BJP CJP Reel Showed Only Muslims, Alt News Reports

The official Instagram accounts of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Delhi and BJP Haryana on July 27 posted a short video collage that showed only Muslim participants at the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests at Jantar Mantar, overlaid with Hindi text reading "Arajkata failate huye ye chehre yaad rahenge" — "These faces spreading anarchy will be remembered." The reel, published days after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned under pressure from the student-led agitation, has drawn sharp criticism from fact-checkers and protest leaders who call it a deliberate attempt to impose a communal lens on a movement that cut across religious lines.

Alt News, which analysed the reel and interviewed Neha Bora — the national president of the All India Students Association (AISA) and a research scholar at JNU who was on a 23-day hunger strike at Jantar Mantar — reported that the BJP Delhi handle's video amassed roughly 865,000 views before the Haryana unit uploaded an identical version, which it later removed. Alt News preserved a screen recording of the Haryana reel.

What the reel showed and why it matters

The footage stitched together clips of bearded men in skullcaps, women in hijabs, and protesters holding placards with Arabic script — a selective visual sample from a dharna that, by all independent accounts, drew tens of thousands of students, teachers, civil-society activists, and ordinary citizens from multiple faith communities over 49 days. The text overlay did not mention religion, but the curation made the implication unmistakable: only Muslims were creating disorder.

"That is precisely what the government fears because it thrives on divisive politics," Bora told Alt News. "They will stay in power only if Indians are divided. And this protest was a big blow to them, not only to the extent that a cabinet minister had to resign, but a big blow to the kind of politics that they peddle in this country."

Bora, who was among the student faces of the Jantar Mantar sit-in, said the movement embodied the communal harmony on which modern India was built. "People from different faiths and communities stood together throughout the movement, and there were repeated attempts to undermine that unity."

Bengal chief minister echoes the framing

The communal characterisation did not stay confined to social media. On July 26, West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari told reporters in Nandigram that the violence during a CJP-solidarity rally in Kolkata on July 24 was orchestrated by "Islamic fundamentalists" — "jamaati" in his words — who may have been supported by "foreign forces."

"There is no connection between these people and the movement. They are not students. They are Jamaati (Islamic) fundamentalists," Adhikari said, according to a PTI report carried by The Times of India. "Probe agencies will determine whether foreign forces backed them."

Adhikari linked the alleged resentment to BJP government actions in the state — "action against unregistered madrassas, implementation of court directions relating to OBC certificates, enforcement of cattle slaughter laws and measures to curb noise pollution." He claimed around 70 people identified from the rally were "not students" and had no connection to the NEET paper-leak agitation.

The West Bengal government subsequently invoked its newly enacted anti-goonda law against those accused of orchestrating the Kolkata violence.

A pattern of narrative-building

Bora traced the BJP's current reel to a longer pattern. "This is nothing new. BJP has been doing the same for a long time now. Creating videos explicitly showing Muslims as the 'reason' for the problems of the country," she told Alt News. She pointed to pre-election videos that blamed Muslims for rising unemployment, and said the Jantar Mantar reel followed the same playbook: "They want to erase the participation of everyone else and reduce the protest to a communal narrative."

Alt News noted that videos of BJP supporters pelting stones during the Kolkata CJP protest and other unrelated clips from Ranchi and Bihar have also been shared falsely as Muslim protesters attacking property — a claim the outlet debunked on July 29.

What we can verify

• The BJP Delhi and BJP Haryana official Instagram accounts posted near-identical reels on July 27 featuring only visibly Muslim protesters from the Jantar Mantar CJP dharna, with a Hindi caption warning of "anarchy."
• Neha Bora (AISA national president, JNU PhD scholar, 23-day hunger striker at Jantar Mantar) told Alt News the movement included participants from all faiths and that the selective reel was an attempt to communalise it.
• Suvendu Adhikari, on July 26, publicly described the Kolkata rally participants as "Jamaati fundamentalists" and alleged "foreign forces" may be involved, while asserting the 70 identified individuals were "not students" (PTI / Times of India).
• The West Bengal government invoked the anti-goonda law against those accused in the July 24 Kolkata clashes.

What remains unverified

• The exact number of Muslim versus non-Muslim participants at Jantar Mantar — no official headcount exists, and the reel's curation does not reflect the full composition.
• Whether the BJP social-media teams coordinated with Adhikari's remarks, or the two emerged independently from the same political strategy.
• The veracity of Adhikari's claim that "foreign forces" backed the Kolkata violence — no evidence has been presented publicly, and "probe agencies" have not released findings.

The CJP called off the Jantar Mantar sit-in on July 25 after Pradhan's resignation, but the battle over how the movement is remembered — and who gets to define its face — is already underway on social media and in political speeches.