“I am a student of Delhi University. I am not afraid of ABVP. I am not alone. Every student of India is with me #StudentsAgainstABVP.”
The incident
Yet again, freedom of speech was violently hushed and opinions were mercilessly ridiculed as social media became the arena for the drama to unfold after the recent incident of goonism. Delhi University’s Ramjas College was at the receiving end of the aggression from the student wing of Bhartiya Janta Party’s - ABVP who violently harassed students, faculty and journalists of this Institute.
The clash rooted from the decision of the Institute to invite JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid to address their seminar on ‘Culture of Protests,’ which later was withdrawn by college authorities followed by the revolt of ABVP.
The clash of opinions
In all this mess, Indian Army Kargil martyr, Captain Mandeep Singh’s daughter Gurmehar Kaur found her way in the spotlight after she stood up against the incident by changing her Facebook profile picture with a placard reading the above statement.
Battling through this entire scenario, an older video resurfaced on the internet when Kaur had claimed, “Pakistan did not kill my father, war did," which fruited to further digital chaos when people held on to this and took on trolling by creating memes against her.
All she did through this video was share her story of losing her father at the age of 2, solicited for peace to prevail in these neighboring counties instead of war and somewhere "Nationalists" missed the entire point of what this 20 year was trying to make.
Soon drawing into a political turmoil and making it yet again an issue of “proving your patriotism”, celebrities, journalists, and politicians tweeted their opinions on the stand where Virendra Sehwag and Randeep Hooda became the participants of the trolling, coming under the scrutiny of Twitteratis when Hooda retweeted Sehwag’s tweet by laughing on it.
Later, Hooda after being blamed for bullying, shared a long post on Facebook justifying his actions.
"This country gives you freedom of expression. How dare you live here and consider using the freedom of expression it gives you?" https://t.co/jAA3dbfHJi
After initiating a campaign against ABVP on February 22, 2017 with an appeal to the students of DU to huddle together and make college a safer place to be in, recently she backed out from her campaign and shared a series of tweets justifying her decision.
Not only this, but Kaur was recipient of rape threats from ABVP and their supporters.
Clearly, the 20-year old too had to give up on the incessant trolling and social media backlash.
I'm withdrawing from the campaign. Congratulations everyone. I request to be left alone. I said what I had to say.. (1/2)
The saga of this war is still fuming on Twitter as politicians take digs at oppositions and ferry away from the crux, while the country is busy discussing who is national or anti-national.
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