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| Representational Pic. |
It
was June 18, 2014 when I experienced the fear of getting attacked or
arrested only for Re-tweeting
a post of Times Now news channel, which said, “Did you make me a minister?” asks Union
Minister Nihalchand after
TIMES NOW reporter asked him questions”.
It was the case of Union Minister, in the cabinet from
Rajasthan being accused by woman of raping her and threatening her to take back
the case.
It was my favourite Aditya
Raj Kaul, Correspondent at Times Now, reporting live from Ganganagar in Rajasthan. It was morning time I
was busy with my Twitter account which soon after channel reported live,
tweeted the incident. The next thing I did was to re-tweet it.
I was shocked after two minutes of re-tweeting, my account was full
with notifications of
random people, having common initials as their usernames, which had ‘#HDL’ in it. I thought it was
spam looking at the amount of replies at first look.
After reading them I found that there was a group of
people, who claimed, themselves to be member of, ‘Hindu Defense League’ and
that was the reason of
their username with common initials of having ‘#HDL’ in the end. It’s not the
end the real story starts here, I
got around 27 replies from members
of HDL, in which everyone had their opinion in favour of the Union Minister and
they mentioned my username & that of Times Now, in their reply for around
27 times.
But this was not the end they criticised Times Now of being
a paid channel and being anti-national and also mentioned me in different
tweet, threatening me by calling me, anti-national element, who wants to keep
Modi, busy with all such non-sense. That was not enough for them, few went
replying me, “You seculars & agents of Congress, should be taught a proper
lesson. I don’t know what they meant by saying,” to teach me a lesson”. It soon
made me remember the attacks & arrests in Maharashtra, where people had
posted their views on social media forum, and they were attacked and also
arrested in one such instance.
I was thinking on it for around ten minutes, after which I
found the tweet in which I was mentioned and which said, ‘To teach me a lesson’
was in the list of favourites and re-tweeted by other members of the same
group. Quickly reacting to the sudden attack on my account by a group of members called
‘Hindu Defense League’. I thought of finding on Google about them. I visited their website which
was saffron in colour, and informed about Hinduism, and increasing threat on
Hinduism. It had articles written against political parties. It was actually
looking like a mouth-piece of the ruling government. After which, I went back
to my Twitter account which had a reply from the member of the same group,
saying, “Saffron dragon is ruling the country and not the secular”.
By this time, I was scared because all this happened in
fraction of 15-20 minutes. I thought of not replying back them. Normally, I
don’t miss my chance to reply back to people on Twitter but this was something
I felt as dangerous and threat. Maybe, I was stupid to be scared by such
replies, but the fact remains, there is a strong valid reason of being scared,
after the BJP has come into power.
I thought of not tweeting further for the day and also I
removed my location information displayed on my account. Should I delete what I
have re-tweeted or should I not? The questions still remains the same. Irony,
here is in all of it, Times Now news channel was several times mentioned while
posting such threatening post. I think the channel’s social-media team didn’t take it
seriously. But I knew I had to stop it here. For the next 24 hours, I never
logged into my Twitter account of fear. After, which I logged in and found out
nothing other than around 40 re-tweets of the Tweet which said, “Saffron dragon
is ruling".
I don’t whether they were joking around with me or not? But
I was scared, I also thought of complaining it to the cyber-crime cell, but I
thought of just ignoring, as I didn’t know whether they were from that
organization or not? The tweets were from their personal account with #HDL
in the end of their
usernames.
The only thing that comes to my mind, do we really need to
monitor the use of social media? Are they all pocket organization of the ruling
government, to spread the message of Hinduism by such means?
Don’t know what it may be? I am now scared to tweet or
re-tweet any political post. I couldn’t stop myself from doing it yesterday,
when Railway Minister, announced to increase fare hike for Railways.
I have the screen-shots of the tweets, which I don’t feel
like posting here. Is social media given a colour of saffron? One thing I am sure about is,by the time I write here
they must be busy threatening some other Twitter user.
Note- In no way I am blaming or alleging the Hindu
Defense League, as it was not the official account tweeting. But yes, who
are these elements on Twitter in the name of HDL?
(I can be
contacted on mehulthakkar29@gmail.com for grammatical errors.).)
