Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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It is either mischievous or ignorant to claim that ‘brahminical’ only refers to brahmins Imagine a celebrity Indian CEO going to the United States and having himself photographed with women of colour while holding a poster that said, “Smash racist patriarchy”. And then, imagine white Americans coming down on him like a tonne of bricks, accusing him of inciting hatred and violence against white Americans. Sounds absurd? Good. Now imagine him actually apologising to the American public for wanting to end racist patriarchy. Sounds even more absurd? Well, this, or at least a version of this, has actually happened. Not in the la-la land of Donald Trump, but right here, in the world’s largest democracy. The act and reaction Recently, the Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, on a visit to India, had an informal discussion with a group of Indian women journalists, activists and writers about their experience on Twitter. In the course of the meeting, he was gifted a poster by one of the participants. It said, ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’. When a group photograph of Mr. Dorsey posing with that poster surfaced on Twitter, it became an immediate target of outraged trolling. Both Mr. Dorsey and the organisation he heads were angrily accused of inciting hatred and violence against a “minority”, namely, brahmins. The furious tweets spanned the whole gamut of indignation from A to B. Mr. Dorsey was accused of being a “brahmin-hating, racist bigot”. He was accused of propagating hatred towards “people who constitute 5% or less” of India’s population. Many compared the sentiment expressed in the poster to antisemitism, asking if he would dare pose in the U.S. with a placard advocating hatred of Jews. A serving civil servant even deemed it “a fit case for registration of a criminal case for attempt to destabilize (sic) the nation”. Mr. Dorsey’s apoplectic critics wanted an immediate apology. And they got it, too. While Twitter clarified that the content of the poster was “not a statement from Twitter or our CEO”, the company’s legal and policy head put out a tweet saying, “I’m very sorry for this. It’s not relective (sic) of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us — we should have been more thoughtful. Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all. We failed to do that here & we must do better to serve our customers in India.” This public apology was tweeted out in its wordy entirety not once, not twice, not three times, but eight times. The whole episode raises two simple questions: What was wrong with that poster? And what is wrong with Twitter? Social order of caste The first is disposed of easily enough: nothing. Someone patient enough to carefully poke through the mass of outrage piled up against Mr. Dorsey and his poster might discern the vague outlines of an argument, which essentially boils down to brahminical patriarchy coming to the defence of brahminical patriarchy.
