As was expected, BJP’s IT cells have gone all out in propagating vicious and spiteful nationalism on Twitter. The Citizenship Amendment Bill that proposes to grant citizenship to non-Muslim undocumented migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh was passed by the Lok Sabha a little after midnight of December 9, effectively December 10 which happens to be International Human Rights Day. This happens to be the dreariest incident to have taken place on a day like Human Rights Day, to have passed a bill that abrogates human rights of Muslim migrants in India.
On a day like this, the topic trending on number 1 on Twitter India is #भारतमेरेबापकाहै (Literal Translation: India belongs to my father!). This phrase in Hindi “Bharat Mere Baap ka hai” refers to a falsesense of entitlement that right wing Hindu extremists have, of exclusivist ownership over the ‘nation’ that is India. No doubt their vision of “Hindu Rashtra”. These right-wing extremists live under the delusion that India was always meant to be a Hindu nation, especially after Partition, which led to a Pakistan for Muslims.
India’s Home Minster, Amit Shah, while addressing the Parliament on this bill, stated that, had Congress not partitioned India, his government would not have had to take such a step. What Mr. Shah seems to have forgotten is India’s constitutional history: although Pakistan adopted Islam as its religion, India stood by composite nationhood. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims, too, resisted the lure of an Islamic state driven by Jinnah and the Muslim League, casting their lot with a secular, republican India. Moreover, the role of the Hindu Mahasabha (resolution passed by its ideologue Savarkar in Ahmedabad in 1935) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in propagating an ‘exclusivist nationhood’ is integral to this history.
Gaining inspiration from the subtle venom being spewed at the very top, the large troll army of the Sangh has taken to Twitter to gloat over, what they see as the beginnings of the creation of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.
Some tweets read as follows:
https://twitter.com/pizzzaa_hutt/status/1204356483460124672
https://twitter.com/virpartapsingh5/status/1204356249917112321
https://twitter.com/upasanatigress/status/1204356035860762625
https://twitter.com/sha_shah85/status/1204349694060552193
https://twitter.com/am_karuna/status/1204344948935385088
https://twitter.com/Abhishek_Mshra/status/1204355494212562944
https://twitter.com/Adarsh_Bharat_/status/1204346571258646528
As a retort to this fascist trend, came #किसीकेबापकाभारतथोड़ीहै (literal translation: India does not belong to anyone’s father!). More inclusive Indians –and their number is as significant — took up the cudgels to fight this Twitter war of hate and exclusion. This topic started trending at number 3 and following it was also #IndiaAgainstBJP which was also clearly an expression of protest against the divisive bill passed by the government.
https://twitter.com/IntriguedSpeaks/status/1204259794422419456
https://twitter.com/Impanks18/status/1204268520114016257
https://twitter.com/tabishkhanss/status/1204307984500678656
https://twitter.com/vKankheriya/status/1204257846755393536
https://twitter.com/RizwanAfsar7/status/1204320817032523776
https://twitter.com/i_theindian/status/1204296805061545985
