India’s Fraught Push for Digital Decolonization and Swadeshi Technology

The Indian government is making high-profile efforts to turn the country’s technological dream, or self-sufficiency, into a reality. In October, Home Minister Amit Shah announced that he would switch to Zoho Mail, an email service of Chennai-based Zoho Corp. He joined Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnao, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and 1.2 million government employees at the podium.

The government has framed its renewed push for home technology as part of a broader campaign against a global digital order that remains largely dominated by the United States. In the past, the government has worked hard to promote “homegrown” digital platforms like Koo (as an alternative to Twitter, and now X) and Sandes (as an alternative to WhatsApp) as an Atmanirbhar Bharat – a self-reliant India.

The Indian government is making high-profile efforts to turn the country’s technological dream, or self-sufficiency, into a reality. In October, Home Minister Amit Shah announced that he would switch to Zoho Mail, an email service of Chennai-based Zoho Corp. He joined Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnao, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and 1.2 million government employees at the podium.

The government has framed its renewed push for home technology as part of a broader campaign against a global digital order that remains largely dominated by the United States. In the past, the government has worked hard to promote “homegrown” digital platforms like Koo (as an alternative to Twitter, and now X) and Sandes (as an alternative to WhatsApp) as an Atmanirbhar Bharat – a self-reliant India.

Digital decolonization is an admirable goal. But the state’s campaign contains a troubling paradox: the same mechanisms intended to empower a nation of citizens can just as easily extend the reach of the state into dangerous territory. The line between digital liberation and control is dangerously thin, especially in the hands of the Hindu nationalist majority government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In a country With a long history of anti-colonial struggle, the public has a deep appreciation for national self-sufficiency and strategic independence. As such, Indian citizens tend to embrace the necessity of digital decoupling. Unfortunately, however, the government’s efforts to date have treated digital sovereignty less as a symbolic tool of national policy and less as a moral model of technological liberation.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party claims to be saving the country from the unfavorable and asymmetric power structures of the Western-dominated digital system. “We will not allow you to act like the East India Company,” then Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned Twitter in 2021. The BJP-led government first codified this position in 2018, with the National Digital Communications Policy, which sought to ensure “equitable and affordable access to new technologies for all.” The following year, the government unveiled a draft e-commerce policy stating that citizens have a sovereign right over their data.

But laudable as these goals seemed, they failed to confront deeper questions about belonging in India – or to offer a specific vision of an alternative society based on the dignified political life of individuals within the digital space. Fundamentally, digital sovereignty requires a shared political context within which it can operate. The idea of ​​“the people” lies at the heart of this concept, but in India, as elsewhere in the world, how the people are viewed is a fraught question.

While the anti-colonial struggle always envisioned a new sovereign community, the current Indian government has failed to formulate a sense of unity, a sense of collective existence. This failure forms the core of India’s digital decolonization dilemma.

Since coming to power in 2014, the BJP’s majority Hindu nationalism has broken open internal divisions, manifested in rising anti-Muslim sentiment, increased attacks on minorities and critics, and questioning of those groups’ loyalties. This in turn has had a widespread impact on the digital sphere, which has become increasingly entrenched in statecraft and governance. The exploitation of social media as a political tool has now become a regular feature of Indian politics, with all major parties enhancing their online presence to shape public perception. However, no party comes close to the BJP in its ability to control digital narratives and reframe ideas of identity, belonging, and state power. In fact, since India’s first “social media election” in 2014, the BJP has been at the forefront of digital politics. It has significantly expanded its digital reach, including an estimated 5 million WhatsApp groups to disseminate partisan information, and has consolidated its supremacy in the digital landscape through successive general election victories in 2019 and 2024.

Most worryingly, this digital politicization has coincided with the amplification of pro-government rhetoric, attacks on independent media, and the thwarting of civil society dissent through opposition surveillance and algorithmic regulation, all while marginalizing democratic norms.

The Modi government has made various legal and regulatory efforts to increase its control over digital spaces. In the process, it has come into conflict with big tech companies like X, Facebook, and WhatsApp after requiring these platforms to share user data and messages on request, even when that means circumventing end-to-end encryption. Credible reports also indicate that the government has used legal action selectively and leveraged India’s position as one of the world’s largest technology markets to influence how platforms moderate political content.

Or consider the government’s evolving control over the national media through its close ties with India’s major business groups. For example, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has a known affinity for the ruling party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, India’s largest far-right Hindu organization, which uses extreme forms of cultural nationalism to push for an inevitable Hindu India.

Even the promise of data protection for individuals – a crucial democratic safeguard against the coercive powers of the state – has become an illusion. For all its claims to empower citizens by protecting individual privacy, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (and its subsequent administrative rules) does not achieve this goal. According to the Internet Freedom Foundation, the law and its rules instead expand the scope of state agencies to collect personal data with “little oversight, thus entrenching state control.”

Thus, an ominous cloud hangs over the government’s endeavors towards digital sovereignty, which threatens to turn into a new form of political control and exclusionary politics.

This worrying dynamic is not without precedent. In China, for example, digital sovereignty is characterized by state surveillance, sanctions, and censorship against political opponents. State control is supported by measures such as the Great Firewall, political censorship, and the necessity of a cybersecurity law to keep data local in China.

Likewise, Türkiye under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cites digital sovereignty as an excuse for expanded repression of political dissent, the spread of pro-government narratives, and strict regulation of Western social media platforms. Similar practices are also evident in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin’s government frames digital sovereignty as part of an effort to protect the country from foreign influence online. But in reality, it increases state control over information networks, facilitating the transition to digital isolationism as happened in China.

In all of these examples, the promotion of homegrown technological alternatives, the coercive lure of public self-censorship, and the steady expansion of the legal basis for state-imposed restrictions act as recurring, mutually reinforcing strategies.

India appears to be moving in the same direction. Digital guidelines introduced in 2021 provide for traceability and expanded enforcement power over the removal of online content. The Communications Act of 2023 gives the state expanded powers of interception and surveillance under broad national security exceptions. A proposed draft law to regulate broadcasting consolidates censorship into government-appointed bodies and relies on vague categories to restrict content. All of these measures embody the same central logic. Taken together, they show a state consolidating its powers under the guise of digital decolonization.

Struggle for Digital self-determination remains vital. But the current Swadeshi movement in India has dedicated this lofty goal to strengthening its control over the digital sphere. While the rhetoric of digital sovereignty celebrates empowerment, in reality it has led to the disenfranchisement of minorities and the repression of government critics.

As a result, Indian citizens are denied their right to true digital decolonization. People who sincerely oppose tech imperialism and want to actively support their country’s pursuit of digital sovereignty now find themselves forced to support local platforms vulnerable to political control. As has often happened in the global struggle for decolonization, nationalism and loyalty come at the expense of political freedom, and the language of power, sovereignty, and integrity stifles dissent and diversity.