Narendra Modi

Atul Kochhar

Uttar Pradesh

Samajwadi Party

If this is another attempt to throw me under the bus, then I’m not interested,” is one of the first things Rupa Subramanya says when I call to schedule a meeting. Lately, Subramanya — who has, for years, been known as a BJP troll — has found herself, she claims, being thrown under a lot of buses. In a volte-face that has puzzled social media, Subramanya has gone from being a cheerleader for the Right to becoming a vocal critic ofand his government. In a recent controversy, she was being viewed (vilified, she insists) as the reason Chefwas sacked by the JW Marriott Marquis in Dubai, following his anti-Muslim tweet last week.“For 24 hours after Atul Kochhar’s post, he was being shamed, and my tweet cost him his job?” asks Subramanya. “All I did was mention the hotel, and now people are saying I have blood on my hands. The Right Wing has launched a vicious attack against me.”The irony may be lost on Rupa who has often been accused of launching vicious attacks on people herself: most notably Aamir Khan, when he said India had become unsafe to live in (Subramanya called for a boycott of Khan), and various Left-leaning leaders and journalists.The staunchly-conservative OpIndia, for which Rupa has written in the past, said they would no longer engage with her, post her stand on Kochhar. Clearly stung by her own, Subramanya says: “And that b******t OpIndia thing! They always viewed me with suspicion. I could sue them for defamation, but it would be giving them too much power.” Her subsequent, sarcastic tweet about Kochhar becoming the new voice of the Indian Right, arguably has the twinge of wistfulness of a dethroned incumbent.“I keep making so many U-turns that if you believed everything, I’d be incredibly dizzy by now,” says Subramanya. “I’ve gone from being a bigot and BJP’s Goebbels, to now being called Pidi [Rahul Gandhi’s dog].” Twitter, says Subramanya, has become an incredibly toxic place.“When I started out on Twitter in 2010, it was a fairly decent place. That’s probably because many more people have taken to the site now, and are more passionate about the issues being discussed.”Face-to-face Rupa is very different from ‘toxic tweets’ Rupa. She is smart, articulate and (dare I say it?) even reasonable about why she does what she does. “Back in 2014, I felt the Right was serious about things that I cared about, like free markets, liberty, and freedom of speech. So I decided that I wanted to contribute to that ecosystem as much as possible, through tweeting and writing,” she says.Subramanya wields her two Masters’ degrees — in economics and international affairs, from Ottawa University — as a double-edged sword to both slash through naysayers with political arguments, and legitimise arguably-flawed premises with data.In various articles, Subramanya has used figures to establish that India was far more communal in the years preceding the Modi government, and that cattle vigilantism was more prevalent in states likeunder the. “I cannot write anything based on how I feel,” she says. “My stuff is always based on economics, scholarly work and data analysis.” Sometimes, with a few convenient tweaks. Lately, though, Subramanya says she feels compelled to call out the BJP for its “bigotry, communal polarisation and stupid policies”. She adds: “I will flag spin and propaganda wherever I see it, whether it’s from the BJP, Congress or mainstream media. You can’t get me to become partisan. I’ve always resisted anything that would make me identifiably on the BJP side.”Does speaking at the annual India Ideas Conclave, organised by the BJP and RSS-backed India Foundation, for four years on the trot, serve this purpose? Subramanya stiffens slightly at the question. “Anyone can attend a conference. It’s my right to do so,” she says. “Shekhar Gupta was invited too.Does that make him a BJP supporter?” Having been bashed by both sides of the political spectrum, Subramanya is now looking for a new audience. “My writings are not for diehard ideologues, but for the people in the middle,” she says. “And hopefully, I’m saying interesting things.”