The spread and promotion of hate on social media have become common. Everyday, many users share content containing abusive, slang, and communalism regarding religion and castes. On the other hand, some people full of hate target those who are doing a fact check, investigative, informative, and genuine journalism against this hatred. Women journalists are the easiest bait for these creatures full of hate. Our team has analyzed the targeting of women journalists, social activists, and writers in the past also.
Continuously, they are targeting Muslim women and especially those who are active on social media. Firstly, people targeted Muslim women through the #SulliDeals app. Now, they are targeting Muslim Women through the #BulliBai app. These applications are built on the open-source code repository GitHub. Firstly, they surreptitiously downloaded the photographs of Muslim women journalists, social activists, and writers from their social media accounts. And, then auctioned them through this app.
There was no physical harm to these women in this auction, but people made efforts to influence their social life. And, they gave such disgusting names to them. It made them feel humiliated as well as tortured them mentally.
Regarding this whole matter, some people have played their vicious “hate” and “communalism” agendas openly on social media. These people posted many tweets and retweet giving Islamophobia, love jihad, and anti-Muslim angle. Moreover, we saw a special pattern in our analysis that social media users have copied-pasted a post a lot.
What is the dispute?
On January 1, 2022, the whole world celebrated the new year. On the same day, an application was created on GitHub, named district Bulli Bai (#BulliBai). Photos of hundreds of Muslim women active on social media were posted on this website for auction. In addition, they captioned these phots as – “Your Bulli Bai of the day is” in Hindi translation “Today’s your Bulli Bai”. They also imposed price of these Muslim women in this post, which was not in rupees but money.
The matter came to light on January 1, 2022, when Ismat Ara, a female journalist for The Wire news website, revealed the matter. Someone uploaded Ismat Ara’s photo on this Bulli Bai app. Ismat wrote on Twitter- “It is very sad that as a Muslim woman you have to start your new year with this fear and hatred. Of course, I am not the only target in this new edition of #sullideals. This morning, a friend sent this Screenshot. Happy New Year.”
After this disclosure of Ismat, social media users started criticizing this app. People on social media started demanding immediate closure of this application and action against the accused. After which this application was suspended, as well as the Twitter accounts associated with this app have also been suspended.
Our team has done investigative research on this whole matter. In which there have been many shocking revelations. In our research, people who started this app and their Twitter accounts were studied.
What is GitHub?
GitHub is an American company that was launched on 8 February 2008. Many types of software can be made in it. GitHub is an open-source code repository platform. Users can create applications through this. Users can also host a small website with the help of GitHub. Here people can also sell the applications created by them.
Meaning of “Bully”
According to several reports, people use the word “bully” in regional languages as a slur to humiliate Muslim women. People generally use this word more in the states of northern India.
Accounts that started #BulliBai:
The account that started Bulli Bai is Bulli Bai (@bullibai_). However, Twitter has suspended this account. But, our team has extracted the archive of this account. Scrutiny of this Twitter account reveals that it was created in December 2021. That is, this account was created before the introduction of the Bully Bai application. The Twitter ID of this account is Id = 1476907464373452802.
The display picture of this Twitter account is a caricature resembling a Sikh religious person. Apart from this, #FREEJAGGINOW is written in the cover photo. While there he has written in his bio Bulli Bai is a community-driven open-source app by Khalsa Sikh Force (KSF). Which translates in Hindi as “Bulli Bai Khalsa is a community-driven open source app by Sikh Force (KSF).”
Second user-
An account named Khalsa Warrior whose ID is @jattkhalsa7. This account was also created in December 2021. Although Twitter has suspended this account, it has mentioned a link to the application ID bullibai.github.io in its Twitter account. It has written in its pinned tweet – “I believe in Bulli Bai Supremacy” which translates to “I believe in Bulli Bai supremacy”.
Let us tell our readers that, these accounts have been archived and their investigation is going on by the police of all the states. Confirmation of their veracity can be known only after the investigation of the police.
“Hate agenda” spread between Hindu-Muslim
On this issue, users of social media were busy in spreading hate and hatred against each other. Users claiming to be from the Hindu community, adding an angle of love jihad to bully deals, asked why such anger is not visible in cases of love jihad. There was also a question from these users that why no one show anger in fixing the rates of non-Muslim girls in Love Jihad. Why is nobody show anger over the murder of a Hindu girl for not accepting a love proposal from an “Abdul”.
At the same time, investigation of these claims has come to the fore that no girl was killed for refusing the love proposal by Abdul. However, there was an incident of Abdul deceiving h a Hindu girl. Dainik Bhaskar’s newspaper covered the news.
Further, some Muslim users also made comments against the Hindu community on this matter. A user commented on the matter giving the example of Draupadi. While another user blamed RSS for Bulli Bai. However, the police is still investigation on this matter and they found no link with RSS.
word cloud:
Here is a word cloud of words used by social media users on Twitter. It shows the most often used words in tweets. Most of the hashtags were #BulliBai and #BlliDeals. The most used words were ‘Muslim Women’, ‘Sulli Deals’, ‘Bulli Bai’, ‘FIR’, ‘Auction’, ‘Strict Action’.
Mention:
Most of the social media users wanted strict action against the accused on this matter. They tagged and mentioned the issue to attract the attention of politicians, officials, and police. Users mentioned @narendramodi, the maximum number of times. People were tagging him and requesting PM to take action. At the same time, Users mentioned @delhipolice, @nargisbano_, and @priyankac19 many times.
Use of hashtags:
In addition, Social media users used some hashtags to this trend. Some people used the hashtag in support of it. At the same time, some people ran hashtags against it and demanded strict action against the accused. Apart from #BulliDeals and #BulliBai hashtags, users also used some other hashtags, for example, #SulliDeals, #SpeakUpAgainstBulliDeals, #Github, #MuslimWomen.
Check out the accounts with the most tweets and replies:
The graph below shows the most frequently tweeted accounts or replies to the hashtag. @TimesNow, @Vishwa71843138 tweeted mostly hashtags followed by @ansariizharali, @MirrorNow, etc.
Conclusion:
That is to say, people targeted Muslim women journalists, social activists, and writers who were vocal on social media through the Bulli Bai app. This move is like tarnishing their image. A police investigation is on in this matter. The police have also arrested two accused. However, there is a lot of hate and hatred on this matter on social media as well. Social media users continued to make allegations and counter-allegations without any investigation.
