Mr. Zuckerberg cited Mr. Mishra's post, without naming him, in an employee town hall meeting in June, as an example of the sort of behavior that the platform wouldn't tolerate from a politician. The company took down the video post.

Mr. Mishra acknowledged that Facebook had removed the video, which he said hadn't prompted any violence. He said his postings don't amount to hate speech, and that he believes neither he nor the BJP receive preferential treatment from Facebook.

Facebook took down some of Mr. Mishra's posts on Thursday after the Journal sought comment on them.

Data from social research firm Crowdtangle shows that within two months of the video of the speech being posted, the engagement for Mr. Mishra's Facebook page grew from a couple hundred thousand interactions a month to more than 2.5 million.

Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com and Jeff Horwitz at Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com