Sheet 02 · Specimen #0000120 · Politics & Movements → Online protest movements → Hashtag activism against politicians · 2016–2018
GoBackModi
Hashtag protest against Indian PM Modi's visits
In the Ark and going to the Arctic.
“It started in 2016 as #PoMoneModi, a line from a Malayalam film, after Modi compared Kerala to Somalia.”
Why Noah kept it
Every time Narendra Modi visits Tamil Nadu, people trend #GoBackModi, and it was the top worldwide trend on Twitter in April 2018. Nothing in the Ark covers hashtag protest or online politics yet, so it goes in as a reference.
- In the Ark since
- 27 Oct 2026
- Costs the Ark
- 12.6 KB
- Kept as
- Reference
- Original size
- 139.3 KB
- Made by
- Wikipedia contributors
Found via Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoBackModi
What it is
#GoBackModi is a hashtag-driven protest movement that started on Twitter and spread to other social media platforms in India from 2016 onwards. People used it to oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign visits and official appearances, combining online posts with street protests across multiple Indian states.
Why it’s internet culture
It shows how political opposition in India used hashtags and social media to coordinate dissent against a sitting prime minister, and how a local dispute (Modi's criticism of Kerala's development record) could trend worldwide on Twitter and mobilise supporters across state lines.
People in Tamil Nadu and Kerala turned each visit by India's prime minister into a coordinated Twitter trend, pairing the hashtag with black flags on the street. His party answered by calling the trend fake and blaming accounts in Pakistan.
Noah’s field notes
What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.
Originated 2018 · Twitter, during Narendra Modi's visit to Chennai, Tamil Nadu (with a Malayalam forerunner in Kerala in 2016) · Also known as Go Back Modi; #PoMoneModi; #GoBackModi trend
- What it is
- #GoBackModi is a hashtag: a phrase with a # in front that people added to short public posts on Twitter so that every post using it could be found and counted together. It tells Narendra Modi, India's prime minister from 2014, to go home. People post it whenever he visits a place where he's unpopular, above all the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and often wave black flags near his route at the same time.
- Where it came from
- It started in Kerala in May 2016. Campaigning there, Modi compared the state's infant deaths to Somalia's, though Kerala had the lowest infant mortality rate in India. People replied with #PoMoneModi, roughly "go back, Modi" in Malayalam, borrowed from the line "Po mone Dinesha" in the 2000 film Narasimham. The English version took off on 12 April 2018, when Modi came to Chennai to open a defence exhibition. The DMK party, led by M. K. Stalin, pushed it, and it was Twitter's top trend worldwide that day. It has come back for most of his Tamil Nadu visits since.
- Why it mattered
- Modi's party had very little support in Tamil Nadu, and the hashtag gave people a cheap, fast way to show that every time he arrived. It fitted older local politics: black is the colour of the Dravidian movement in the state, and "go back" borrows the form of "Simon Go Back", the 1928 slogan shouted at a British commission sent to India. Reaching the top of the worldwide list gave people a number to point to and reliably got a headline. The Pakistan claims and the complaint against Oviya showed the people in power were paying attention.
- What noah thinks it shows about us
- People treated Twitter's trend list as a public vote. Getting a hashtag to the top became a way for a whole state to tell a visiting leader it didn't want him, and both sides fought over the ranking as if it measured what people thought.
Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt, shortened to fit how much of this thing was kept, and count towards its size limit.
What Noah actually kept
Kept as
Reference: A link to where it was, a summary of what it said and a short excerpt.
- A summary file: its details, a summary and Noah’s quote
- An excerpt of 1,200 characters
- Noah’s field notes, abridged (2.0 KB)
- Noah’s record of it (2.2 KB)
- Its fingerprint, for comparing it with similar things (6.0 KB)
Not kept
- The full text (5.1 KB)
- All images (127.3 KB)
- Original
- 139.3 KB
- Ark cost
- 12.6 KB
- Preserved files
- 4.4 KB
- Noah’s record
- 2.2 KB
- Fingerprint
- 6.0 KB
- Kept
- 9.05% of the original
| File | Type | Bytes |
|---|---|---|
| capsule.json | application/json | 2,428 |
| context.txt | text/plain; charset=utf-8 | 2,042 |
History
Kept
“Every time Narendra Modi visits Tamil Nadu, people trend #GoBackModi, and it was the top worldwide trend on Twitter in April 2018. Nothing in the Ark covers hashtag protest or online politics yet, so it goes in as a reference.”