Framing ‘love jihad’: nationalists’ discourse construction in a right-wing extremist sub-issue on social media

This paper investigates one sub-topic within a right-wing extremist (RWE) movement in India – love jihad, a conspiracy created by Hindutva nationalists alleging that Muslims forcefully convert Hindu women to Islam with allurements of love. Love jihad narratives and digital dissemination tactics serve a nation-building, patriarchal and vote-seeking function for the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP and allied nationalist and media organisations have led many anti-love jihad campaigns. However, this study investigates how ­non-elite – ordinary – social media users construct love jihad discourse through a discourse analysis of 188 sub-sampled tweets from February to October 2023. The analysis finds relative congruence in how non-elites, elites, media and nationalist organisations frame love jihad. The invoked themes – Muslim exclusionism, patriarchy, nationalism and post-truth politics – are cross-cutting and mutually reinforcing but can also be categorised based on which appears at the forefront. I use this organisation to highlight novel frames within each theme and their implicit and explicit cross-cutting dimensions. Finally, these findings can be situated in broader discussions around the connection between populism and post-truth politics, and call for reconceptualising online social movements.