With 187,439 followers on Facebook, Norinder Mudi isn't quite as popular as the prime minister. He's nearly as ubiquitous, however - his handsome mug goes viral with the regularity of his lookalike's mann ki baats.

Created in 2013 by an animator who goes by the screen name of Swagmohan, to replace an earlier character known as Monmuhin, the Mudi memes are fairly innocent in comparison with much of the political satire on the web. Yet they've inspired hundreds of hate mails and run-ins with internet trolls.

India Today (IT) had an anonymous chat with the current administrators, who choose to call themselves SM and AP, who say the page has been taking a backseat because "life happened". Excerpts:

IT: What inspired the aesthetic and language of the comic?

SM, AP: In 2013, 'Dolan comics' were an absolute rage-poorly drawn Disney characters and barely readable, blatantly offensive text. The distinctive features are extremely poor, broken use of English, accompanied by intentionally badly drawn characters, usually on MS Paint. This type of comic is sort of a paradox-it seems like a kid has drawn it, but the content is extremely adult in nature. Norinder Mudi is essentially an Indianised Dolan, with the content being more politically correct for the hot-headed Indian audience.

IT: Speaking of hot-headed audiences, have online trolls affected your art?

SM, AP: We had to tone down the offensiveness of our posts. We started out as a dark humour page, but since Modi fans are really sensitive, we have had to be careful with what we were posting. We receive a lot of hate, but we refused to engage with it. There were threats of FIRs, police complaints and vile abuses but nothing much happened.

IT: How do you choose subjects?

SM, AP: The character in question is [based on] an extremely charismatic individual who is always in the news. Standout trends generally dictate the content of our posts. For instance, the "Abki baar, Modi sarkar" trend was started right on our page! We made a meme on the extremely catchy tagline, and it spread like wildfire.

IT: You have stated that you have no political affiliations. How would you describe your political stance though?

SM: I don't lean towards any side. I'm fed up with the Left vs Right fight. I've reached a point where nothing seems interesting or amusing to me anymore.

AP: Three years ago, I would have said I was a hardcore centrist. However, at this moment, I'd consider myself leaning the slightest bit towards the Right. The extreme showboating of the extreme Left irritates me more than the annoyingness of the far-Right.

IT: What's next for you?

SM: I've been putting in long hours [at work]. I am bored of political humour. I haven't even had time for the Indian Railway Memes for Teens page that I started to cover non-political subjects.

AP: I've just gotten done with my first year of computer science engineering. My social media use has now been reduced to infrequently browsing Facebook. The page is well known in my college and among my peer group. It's a great ice-breaker, and that's good enough for now.