Sushma
Swaraj, India’s foreign minister and most senior female politician in
government, is most beloved for her compassionate presence on Twitter,
using the otherwise noxious platform to help Indians stranded in
far-flung corners of the globe.
She has used Twitter with generosity to provide documents
to Pakistanis who need emergency treatment in Indian hospitals, even
when diplomatic relations between the two nations have been in a nosedive.
While
her detractors have sometimes mocked her for being reduced to the post
of a Twitter minister, her humor and grace have won her friends across
the aisle in a deeply divided country.
But this
week, it was her own party’s hard-line base that used Twitter to turn on
her in the ugliest, most misogynistic way — all because her ministry
intervened to help a Hindu-Muslim couple with a passport complaint.
Vikas
Mishra, an official in a passport office in the city of Lucknow, was
accused by a woman named Tanvi Seth of insulting her husband because he
is Muslim. The complainant tagged Swaraj in her tweets and alleged that
the official had demanded to know why
she had not taken her husband’s name after marriage. Seth alleged that
her husband had been asked by Mishra to convert to Hinduism. The official was transferred the next day, but he argued that the interfaith couple had misrepresented him. According to the official’s version
of events, there was a mismatch in the travel documents; he said the
woman had one name on her “nikahnama” (a legally recognizable marriage
contract under Muslim personal law) and another on her passport. He said
he was doing his job in addressing the contradictions. The far-right
presented Mishra as a victim of Muslim appeasement pushed by
Hindu-hating liberals. These are the pathetic polarizations that have
come to frame public debate in India today.
In response, Swaraj was flooded with abuse, including a reference to her “Islamic Kidney,” a horrific swipe at a transplant she had to undergo in 2016.
Others commented on the “almost dead woman” who is “running on one
kidney.” She was even branded a “publicity hungry . . . Visa Mata”
(Passport Mother).
Swaraj’s saga reveals harsh
truths: These sympathizers-turned-online-stormtroopers for the Bharatiya
Janata Party have started a fire that will eventually burn down the
BJP’s own house. And the party’s scorched-earth policy for electoral
victory at all costs is fanning the flames of dangerous anti-Muslim
hatred that could destroy the very edifice of democratic and cultural
decency.
The army of right-wing trolls who
targeted Swaraj is normally deployed to strike at enemies across
ideological enemy lines. Journalists have been routinely smeared,
slandered and, in several cases, threatened with rape and death.
As someone who has experienced this myself (and yes, I’ve complained to
the police, taken it to court and reported such abuses to Twitter), I
can confirm that outspoken women are their favorite targets. And when we
speak out against our vilification, resisting the attempts to
intimidate and silence us, we are accused of “playing the victim.”
Well this week, it was the minister who decided to make a strong statement about the venom thrown her way. She sarcastically tweeted that
she had been “honored” to receive the messages. Later, she deleted the
retweets, but the message was clear. She wanted everyone to understand
the extent of the vitriol she had received. But Swaraj was criticized
even more for publicly taking on the toxic trolls. BJP supporters claimed she was giving ammunition to her opponents.
What
is both shocking and shameful is that not a single party leader of
consequence, not even the other women in the Modi cabinet, have publicly spoken in Swaraj’s defense.
Why would Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has appointed women to key
roles in his government usually reserved for men (including foreign
affairs and defense), not swiftly and publicly condemn this language of
hate and sexism? Whatever the facts of the passport case are eventually
proven to be, does Swaraj not deserve the respect of her Cabinet
colleagues? Or is it that in the run-up to the big election in 2019, it
is the BJP’s cynical calculation that, come what may, it cannot afford
to be seen as “soft” on Muslims?
Yes, other
ideological camps and political parties are attempting to raise
battalions of trolls, too. But none are as organized or as feared as the
social-media machinery of India’s political right.
The
ugly underbelly of the right-wing’s political Internet culture cannot
be divorced from the reality in India today. Women in public life have
to constantly battle
for basic respect. And for demanding the dignity that should be ours
automatically, we expose ourselves to even fiercer attacks. If a
high-ranking, influential, powerful minister does not have the
protection from verbal violence, what chance do the rest of us have?
The
second alarming and inescapable fact is that a coarsened environment —
enabled by social-media toxicity — has made casual religious bigotry,
especially against Muslims, socially acceptable. Compared to the West,
especially European countries, Indian Muslims (roughly 14 percent of the
population) are happily culturally integrated in a pluralistic society
that is the best thing about us. In 2005, President George W. Bush
famously introduced then-Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to first
lady Laura Bush, with Singh
saying that he came from a “country that had 150 million Muslims but
not one of them joined the ranks of the al-Qaeda.” In 2018,
notwithstanding the insurgency in Kashmir, terror groups such as
al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have still made scant inroads in India
compared to other nations.
But we risk
everything that sets India apart with an insidious Islamophobia that is
only continuing to grow. The lynching of Muslim cattle-traders over
rumors that they are trading in beef has become a near-normal part of
the news cycle. One day recently, a customer publicly asked her telecom
provider to send a non-Muslim representative to fix her broadband connection.
Similar prejudices have been reported by cab companies such as Uber and
Ola. Those of us who talk about these issues are mocked as Muslim
lovers. The right wing routinely distorts my name from Barkha to “Burqa”
to make a statement on my secular politics, as if being secular is now a
bad thing.
The attack on Swaraj from people
within her own party’s political base reminds me of what Hillary Clinton
once said about Pakistan: You cannot keep snakes in your backyard and
expect them only to bite your neighbors.
The question now: Is there still an antidote available?
