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Background
The Washington Post, The Wire, an independent Indian news organization, published an in-depth investigative series on Jan. 6, 2022, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party, the BJP, of using a sophisticated app to hijack social media and even encrypted messaging platforms to manipulate public opinion and launch online campaigns against those it saw as a threat to the government, including female journalists.
The problem is not the hate that is prevalent in the nation, the problem is that this hate is now normalized to an extent that people no longer get surprised when another Muslim man is killed. This “generalizing” or “normalizing” of such an inhumane thing is the problem.
What Was the Bulli-Bai App?
According to the Tek Fog investigation, along with online harassment of journalists, manipulation of authentic information and data, and hashtags on Twitter, the app was also being used to harass and threaten female journalists. More than 100 Muslim women, including a well-known actress, many journalists, activists, and politicians, were offered on an app for "sale" as the day's "Bulli Bai." (‘Bulli’ is a derogatory term to address Muslim women.) The app was taken down, and Mumbai police detained three teenage supporters of India's right-wing ecosystem.
The people were Vishal Jha, Shweta Singh, a woman herself, Mayank Rawal, and Niraj Bishnoi – all between 18 and 21 years old – have were arrested for creating the app that ‘auctioned’ hundreds of Muslim women journalists, activists, and others including the 52-year-old mother of missing JNU student Najeeb Jung.
This Is Not All…
At a conference in India, a Hindu fanatic dressed in the religion's holiest color, saffron, called on her supporters to kill Muslims and "protect" the country.
"If 100 of us become soldiers and are willing to slaughter 2 million (Muslims), then we will win... protect India, and create it a Hindu republic," Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha political organization, stated in a video of the gathering.
Many individuals are still outraged over a month later at the lack of official response or arrests in response to the comments, which they feel shows a deteriorating climate for Muslims in the country. India's Supreme Court intervened on Wednesday in response to mounting pressure, ordering state and federal officials to react within 10 days. By Haridwar police, Pandey and several others are being investigated for insulting religious beliefs, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison. In response to the outcry and inquiries, neither Pandey nor the others have made any public statements.
All This For an ‘Imaginary’ Threat?
The Ministry of Home Affairs has responded to an RTI saying threats to Hinduism are ‘imaginary’.
Then, why are Muslims being tortured, and killed? Over 5000 Muslims in Assam became homeless after being forcibly evicted by the Indian Government, killing a lot of them. Then why were Tabrez Ansari, Hafeez Mohammed Haldar, Faizal Usman Khan, and thousands of other innocents, killed, for the ‘crime’ of being born in a Muslim family in India? Then why, in UP, the names of the cities are being changed, or several mosques are being demolished?
Then why the Facebook Whistle-blower Frances Haugen files a complaint in US-SEC alleging Pro-Hindu group RSS and BJP for promoting Hate Speech Content in India? Then why, according to a BBC investigation, from August 2016 to August 2021, the cases of hate crimes against Muslims in UP double?
And the most shocking of all, why is a group of young Hindu men and women in a Clubhouse group discussing that Hitting a Muslim girl’s vagina is equal to the Punya of building 7 mandirs or demolishing the Babri masjid?
The Constitution of India Is Still a Dream
The constitution doesn’t tell you what India is. Because in practice, India is medieval, feudal, deeply divided across communal and caste lines, and ruled not by laws but by patriarchal power structures. The constitution, so, is just a statement of intent.
Have any nationalist Hindu organizations taken offense at the name of Ram being used as a chant by murder mobs yet? No? Okay. Maybe that’s what Hinduism is then. Maybe now, when curious foreigners ask us about our culture, we should send them a compilation of Proud Hindus chanting the name of Ram as they applaud murder. Maybe that should be how we introduce our “great and ancient civilization”. Maybe there should be a nice-looking website with an ancient-looking stone-carved graphic template called “ An Introduction to Hindu Culture”.
The main page can have a grid layout populated by video clippings like “goli maare” and “kaate jayenge”. This level of communal hatred is, or maybe, irreversible. It would take years, and decades and this hate may still be left.
It was almost inconceivable a few decades ago that the ideas of freedom and independence in India would be in danger. A land where every major world religion and thousands of languages existed, if not coexisted for centuries. For a nation founded on the principles of democracy and secularism, the past few years have been a painful decline towards an extreme autocracy.
All Is Not Well in India
Politicians promoting hate speech, journalists targeted, historians harassed, climate change and human rights activists jailed, violent symbols of nationalism encouraged, irresponsible reporting by mass media, sedition charges, and FIRs as tools of intimidation, Internet shutdowns, scapegoating and persecution of minorities, police brutality against peaceful protests, Kashmiris silenced and detained, spyware used against critics, legislations against interfaith relations, cows receiving more safety and protection than women.
But it goes deeper than just recent politics. Living side by side for centuries, neighbors mistrust each other based on which way they pray. Children are being taught a revisionist history and to glorify vandalism against other places of worship. Mob lynching is a regular occurrence.
Vulnerable refugees blamed. Freedom of the press constantly declining. Issues like corruption, inflation, unemployment, education, and pandemic mismanagement are denied, or ignored until it is time to blame a minority faith.
People must understand that, If you hate a person, it can be justified; but if you hate a whole COMMUNITY, a whole RELIGION, a whole COUNTRY… then something is terribly wrong with YOU. A true patriot questions the state of a nation and what we are teaching the next generation. You can still search for the beauty of India’s multiculturism, and all the fabrics that were woven to create a pluralistic, vibrant, secular democracy.
But we cannot close our eyes to the hatred, intolerance, chauvinism, and the use of state authority to silence dissent that is robbing democratic India of the very thing it prizes most – Freedom. Azadi.
Written by - Aastha Monga
Edited by - Kritika Sharma
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