Hate story

Hate is a canker; it infects from the inside. Many times, like canker, you can't see hate because it's so deeply wedged within our being. I didn't know we Indians are capable of such compelling hate; recent incidents have changed my mind. I have also come to accept that perhaps this uncompromising hate was always there inside us; latent, unprovoked but ever present. In the last few years, we have allowed that hate to prosper. By turning a blind eye, by not protesting, and may be even accepting hate as a facet of new India, we have allowed it to poison all around us, including and may be most severely, the impressionable youth of our country.

This week we learnt that three young adults (Mayank Rawal, Shweta Singh, and Vishal Kumar Jha) built the Bulli Bai app, which like 'Sulli Deals', uploaded pictures of Muslim women from their social media pages with the view of auctioning them online. All three may have been arrested but that this is the handiwork of talented minds is deeply disturbing. Of them, an 18-year-old woman is purportedly the mastermind. A woman sullying the image of fellow women just because of religious hate shows how deep that canker has infected some among the youth of India. This young woman who lost her father to Covid and mother to cancer would otherwise be subject to empathy. Another of the three brains behind this sordid matter, a BTech student, expressed no remorse; he believed that creating this app that's used by right-wing extremists was the 'right' thing to do.

It's heart-breaking that these youngsters have no moral compass. What more could they have learnt from the insidious clime of online trolling and hate? They strongly believe that what they were perpetrating was righteous; may be even their duty or debt to society; a lesson being taught to minorities by the majority? Right has turned wrong and wrong has turned right in today's dystopian world of upturned morals. The government recently also blocked a Telegram channel that targeted Hindu women and action has been taken against some Facebook pages for sharing photographs of Hindu women. And as always women pay the price for hate.

Scores of women were shocked to find their pictures on auction apps whose intentions, like the names they bore, were humiliating and abusive. Imagine waking up to Facebook pages that carry your picture and abuse you. 'Find me a Sulli' or 'Find your Sulli Deal of the Day', these were the kind of options available on the Sulli Deals app. Women who haven't been shy in using their voice in the public domain were aghast to find themselves on the app with the derogatory name. This is problematic at so many levels. Technology is used not for good but with the sole purpose of commodifying women and selling them like objects. The apps targeted minority women in particular; yet another intent to suppress them from being heard. The fact that these apps and Facebook pages maligned women, irrespective of their religion, should have us all up in arms. It's once again proof of how unsafe the virtual, as well as the real, world is for women. This too is harassment and promotion of violence against women.

I wonder, what will be the future of these young people who set up platforms of hate? How unhappy they must already be; as also friendless and alone in suffocating religious constructs of their own half-baked notions. Will they find vocation in the growing virtual armies of hate-mongers? Will they ever understand the implications of their actions? Most importantly, who will help cross back into the realm of compassion and tolerance? Have we lost them to the dark world of hatred for ever? Will they grow older as bitter, unhappy crusaders with misplaced religious ideologies with that canker of hate devouring them more and more with each passing day? Will they pass on this hate to their children? I don't know these digital creators personally, but these questions torment me. These young people are defeated by their all-consuming hate. To me, they are lost lives.

The writer is an author and media entrepreneur. Views expressed are personal