an estimated one to two million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. Women were subjected to systemic abduction and sexual violence on an industrial scale.

While Gandhi walked barefoot through the blood-soaked, burning villages of Bengal desperately pleading for peace, Jinnah flew to Karachi to preside over a fractured, geographically incongruous new nation. Two men, both born in Gujarat, both trained as brilliant lawyers in London, both "Fathers" of their respective realms, had engineered the liberation of a fifth of humanity, only to see it baptized in unimaginable bloodshed.

It is this profound, agonizing, and unresolved historical trauma that Riyas Komu sought to capture in Blood Brothers. The installation asks the viewer to sit with the deep discomfort of how closely intertwined the architects of India and Pakistan truly were, and how their ideological divergence ruined millions of lives.

Yet, trauma, by its very nature, stubbornly resists nuance. For Amrit Singh Darren, a young man from Uttar Pradesh—a state where the scars of Partition and subsequent communal riots remain raw, violently contested, and heavily politicized—the face of Jinnah does not represent a historical cautionary tale or a sophisticated artistic exploration of shared heritage. It represents the slaughter of his ancestors. It represents the absolute enemy.

When Darren aimed his smartphone at that metallic relief on the wall of the Kashi Art Cafe, he was not looking at a piece of contemporary art. He was looking directly at the ghost of 1947, resurrected in a space he fundamentally did not understand.

The tragedy of the Kashi Art Cafe incident is one of profound cultural, historical, and linguistic mistranslation. A North Indian vlogger, deeply conditioned by the zero-sum religious politics and dietary sanctities of the Hindi heartland, walked into a space designed for Southern cosmopolitan artistic discourse and interpreted it as a hostile act of communal aggression. In response, a state government that prides itself on secularism and tolerance utilized draconian criminal statutes to crush his expression, driven by the realpolitik of coalition alliances and the paralyzing fear of right-wing narratives. In the end, Riyas Komu's artistic warning about the destructive power of division was entirely ignored, even as that very division played out, in violent real-time, across the digital and political landscapes of modern India.