At the beginning of New Year, the entire country woke up with shocking and disgraceful online abuse and hate news. As many as 100 Muslim women, including journalists, activists, actors, politicians, students, and other influential personalities, found their doctored pictures ready to be traded off on the ‘Bulli Bai’ app.
Bulli Bai is not the only app that has put the profiles of the women for online auction. In July 2020, another app, ‘Sulli Deals’, made headlines for the same reason. The common thing among these apps is that both targeted Muslim women. Now the question arises; why is this happening?
The answer needs to be illustrated through two domains: the psychological domain and political sociology domain. There are many psychological perspectives on hate, but Schafer points, “hate is one of those emotions we cannot experience alone. As soon as you do not like someone, what do we as people tend to do? Immediately find someone who doesn’t like that person, too. Then you commiserate together and validate each other’s experiences. You form a little group”.
In the case of the Bulli Bai app creators, all have the same motive against women. Thus hate is characterized as a judgment that a person or group is evil. One needs to understand what influences one’s to consider the ‘other’ as evil or undesirable. Surajit C Mukhopadhyay says that these indicate a long-standing poisoning of young minds from the sociological standpoint.
It appears that youth’s socialization has probably coincided with a shift in the social milieu. They have learned that such blatant disregard and contempt for the ‘other’ will not be questioned by elders, community mores, and the law of the land. Such conception might have given these young accused the strength to act in such a bold and unconstrained manner.
Is this hate simply misogyny or a politics of misogyny?
Misogyny is defined as a woman’s disdain, distrust, or inherent prejudice. Our culture has embraced a misogynistic attitude for far too long, and it doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. Loyal or (These hoes ain’t loyal), a popular hip-hop song by Chris Brown, is a fantastic illustration of how our society insults women and openly expresses and encourages misogynistic views. The song’s lyrics labels women hoes and depict them as dishonest and untrustworthy.
There is a deep cultural bias against women. Women are considered less superior than men. The son preference is another narrative that adds to the misogynist nature of man. The millions of girls born each year on the Indian subcontinent do not live to see another year. They end up being aborted even before they had a glimpse of this world. This happens due to unethical medical and societal practices which promote male preferences. Some of the fortunate kids live in orphanages and/or foster homes if they survive the challenge of being abandoned by their biological parents. However, it is essential to highlight that government affirmative action has resulted in considerable change in our society, but the speecd of such change is extremely slow.
Women face multiple challenges in our societies since their birth. The socialization of a boy takes in such a way that undermines the existence of a girl child. That is the first step where a male child has the sense of controlling power against the female child.
We all tend to associate ourselves with a particular political ideology. The contemporary political narrative plays a vital role in how youth represent themselves. In the present political narratives where hate speeches lead to polarization, a conflict between religious communities, and violence, youth tend to get attracted by these tactics. Recently, at Dharam Sansad, Haridwar, Narsinghanand, accused of hate speech, asked Hindus to pick up arms against Muslims.
These videos have been circulated through social media and have influenced other people. Religion as a tool to promote hate against the minority community is a potential threat to any nation. As far as these apps are concerned, both have targeted women. However, there is a typical pattern of hate, i.e. auctioning or trading off Muslim women profiles on online platforms. The answer to this question is rooted in the present political atmosphere in our country. Hate speeches from political workers, either in their capacity or from their parties, are usually shared online.
As long as the internet has existed, extremism, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other types of group-related prejudice have existed. These things are normalized or justified through two ways: 1) Positive narrative about ‘hate’ considering one’s religion as the only supreme religion 2) Present the propaganda work through media, i.e. the debates about Muslims vs Hindus. Such narratives become the soup for political workers to radicalize the youth.
In between the above two ways, some politically motivated people try to create fake news and produce it through their WhatsApp groups, Facebook, and other social media tools. The spread of targeted disinformation creates communal conflict and disharmony among different communities. Given these, radicalized youth used an online platform to hurt the sentiment of minorities groups and women.
Channelizing the power of youth
Given the rise in hate politics, it is essential to instil human rights value in our youth. It is the responsibility of the socio-religious and political institutions to tap the untapped energies of youth for the betterment of society. Families and educational institutions play an essential role in shaping the behaviour of youth. Therefore, families have to ensure that their children are socialized better with norms, values, and respect for minorities, women, and other marginalized and vulnerable groups. Educational institutions can potentially design a specific curriculum where learning and training go hand in hand to tackle the issues of hate speech, misogyny, and intolerance. Whether by the right or left, any extremism leads our youths to a dangerous path, and it is our duty to fix it as soon as possible.
