New Delhi: A YouTuber, political analyst and a columnist — Gunja Kapoor, who was caught covertly filming the Shaheen Bagh protests in a burqa earlier this week, is a woman of many shades.
Kapoor is the “curator” of a YouTube channel ‘The Right Narrative’ that has over 7,300 subscribers and 114 videos on a host of issues, including the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute, former RBI governor Urijit Patel’s resignation and women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple.
While many of her latest videos feature pro-Right-wing views, Kapoor had in 2014, 2017 and 2018 also tweeted in support of the Aam Aadmi Party, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav and Congress leader Sachin Pilot.
When asked about her change of stance, 32-year-old Kapoor told ThePrint, “Evolution is a part of everyone’s journey. If you don’t evolve then it’s a problem.”
Today, she has over 35,000 followers on Twitter, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP MP Tejasvi Surya. She has also been photographed with the party brass.
Kapoor identifies herself as a “foot soldier in building India as the Vishwa Guru”.
I couldn't have asked for a happier New Year gift!
Thanks a ton PM @narendramodi ji for this acknowledgement. We are your foot soldiers in building India as the Vishwa Guru.
Really means a lot 🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/11LNr9OeWz
— Gunja Kapoor (@gunjakapoor) January 1, 2020
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An Akhilesh Yadav supporter who questioned Modi, Shah
An alumna of the Xaviers Institute of Management in Odisha, Kapoor had worked for several finance companies before she became an analyst at the Delhi-based Pahle India Foundation from 2016 to 2018.
During this time she wrote two articles for The Wire, a media outlet she was later critical of.
Her articles have also appeared on several other websites, including YouthkiAwaaz, ThePrint, Livemint, The Financial Express and Huffington Post in which she primarily wrote on political and economic issues.
In December 2016, she wrote an article titled Akhilesh Yadav – Making Netaji Proud in which she lauded the SP chief for not hesitating to take “tough and bold decisions”.
Then, in 2017, Kapoor penned an article opposing the passage of the Aadhar bill as a money bill. “The voice of the Opposition needs to be heard and empowered — especially at a time when power is perilously concentrated in a few, and the sense of entitlement has overtaken the very spirit of democratic pluralism,” she wrote.
Kapoor quit her job as an analyst in 2018 December to focus on her YouTube channel.
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An avid YouTuber
In the ‘Right Narrative’s’ first video titled Heir in politics — Rahul Gandhi that was aired on 4 December 2018, Kapoor targets the former Congress chief as well as the party over its “majority appeasement politics”.
She can be heard saying: “Just because you go to temples and wear tilaks and saffron cloth, you become a Hindu?…You do ‘gotra’ politics but do not talk of development. You don’t openly say that you are with Hindus.”
Her subsequent videos in the channel are largely in favour of the Modi administration. Days after Article 370 was scrapped from Jammu and Kashmir, Kapoor reached Srinagar and was filmed going around in shikaras, shopping and sitting by the Dal Lake.
“Perhaps so many lotuses haven’t ever bloomed together in India before,” she says in the video.
She also described the marked change in her ideology as “coming close to a mirror” and “seeing the stars”.
“There is a certain way in which a section of the media has been projecting the Right-wing and Modi since 2002…It’s only when I came to Delhi and started working with policy-related matters that I realised this. I was exposed to the true face of the Left and the Hindu-phobic ways of the Congress.”
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