Opinion: Is abusing and threatening women in keeping with the #SelfieWithDaughter campaign?

Probably the #CowardBhakts (and you know who we are referring to) have an answer to this!

Before starting off, my sisterly advice to all those happily-posing girls for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s #SelfieWithDaughter campaign: Stifle your dissenting voice girls, unless you want to get thrashed, catcalled at, terrorised by kidnapping and death threats and, worse still, virtually f**ked in return of Rs 5 rupees! Better, let your voice go the way a female foetus in India does.

Thanks Kavita Krishnan and Shruti Seth for teaching me—as well as the rest of the nation– the lesson. The former is an activist and secretary of All India Progressive Women’s Association, the latter is an actress and former VJ. They didn’t mince their words on what they honestly felt about the initiative of posting pictures with daughters.

Shruti thought it takes more pain than clicking just one picture for ushering in changes in society and called the PM selfie-obsessed. She tweeted: A selfie is not a device to bring about change Mr. PM Try reform. #selfieobsessedPM.

Though for one Nishrin Jafri, the daughter of the late Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was murdered by a violent Hindu mob during Gujarat riots of 2002, it certainly is a device bringing her more than just a change. She wants to “haunt” the PM with this:

Her family avowed that there would be no justice for riot victims if Modi became the PM. Now, can she banish her harrowing past from her thoughts just because Narendra Modi is enjoying the clout? Instead, she chooses to “haunt” him.

And for musician singer Vishal Dadlani the initiative is nothing but sheer “tokenism”.

.@sarveshparab88 Totally. @parikhm brought up the comparison. I have no problem with #SelfieWithDaughter. But it's tokenism. Nothing more.

— VISHAL DADLANI (@VishalDadlani) June 30, 2015

But Kavita certainly threw up the gauntlet by branding the Prime Minister as a lame duck and daughter stalker:

Careful before sharing #SelfieWithDaughter with #LameDuckPM. He has a record of stalking daughters.

— Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) June 28, 2015

Let’s face it. Beti Bachao, Selfie Banao campaign is unlike those conventional government plans that are dull and dreary and send you to sleep in no time. Talking about a sensitive issue in such a lively way is breathtakingly wonderful. The beauty of the campaign is it’s so easy. All you have to do is to take a selfie with your daughter.

True, that it’s not going to put all our womanly plights to rest. While one father is busy taking a selfie with his ward, another must be racking his brains drawing the “lakshmanrekha” for his girls—where should be the line and what should be the limit and blah, blah— taking a cue from the “sanskaari babuji” Alok Nath (Haven’t you heard about how, referring to girls like Kavita, he decreed on Twitter that “this once she’s crossed the line and limit” and ordained that “jail the b****”, of course, without resorting to asterisks). His latest “gyan” on how to make girls toe the line is rocking the boat, more than the dissenting girls do!

Well done, babuji!

A selfie may not be the device for a change. But why can’t it be? See, how the world is painting itself like a rainbow in support of marriage equality. Even actress Shruti has rainbowified her Facebook profile pic though it looks quite like an oxymoron for one who thinks a selfie with daughter is not going to stop the atrocities against women. Then how will a colour splash actually help you break free of the restrictive gender binaries? We don’t understand this Shruti!

However, remember how we promptly took the Ice Bucket Challenge, all for a good cause. This selfie campaign is spreading like a bush fire cutting across geographical borders. Pictures from across the globe are flooding in. But deep down, the hero of the idea is not the “selfie”. It’s our attitude towards women and how we respect them.

Going by the import of the campaign, it’s disheartening to realise we are a mere selfie-obsessed generation, exactly what Twitter victim Shruti pointed out. We post a proud selfie with our daughter, and the very next moment we equally proudly call another daughter a b****. Where’s our “adarsh”? Playing possum?

Kavita, who hinted at Snoopgate in her tweet, writes in an article: In response, I got tweets from Modi supporters that threatened me with rape; threats to insert a sugarcane stalks into me and do to me what was done to Muslim women in the communal riots at Muzaffarnagar; I was called a prostitute, my parents were called dogs, it was suggested I should be raped by dogs, or that I be sexually abused by my father, and so on.

This would put the adoring father Sunil Jaglan from Haryana—who begot the selfie-with-daughters initiative and also heads a Panchayat in the Indian state notorious for female foeticide—in utter shame! The posers in the garb of guardians are nothing but wolves, he is getting to know this now!

Raghu Ram, MTV Roadies’ popular face who is no less than a youth icon befittingly states:

Those who abused @SethShruti only proved her point. Selfies is not the point. Respecting women is. My irony meter just exploded.

— raghu ram (@tweetfromRaghu) June 30, 2015

In a country that boasts of being the largest democracy in the world Freedom of Expression has gone for a toss, for sure. And if you are a girl, you better hold your tongue!

I wonder whether selfies or “sanskar” will save our “betis”!