With two separate tweets by two different women, social media erupted over the #Selfiewithdaughter campaign — an initiative that asked people to tweet pictures with their daughters. It began in a village in Haryana and was later taken up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his last Mann Ki Baat. After actor Shruti Seth and womens’ rights activist and All-India Progressive Women’s Association secretary, Kavita Krishnan, tweeted and wrote on social media criticizing the initiative, people claiming to be followers of Mr. Modi trolled the two women.
Abuse and threats of rape and even public lynching followed soon after they expressed their opinion. Ms. Krishnan on Wednesday wrote a mail to the Commissioner of Delhi Police with snapshots of the comments that followed her Facebook posts and tweets. She requested him to treat these as an FIR.
Even actor Alok Nath abused Ms. Krishnan and said that she should be jailed. However, he deleted his tweets later. “Some of them are relentlessly abusing and giving me rape threats. One said that I will be treated (raped) like the women of Muzaffarnagar. It was obviously a very organized way of online bullying and a part of the bigger agenda of censoring of opinion and disciplining the dissent,” said Ms. Krishnan.
While Shruti Seth had tweeted saying that “A selfie is not a device to bring about change, Mr. PM” and “be ‘more than a photograph’ (sic)”, the activist’s tweets were more political in nature and linked the new campaign with the Snoopgate scandal. “Careful before sharing #SelfieWithDaughter with #LameDuckPM. He has a record of stalking daughters.”(sic).
“The campaign is aimed only for ‘well-behaved daughters with no opinion of theirs’. The moment a woman tries to voice her opinion, which is otherwise, people show their true colours. At least mine (tweet) was political in nature, but Ms. Shruti simply said that the government needs reforms and not photo-op moments. Just as they have censored the movies, even social media in India will go through the same,” said the activist.
“It is clear these campaigns are just gimmicks. The real misogyny and hatred for women has come to the fore,” said Vrinda Grover, a womens’ rights activist and lawyer.
