Last couple of months have been a testament to just how much hate and humiliation people can be capable of. Justice for women in India is already not a well-executed reality but the situation is even worse for Muslim women and other female minorities.

Two examples of just how much disrespect they have to endure on a daily basis have come up in the last few months.

“Muslim Ladki Patao Abhiyan”

A few weeks ago, an individual named Kunal Sharma (operating from two separate handles @kunalsharma5205 and @kuna.lsharma5205) shared a list comprising of names and contact details of Muslim women as ‘gift’ to Hindu boys. This supposed gift was called “Muslim Ladki Patio Abhiyan”. Below are the Screenshot of the handles. These accounts no longer exist.

Showing the list and his message for “Hindu Boys”

This not only a violation of these women’s right to privacy and but also puts them in grave danger. We can effectively say that these women were ‘doxxed’ by Kunal Sharma. Doxxing means disclosing an individual’s personal information online without their consent. This incident was highly disrespectful of these women who were treated like commodities.

The person in his display picture was largely identified to be Shiringi Yadav. Shiringi Yadav has been previously caught beating a 14 year old Muslim boy on video. The massive media storm that followed verified the fact that the boy merely went inside a mandir to drink water.

Here is the YouTube video by Oddnaari with 1.43M subscribers claiming that this is the same person accused of brutally beat up a minor Muslim boy in Dasna Devi Mandir, Ghaziabad.

‘Sulli Deals’

This incident was almost happening side by side with the much larger incident of “Sulli Deals”. Several twitter users started posting screenshots of an app of the same name, that was created by an unidentified group on GitHub. This app was made with the purpose of auctioning off Muslim women. The app had pictures and information on journalists, students, artists and activists. The crime does not stop there, the users on the app were encouraged to click on ‘Find Your Sulli Deal of the Day’. 

This abhorrent act took twitter by a storm and eventually Delhi Police filed FIRs against the creators of the app and also issued a notice to GitHub.

Severe lack of sensitivity displayed by OpIndia and Hindu Men

These two separate incidents display just how much hate and disrespect is harbored by those who believe their religion to be the superior marker of people. No man could ever be disrespected in this way because women in this country despite being given legal and constitutional equality, hold a lower position in the society.

OpIndia, the patron saint of right-wing journalism, instead of acknowledging the systematic way in which these Muslim women were disrespected, chose to focus finding subreddits that claim to find ‘Hindu’ girls for Muslim men. This brazen display of ignorance confirms that neither does OpIndia care about minorities nor women.

We live in a highly communalized country but this wrestling match between communities must not come down to disrespecting women’s rights as individuals.