I have been on Twitter for 15 years, and I must write a book on the many Twitter encounters, the love, the hate, happiness, success I have got from Twitter. But today, I just wanted to make a small note of a few recent events and realizations.
Few days back I asked a critical question to a brave woman journalist from liberal-secular side. She has won awards for her reportage against the ruling regime and faced lots of abuse from right wing trolls. I’ve followed her for years and always respected her. This time, I could not help asking a question but I was polite and respectful in my language.
Whenever I have to question a woman from any side I try to be polite. Not always, but mostly try. But the same politeness has never been offered to me by any blue tick dhaari liberal woman or man on Twitter. They’ve used labels, personal remarks, downright abuse against me. The liberal women and men with verified profiles who lead NGOs, and earn reputation as brave journalist have said things like “attention seeker” “Troll” “she is sick” “shut up” to me either on my timeline or behind my back on other people’s timeline. When I felt like questioning one of them I started with, “Don’t mean to offend…,” but when a blue tick dhaari, woman-author, NGO founder, ‘secular-liberal activist’ didn’t like a logical question I asked, she responded with “STFU (Shut the fuck up)”. No logic or facts involved just STFU. I mean such sense of entitlement, intolerance, and pettiness. Because of her, thousands of anonymous ‘activist’ trolls came to my timeline repeating the same, STFU.
I see this as a major difference between right wing trolls and half-liberals who can’t stand my guts and abuse me. Anonymous right-wing twitter do not pretend to be courteous. They know they are trolling. I know that they don’t like my politics so they are trolling. But these women, my peers, they are pathetically jealous and petty and get far more abusive more quickly just because i disagree or said something they don’t like. I don’t want to use screenshots here, but I have the screenshots. Maybe someday I’ll put these encounters in a book.
Just the other day on Twitter we saw how Tavleen Singh was playing victim and calling everybody who asked for proof or her lies about Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh as “troll”.
That’s what these elite liberals do. They just cannot imagine and perceive a worldview where they can be actually asked a logical question by one of their own. They are used to right wing trolls using silly abuse or body shaming or giving death/rape threats or calling them idiots and laughing at them.  These are not logical questions. That rattles them. One of them called me a ‘troll’ in response to a well-articulated question. I told her that trolling is a much serious problem and she should not call anybody who disagrees or criticizes as “troll”. I said I know this because I am doing a PhD on the subject and have thoroughly read and understood the concept from both an academic point of view as well as through lived experience of being trolled heavily, and also shared a slide from my PhD synopsis explaining what trolling is. In resposne of such logical factual academic communication from my side what did she do? She used a laughing emoji.
This using of laughing emoji when you just want to insult someone but cannot find any proper reason is a very right wing trolling tactics used on FB where they can give “reactions.” Often on my FB, hundreds of trolls simply click on the laughing emoji if I post a photo of mine to convey the message that they are laughing at me. The same thing this liberal journalist with all kinds of liberal media houses on her profile as byline holders. She also engaged with another account on her timeline and shared laughing emoji but as of today that account is suspended. Which goes to show that a liberal will go to any extent to gather support even if from random anonymous handles which disappears in a few days.
Another famous female journalist, Rohini Singh, she is so jealous of me that after I attended an event in Mumbai in which all the big shots of media and politics were invited as speakers including me and photos from the event (see below) went viral Rohini went about asking others on the photo why they posed with me. Just imagine the level of hate she has for me. She does not like me, so she harasses other liberals who merely appear on a group photo with me. She also questioned who invites people like sanjukta. She was not invited as a speaker at the event. I shared stage with likes of Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Umar Khalid, Abhishar Sharma. I can understand her frustration.
I am saying these because people have no idea how much hate I endure from all sides and what efforts it takes to still be myself without a damn about any sides. I stay rock solid with my thoughts, and my ideals and integrity do not waver despite knowing that these peers cannot stand my guts and probably have or will sabotage my inclusion in their club.
Talking of receiving hate on Twitter I must also talk of getting love. I have found immense love, appreciation, happiness on Twitter. In fact Twitter has given me everything in life, my entire self-created identity is thanks to Blogging and micro blogging (Twitter). I’ve also got love from right wing Twitter when I called out a few people from this side. They suddenly feel overwhelmed that an anti-Modi person has called out one of their own.
I appreciate their appreciation though I don’t take it seriously. Because, unlike what they assume, I have not changed, no there’s no ghar wapsi. I will always be against RSS-BJP’s ideology of Hindu Rashtra, Hindu supremacy. No force on earth can turn me away from that fight. I will always demand a Secular Rashtra.
I call out people on this side because I don’t like lies and hypocrisy. And because one of the key tenets of liberalism is ‘self-criticism’. If we keep lying and never accept our faults the right wing will never even try to listen to any of the good things we have to say, and we will never make any progress in our efforts to unite.
Peace out. Happy Diwali to all.
Dr Sanjukta Basu 
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