I just want to say that this looks like bullying, and the language and RT quotes have disturbed me.
These are respected and senior professionals. And yet, instead of dialogue and discourse with a young activist, they chose ad hominem to RT quote and call him a "terrible person".
Here, I am not commenting on what Sharjeel said. What genuinely scared me here, is that someday I may lose my cool and say something haphazard on Twitter, and I will be pulled down by respected senior progressives of the majority—who have more social and financial capital too.
That no one will initiate a dialogue or discourse with me and simply attack as a "terrible person", means that my life's work, credibility and demeanour as a well-meaning person will come crashing in a day. That if I have a strong "disagreeable opinion", I may simply be quashed.
And quashed by people whose opinions most other progressives would usually look up to. From whom one may learn aspects of the craft of political discourse, well-reasoned arguments, and factual rebuttals.
I see none of that here.
Instead, I see brickbats thrown with might.
I am not saying that “age” is the reason why one must be excused. I am saying that the moral standards (language, empathy, ill-feeling, humanity, etc.) for which these seniors are condemning the activist, are being breached by themselves too as they fling their words at him.
Sharjeel is not a troll. He is someone you could argue with on facts, reasoning, and arguments. He is an educated person. One could agree to disagree after discourse. But the route chosen was derogatory attacks.
In fact, his education doesn’t matter too. Being senior professionals with more social and financial capital, your standards of conduct still stand higher—and hence, breached with such tweets.
This sets a dangerous precedent.
I beg to ask:
—As an Indian Muslim progressive, how do I feel safe to truly speak my mind among progressives of the majority now?
—Will I ever be an equal?
—Will I always have to toe my opinions and agree with them so as to not be quashed?
P.S. I just took the first 4 screenshots out of the many in my phone to avoid selection. These are not the specific people I am holding this argument against; there were many more. I am questioning this phenomenon. This is not a personal attack, kindly do not treat it as one.
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For three years of my job in the healthcare sector I looked at the infinite shortage of beds as nothing but government apathy and the possibility of a great business model. It took this absolute hell ride to truly understand what a thin rope we were all dangling on since forever.
Make no mistake, this is still all government apathy. They are not mismanaging it; the not doing anything and not letting it out through media IS the management of it. This is how it's done year after year after year.
This is not a collapsed system.
This is a single broken teacup that is being made to serve a party of a thousand guests with gallons of wine.
Also, not an exposed system.
The margins who've seen it have always known it is where they always end up, and many times only to die.
When one attacks a person as a Muslim, what happens is reduction of identities to merely that of a Muslim.
The attacked can defend as a Muslim. But the many communities that the person belongs to—that sees the person in different identities—can remind all of the other identities
For instance, when an Irfan Pathan or a Wasim Jaffer is attacked as a Muslim, the cricketer community can remind the world of who they are professionally: Cricketers. The college friends can remind of who they are educationally: Alumnis. And so on.
This not only balances the fight—which is initially many against one—to many against many, but also reminds the attacked person to not lose sight of who they are in entirety as a person: a sum total of many different identities. And addresses the core issue of reduced identity.
Many of my CA and MBA batchmates who are BJP supporters have been silent on the GDP shrinking massively this quarter.
They have been silent on the economy for a good two years now.
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They are smart enough to have been seeing the decline in our economy from the last eight quarters. They know that Corona has aggravated the economic slump, not caused it.
In fact, they even know that the starting point of this decline is Demonetisation. A catastrophe that they all thumped their chests on. A financial fraud that our economy never really recovered from.
We should have probably recognised the Radicalisation of Indian Society as a humanitarian crisis long ago.
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The progressive sections of the society—with all noble intentions—can keep beating drums of truth or keep filling buckets with tears of compassion, but what will remain unshaken in the regime’s mass support is the foundation of it: the nakedness of the rot in the Indian society.
One must also humbly recognise that this rot is more channelised and deliberate, than it is accidental and exploited. That it is a conscious pandemic of the minds. That governance, since a long time, has had little to do with blind allegiance towards the regime.