Looking at 74 years of freedom through the Prism of Twitter

 

Twitter is a social media platform, where ‘every voice has the power to impact the world’, used by millions globally; the 2020 statistics of number of users worldwide has India ranked third with 17 million users. From politicians to policy makers, writers, journalists, and activists- almost everyone and his/her aunt is at any given moment either tweeting or catching up on what’s happening around them. A slogan for twitter says it all: ‘It’s what’s happening’.

And herein lies the problem. If it is true that twitter is a reflection of society, then that reflection doesn’t sit very well for India @74. The preamble to the Indian constitution promises all citizens of the country

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the [unity and integrity of the Nation]

But twitter has become a platform where the sanctity of these very ideals of the constitution are sent for a toss in hundreds of tweets daily. Women, minorities, and the weak are targeted and trolled. This ridicule and abuse has a ripple effect, with most of those targeted either withdrawing from social media or finding themselves unable to express their opinion freely. Even if one were to take into account the undisputed fact that conversations in  patriarchal Indian society have always amplified men’s voices more than women’s, it is a sad commentary on our collective failure to respect human rights and ,in fact, to push victims of trolling into a culture of silence.

Women journalists are no strangers to twitter trolling. From Barkha Dutt, to Rana Ayyub, to Sagarika Ghosh, they have all been targeted and attacked. When well known journalist, Nidhi Razdan, tweeted a comment given by Omar Abdullah, she was trolled not for the comment itself but at a very personal and sexual level.

 After the death of famous lyricist, Rahat Indori , when Saba Naqvi tweeted his very famous words, Kisike Baap ka Hindustan thodi hai..., she was targeted for being a Muslim and told to live in Pakistan , not India.

After the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, Alia Bhatt became a twitter target because of an unfortunate and snarky comment she had made about Rajput on Karan Johar’s show. Admittedly the comment was cringe worthy and it would have been par for the course to pull her up about it but what unleashed was an extremely below the belt attack on her and her family. Alia Bhatt was called a 'traitor' and a jingoistic call given to boycott her.

A sample of the tweets targeting Alia Bhatt:

According to our sources #AliaBhatt has gone into depression. she spoke about it sometimes ago also and even cried at few events. Alia’s sister Shaheen is also a patient of depression. This Bhatt family is the brand ambassador of mental illness and depression in India.

Rhea Chakravorty is being questioned in Sushant Singh Rajput’s case and the whole matter is sub-judice. But is that good enough for twitter trollers? Rhea has been targeted as a woman, as a Bengali and, believe it or not, as someone who does black magic.

The trollers do not limit their trolling to only the media or actors or those whom they feel need to be quartered and hanged even before the court has passed its verdict. PTI reported that on June 5, 2020 some woman police officers posted at a premier training institute for bureaucrats in Mussoorie were targeted with abusive and obscene content on Twitter.

 Freedom for most of us in India has almost always been synonymous with the country getting freed from British rule and the tri-color being hoisted on August 15, 1947. But if twitter is taken as an example of personal expressions through social media, in essence it will mean that what we got 74 years back was independence, which is liberation from the power of another. Freedom from the moribund shackles of gender, religion and economic status is a long way off.