We have long been witnessing a suspiciously incestuous level of coordination between one of India’s self-proclaimed fact-checkers Alt News, social media platform Twitter, the Congress party and the greater Islamoleftist clique that has scattered interests placed all across the vast network of opposition parties. This nexus has worked formidably in the past, carrying out misinformation campaigns and getting away with most of them unscathed, if not stronger and more emboldened. This is quite like the motto of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism— to bleed India with a thousand cuts. But winds of change are here, and like the monsoons bring in dark clouds upon our cities this month, these winds of change are fast forming a dark cloud above the ‘beloved’ ecosystem and metaphorically enough for their lot, it all started with a bad tabeez.
Twitter was at its defiant best, dodging questions about its arbitrary censorship and pushing back at India’s new IT rules which seek to rein in social media platforms that arbitrarily controlled what’s taken down and what’s not, without caring for the facts, the Indian people’s sensitivities or the Indian law. Alt News was in its element too, just ready to produce ‘alternative facts’ as long as it is to favour the Congress or attack the Modi government. And the ecosystem, well, the ecosystem never tires. It’s the most thick-skinned lot of hypocrites you will ever see in your lifetime.
This was when some random old Muslim man, Abdul Samad, in a small town of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, was making an ‘ineffective’ tabeez to con his clients, but unfortunately, this set of clients meant business when it came to sourcing a good life from an amulet. All hell broke loose. The amulet failed to repel the misfortunes written in the destinies of his clients. Abdul was in serious trouble. The seemingly pious, old Muslim man was assaulted, and his silver beard was chopped off by men mostly from his own creed. Arif, Adil, Kallu, Polli, Mushahid and one Parvesh Gujjar.
Now, Abdul, beardless, with few teeth left in his mouth thanks to ageing, was helpless. Some guy named Intezaar had orchestrated the whole thing, but it was Abdul left with the bruises and the possibility of ostracisation. Then came the mastermind, or at least that’s what he thought himself to be when Ummed Pahalwan Idrisi saw himself in the mirror that day.
Ummed recorded Abdul’s testimony after some editing and improvising. In this case, turning the narrative on its head and blaming Abdul’s assault on a made-up group of Hindus who made him chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Not cool. But that’s how the SP rolls. After all, UP elections are right around the corner. The news broke out, and a muted video of the assault was shared on Twitter by an Alt News fact-checker Mohammed Zubair who religiously parroted Ummed’s line to a T. I can confirm that there was no fact-checking involved in the process. Deliberate or not, it’s your guess.
The stage was set for a Hindu-Muslim riot, one that would be provoked from the top-down. Elite Twitter users from media persons, activists, uninvited actresses to politicians and Islamists— the entire Islamoleftist cabal got a nitro boost. But it did not last as Ghaziabad Police revealed the details of the case and the names of the accused.
Now it was Twitter’s job to curb the incendiary fake news, but obviously it did not— the men and women working from the comfort of their homes had already made it very clear that they do not have the best interests of India in mind and if the misinformation emanating from their platform is causing a riot in Modi-ruled India, so be it. In fact, it is welcome. We saw this during the 26th January violence in Delhi and numerous other times. Lies were embedded boldly and hardly ever were they nailed while it mattered. Nothing changed.
The only thing that did change this time was Modi government’s approach to Twitter. It saw a perfect opportunity and waited only a few hours before finally dropping the guillotine on the bird app. Citing the UP incident and Twitter’s non-compliance of the IT rules, the MeitY announced that Twitter has lost its intermediary status since it wished to be the ultimate authority beyond Indian law to decide what stays up and what does not. Twitter cannot act as a publisher while enjoying immunity from the law as an ‘intermediary’ and now the gates were thrown open for lawsuits against Twitter over any third-party content on the platform. Damn you, Bad-luck-Abdul!
It was now the turn of the Islamoleftist clique. The amulet was on a rampage. The Wire, Congress leader Salman Nizami, Maksoor Usmani, Sama Mohammad, Saba Naqvi, Rana Ayyub and others among Twitter and the ‘fact-checker’ were booked in an FIR filed by UP Police. Swara Bhaskar, Manish Maheshwari, MD Twitter, have been booked in another FIR. Many named in the FIR, and those who feared one, backtracked, but there are still a whole bunch under the spell of that amulet, like Arfa Khanum Sherwani who still maintains that Abdul was beaten in the name of Hindus. Madam shares the same audacity as Ummed Pahalwan. And coming to Ummed, who has been now been arrested – the smarty-pants thought he had a JNU degree in rioting, but the Samajwadi Party leader messed up big time. Ummed Pahalwan woke up that morning and chose violence. But that cursed tabeez had a different plan.