You don’t have permission to joke about Narendra Modi (HTTP Error 403 Forbidden) (Click here https://facebook/newzindia to add us to your interest lists) By: Joy Das Unless you are not on Twitter or live under a rock (Twitter users consider it as the same thing), you probably know about the controversy surrounding a satire website narendramodiplans. The site mocking Narendra Modi was born on 15 July, went viral on 16 July and like a “puppy under a car tyre”, died an untimely death on 17 July. Since then there have been articles, posts, accusations, counter-accusations about the “conspiracy” behind the site and its takedown. (Mercifully Chetan Bhagat hasn’t written an open letter pretending to be a hapless website owner yet) When the website went down, the owner posted a note hinting that he faced harassment only because he did a satire on Narendra Modi. It is a widely known fact that BJP and Narendra Modi supporters (both are same if you exclude LK Advani) are an intolerant bunch who can’t take anything in good humour. For proof you just have to check the response to Shashi Tharoor’s harmless tweet sharing the link of the satire website. The responses vary from “How low and cheap can you get” to some references to his wife. It was the website owner’s note hinting harassment and threat which triggered the outrage. While Congress supporters claimed attack on freedom of speech, BJP supporters claimed grand conspiracy to malign them. To prove that BJP supporters are very open minded, some prominent BJP supporters posted tweets and wrote to the website owner offering to host the satire website (which was like Taliban offering to sponsor Malala’s education). As the controversy picked up, BJP supporters immediately started their “investigation” to trace the identity of the person who created the website and finally concluded that it was a “joint operation” of the Congress, their supporters and the media (they forgot the UN), just to joke about their beloved leader. Later Firstpost carried an article by Rahul Roushan of Faking News, about how something was fishy about the site being taken down and hinted that maybe the owner was just crying victimhood. The article (and many others on Twitter) asked a very valid point – how exactly did the harassment or threat happen? In his note, the website owner wrote that though some people had traced the name and number of the person in whose name the site was registered, it is a fake name/number, so no one should call that person. So the question was, if the person is not on Twitter and the contact information on the site registration was fake, how exactly did anyone threaten or harass him? The answer can be simple. Threats can be of two types – direct and perceived. Although the person deleted the Twitter handle through which he promoted his site, he obviously has another Twitter handle and read every conversation going on around his creation. So if he read Twitter conversations like “We will trace the person who posted it” or “He will be in jail tomorrow” – he would feel threatened and scared or believe that these unruly fans might try to trace him and harm him. And exactly that was happening. BJP fans were tracing the registrar of the website, posting the mobile number and talking about taking legal action against him. So instead of some grand conspiracy, it must have been a simple case of a person wanting to create a satire and learning it the hard way that doing this on Narendra Modi can have undesirable consequences. But instead of wondering who created the website and why he took it down, we need to ask ourselves this – Why are some people so intolerant that they can’t take a joke? One can understand if someone made baseless allegations or posted obscene morphed pictures about somebody, which could anger their supporters. But if someone created a harmless satire website, instead of laughing or ignoring it, why does one have to go to the extent of tracing the identity of the website owner, his city, where he works, his mobile number and place calls? Just because he joked about Narendra Modi? For the record there are similar satire sites on Rahul Gandhi since two years and no one has objected. So what is it about BJP and Narendra Modi that drives fanatic supporters to hunt down anyone who even jokes about him?
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 20:24:22 +0000
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