Why students are getting death, rape threats on Facebook and Twitter in India
Madhuri Bhattacharjee, an English literature student in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), removed her earrings. Her friend Vikas Kumar kept some onions in his bag. Another doctoral studies batchmate tied her hair tightly and wore sneakers.
They were all getting ready to be beaten up — by the Delhi Police. The onions were to alleviate the effects of tear gas. Madhuri and her batchmates joined about 15,000 other people, who marched the streets of Delhi last week, to voice their opinion against curbs on freedom of speech imposed by the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
They were demanding the release of student union president Kanhaiya Kumar who was arrested by the Indian government on charges of sedition.
They were demanding the release of student union president Kanhaiya Kumar who was arrested by the Indian government on charges of sedition. He was seen at an event on the university campus where some people allegedly raised fiery slogans demanding freedom for the state of Kashmir from Indian rule.
Right now, it’s close to midnight and I’m sitting with some students after a play that saw over 700 people clapping to slogans of "Down with Narendra Modi," just about eight kilometers from his residence.
In the satirical play, a judge orders the death penalty for a revolutionary who is charged for sedition for fighting for India’s independence from British colonial rulers. That the message was intended for the Indian government and its Hindu nationalist supporters was lost on none.
A birthplace for open ideas
Jawaharlal Nehru University houses over 7,000 students. It was born in 1969, in the heart of New Delhi.
Known for encouraging freedom of opinion of all kinds, it has given India some of its greatest political thinkers, writers, diplomats, journalists, professors, and leaders. On the walls of the university campus, one can find graffitis of Karl Marx, Che Guevara, and Bhagat Singh, among other names from world history.
What Stanford University has done for Silicon Valley, Delhi’s JNU has done for Delhi’s political class and academia.
Fierce war on social media
The recent arrests of students and beating up of journalists inside a court complex in a related incident has virtually divided India into two groups on social media — right-leaning nationalists and leftist or moderate liberals.
The ruling BJP and its rivals Indian National Congress and Aam Aadmi Party are known to have an active army of social media agents. These tweeters and Facebookers are believed to create hundreds of fake accounts each day.
India’s Twitter map keeps trending with pro- or anti-BJP topic, indicating the power of these two opposing social media camps.
“There are numerous fake accounts. Recently I got a death threat from an account named Muhammad. I could easily have filed a police case against it. But judging by past tweets, I could see it was a fake account created to propagate enmity between religions,” said Madhuri.
Death and rape threats
Any tweet which even remotely sounds anti-government or anti-Modi is now being crushed.
Fed up with an inbox full of death and rape threats to her on Facebook, Madhuri has drafted responses (about 20 of them) for them. She now just copy pastes these responses.
#IgnorantCows is a hashtag started by a few students against the massive social media army of the BJP and its affiliated organizations.
#JNUCrackdown and #JNURow has been trending since last week, as it gets support from other campuses and cities in India. On Sunday, #MarchforUnity was trending as ex-army servicemen took to streets.
“Traitor is the usual word they hurl online. ‘Go to Pakistan’ is another one I am bombarded with on my Twitter and Facebook accounts,” says Ankush, who has put a sticker named "keep calm" above his desktop to avoid reacting angrily to all the negative comments he gets online every day.
“My mother and I have been threatened with online with rape and murder,” says Madhuri.
It has taught some of them to be stoic. “I used to respond to every comment earlier including the ones threatening rape. Now I just use LOL as a comment,” says another student, who is also actively participating in protests against what is seen as curbs on free speech by the Indian government.
A woman journalist speaking out against the attack on fellow media persons in Delhi, was threatened with rape. After she tweeted it to the Mumbai police, the man was arrested.
Hackers getting active
I’m sitting in a TV room at a JNU hostel. There is pin drop silence, except for the cacophony of news channel Times Now. As soon as the TV anchor starts shouting at a student, accusing him of sedition, the students turn the TV off. There is palpable anger against some sections of the media too.
IMAGE: BERNAT ARMANGUEAP PHOTO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hackers have also taken sides. The Facebook account of JNU president Kanhaiya Kumar was hacked last week. The hackers created a fake image of the Flag of Iwo Jima and pasted it on his Facebook profile.
Delhi’s underground culture
I’m sitting in a nightclub and talking to its culture manager who tells me that after hours he goes to support his friends at JNU. Among the pub hopping young crowd of the capital, there is a growing angst, a feeling of being targeted for speaking one’s mind.
Delhi does have its underground culture. Many such youth are now uniting online. Besides making WhatsApp groups to protest, people are opening fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter to express themselves in force.
Nevertheless, people tweeting support for protests from their real accounts are being targeted by social media armies of right wing groups.
But the idea of nationalism is always debatable, is it not?
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” wrote Samuel Johnson, an English writer and poet in 1774. Last week, noted Indian columnist Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar also wrote this, and sure enough he was attacked for it online.
Every day at 5 p.m., JNU professors hold an open classroom to give a perspective on the "Idea of Nationalism." And that reminds me it’s already 5 p.m. Time for the class.
Names of some students have been changed to protect identity
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This article originally published at Tech in Asia here
