BJP’s ‘lie factories’ are truly wondrous things. With back-to-back protests against CAA-NRC-NPR across India, a 2018 news report has surfaced of Amit Shah (better known internationally as “Termite Man”) giving a pep talk to the party’s lie factories/WhatsApp University teams, and bragging that they had the power to make anything go viral, whether real or fake. And he’s been right until now—the protests have left him stumped.

The Termite Man has tried every trick in General Dyer’s book and more to stop protests on the ground: Section 144 and curfews were imposed, the internet was shut down, police went on Jallianwala Bagh-like rampages, but protesters never stopped showing up. Not even when some were shot, attacked, and arrested. The Termite Man’s lie factories went into overdrive, blaming protestors for police brutality. The usual warped nonsense that WhatsApp aunties and uncles swallow as easily as ‘chyawanprash’.