Outside War Stalled, Now It Is Time To Tackle The War Within

At a time when it is crucial for India to win over international opinion in its favour, it is imperative for the govt. to rein in the online trolls

Both India and Pakistan showed no hesitation in announcing a ceasefire, but who will broker peace for the war raging within the country? As a nation, we seem to have lost our inner compass, and people are willing to start trolling at the drop of a hat. Post Pahalgam, the largest number of trolls were directed at Indian Muslims, spurred on by increasing dollops of communal rhetoric that have been let loose across our TV channels. It is almost as though there is a concerted campaign to equate Indian Muslims with Pakistanis, who, like our western neighbour, seem to have become our permanent enemy.

This anti-Muslim sentiment seems to have become so ingrained in our social consciousness that Madhya Pradesh’s Tribal Welfare Minister Vijay Shah did not blink an eyelid when he described brave heart Colonel Sofiya Qureshi as a `terrorist’s sister’. Shah, in his scurrilous speech, went on to claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sent “a sister from their (the terrorists') community” in an Indian Air Force aircraft to avenge the victims”. How could a man holding a constitutional post for the last decade not realise that Qureshi’s briefing was at the behest of the government?

The BJP should have immediately given him marching orders. Instead, it was two feisty judges, Justices Atul Shridharan and Anuradha Shukla from the Jabalpur High Court, who ordered the police to register an FIR against Shah for speaking the `language of the gutter’. A rap from the Supreme Court should chasten him further.

Equally mystifying is the trolling of foreign secretary Vikram Misri, who became the victim of vicious trolling on social media for having announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Why a government bureaucrat should be on the firing line for a decision taken by the government defies imagination. Misri was forced to lock his X account, but it is time government agencies investigate the identity of these trolls and at whose behest they are sending out these poisonous darts. Why has no one from the government, including external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, condemned these attacks or come out in his support?

Another front was opened by Renu Bhatia, heading the Haryana State Commission for Women, who served a show cause notice on Ashoka University assistant professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad for a post he put on Facebook.

Mahmudabad wrote, “The optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings is important, but optics must translate to reality on the ground, otherwise it’s just hypocrisy (sic).” He also emphasised, “I am very happy to see so many right-wing commentators applauding Colonel Sophia Qureshi, but perhaps they could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the BJP’s hate-mongering be protected as Indian citizens.”

The Haryana women’s commission interpreted these remarks as “an attempt to vilify national military actions” and also an attempt to promote communal disharmony.

Mahmudabad, who has an MPhil and PhD from Cambridge University and is a historian of repute, issued a public statement slamming these summonses stating, “This is a new form of censorship and harassment, which invents issues where there are none.”

Why are the maximum trolls directed towards minorities, women and marginalised communities? What has Mahmudabad said that the commission has found so offensive? His comments can hardly be called abusive or a distortion of facts. Surely, the women’s commission has far more serious matters to attend to. Surveys have shown that there has been an alarming rise of violence against women in this state, including rape, abduction and molestation. The NCRB data for 2024 shows that Haryana tops other states in crime against women.

A great deal of the Pahalgam trolling started when Himanshi Narwal, whose husband, a 26-year-old naval officer, Vinay Narwal, was shot dead by the terrorists. The couple had been married for less than a week. For someone who was symbolised as the face of the tragedy, she found herself being viciously trolled when she urged people not to target Muslims or Kashmiris.

The trauma of Pahalgam should have taught us that Muslims stand by a secular India. The widespread protests by Kashmiris in the Valley against the gunning down of innocent tourists bear testimony to this.

All this hate mongering does take a toll, and data collected by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights highlights that 184 hate crimes have been reported post Pahalgam. There have been 84 hate speeches, 39 assaults, 19 cases of vandalism and three murders in this period.

The last few years have seen a phenomenal rise of social media, but this is not matched by internet literacy. Data experts who follow these abusive trolls have pointed their fingers at a number of platforms being regularly used for hate speech and abusive comments. The government has the surveillance machinery to take action against such groups, who are targeting minorities, women and marginalised communities.

Following the cessation of fighting, the political class should have gone into overdrive to emphasise how a secular, pluralistic India is civilisationally different from Pakistan. The opposite seems to be the case in our most populous state. The UP police, at the behest of Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi, has gone on an overdrive and registered FIRs against 40 social media accounts and arrested 25 people for spreading “anti-national content”.

Again, most of these arrests have been directed against those belonging to the minority community for having disseminated false propaganda.

If the UP police can conduct round-the-clock monitoring of various social media platforms, why is the centre unable to take similar action against those who have trolled Qureshi, Misri and Himanshi Narwal, to cite just three examples?

Shockingly, many of these trolls translate into death threats. The defence editor at The Economist, Shashank Joshi, has received numerous death threats following his coverage of the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan. A diplomatic fracas was kicked off when Gaurav Arya, a former army officer who appears on several news channels, went to the extent of calling the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi a “son of a pig”. His words caused outrage in Iran, coming as they did when both countries were in the thick of negotiating several trade deals.

At a time when India needs to win over international opinion in its favour, it is imperative these online trolls must be reined in, else they will get so emboldened as to legitimise violence and further spread this wave of hatred that can end up destroying our society. We also need to establish a code of ethics for all the social media platforms to be implemented strictly.

It also indicates a coarsening of public discourse which bodes poorly for a democracy, as it is indicative of how online spaces are becoming fundamentally unsafe. This has a negative bearing on our everyday lives, and that should not be overlooked.

Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.