Humans of Hindutva Facebook page blocked temporarily; 'collective effort to muzzle voices,' says admin

[Update: Humans of Hindutva has been blocked for three days , after the admin wrote a letter about being blocked from posting for 24 hours.>

Humans of Hindutva, a popular parody page on Facebook, which “takes potshots at fundamentalists hiding in plain sight within India’s right-wing” in the admin’s own words, was blocked for 24 hours by the social media platform for a post on General Bipin Rawat and his controversial comment on Kashmiri protestors.

This Facebook page combines pictures of politicians, celebrities and others in the news, along with personal quotes written in a humorous, often self-deprecating manner. In the past, two its posts have been removed, citing violation of Facebook’s Community Standards, the admin revealed in a DailyO article he wrote. In this article, he argues that satirical Facebook posts seem to bother users more than increasing attacks on people. “The problem is that average, unaffiliated Facebook users like me are now against a dedicated collective that wants to muzzle our voices by employing the tools that you had incorporated in order to check abuse,” he says.

Firstpost spoke to the admin of Humans of Hindutva for an article on the page’s style of humour, and he talked about the experience of dealing with trolls online. He called trolls the “best thing” about starting a parody page. He says that initially, he would engage with each commenter because it was manageable; he ran the page alone and when he would take breaks from work. “So when the hundreds of comments turned into thousands, I put my hands up. Now, I just delete and ban people who use racial abuse or personally attack me. At the end of the day, it is my page and I’m not going to participate in my own abuse and neither will I allow the abuse of others. It is the only space where I yield some authority so I’d be a fool to not exercise it,” he explains. He says that many people have challenged him to come out of anonymity, “as if we don’t know what will happen if I do that”. He mentioned that he has received a couple of death threats, which is why he chose to stay incognito.

He uses humour even when he speaks of the accusations people have made against him. “Many people accuse me of being on the opposition’s payroll, which really makes me chuckle. Some woman even made the bizarre accusation that I hire people to comment on the page and like the posts, which was equally hilarious. I find it funny that these people can’t see that this page is just a guy making stupid jokes and some of it is resonating with people who are like-minded. It’s that simple. It’s not some giant conspiracy to break India that is funded by opposition parties. Kejriwal can’t even pay his lawyers; he’s going to hire me?” he asks.

Humans of Hindutva was set up after the admin had a heated conversation with a nationalist friend; he had always considered creating the page, but the night of this conversation, something inside him forced him to act on this thought. “I went with the name because, despite being a Hindu, I’m disgusted with the saffron brigade and the way they are trying to spread their regressive ideas through communal and religious propaganda. Many commenters on the page ask why I didn’t start a Humans of Islam or Humans of Christianity. That’s the equivalent of going to a Mexican restaurant and asking why the chef doesn’t serve biryani. What I’m serving should be clear from the name of the page. The page is not against Hinduism but against the people who twist it for their nefarious purposes,” he explains.

Firstpost asked the admin what the objective behind setting up this page was. “I seriously have no intention to sermonise. I started this page mainly to make myself laugh. If some of the posts seem in poor taste, then it’s because the retrograde ideas that those posts ridicule are in poor taste to begin with. Besides, if you’re more offended with an obvious joke on casteism than you are with actual casteism then you need to set your priorities straight. Some of my favourite writers like Hunter. Thompson, Joseph Heller, Chuck Palahniuk, John Kennedy Toole and Kurt Vonnegut didn’t pull any punches. I get my general understanding of satire from them. Over time I’ve learnt that humour is a better way to deal with issues than anger,” he explains.

But this problem of people repeatedly hitting the ‘Report Abuse’ button probably stems from their inability to understand Humans of Hindutva’s brand of humour. The admin himself says that people should instinctively not trust any of the content because it is a parody page, and yet users seem to fall for even the most over-the-top posts. “I put up this photo of a motherboard that sort of looked like a futuristic city and said that it was Rajkot. It was such an obvious and infantile dig at those photos of Western cities that BJP ministers tweet and try to pass off as Gujarat. Literally hundreds of nationalists commented ‘it’s a motherboard you idiot!’ On the flipside, several liberals who didn’t know that it was a parody page said that this photo proved that BJP had lost the plot. I sat at home and laughed into my beer,” the admin says.

Funnily and sadly enough, on 27 May, the page put out a post poking fun at people who wanted to report the page.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s Community Standards are nothing less than vague and inconsistent, and it is difficult to understand what content is and is not permissible, considering that several banned outfits in Pakistan continue to function openly on the social media platform. According to a report by Dawn , 41 sectarian, terrorist, and anti-state organisations operate on Facebook in the form of individuals, groups and pages. These entities openly support extremist and sectarian ideologies, and some user profiles reportedly have also ’liked’ pages about weapons and weapon training. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Tehreek-e-Taliban Swat and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) are some of the outfits that are part of Dawn’s list.

When asked about the issue, the admin said, “Unfortunately, after my 24 hour ban was lifted, I posted the letter I wrote for DailyO on my page and asked Facebook to take a stand. Instead of addressing this issue, Facebook has blocked me for three days. At this point, it is incredible that they can’t see how there is a dedicated campaign against the page when even sharing an open letter is getting reported. With the media covering this issue, surely someone at Facebook India has learnt of the problem I’m facing? It’s a rather grim state of affairs; tomorrow I may say that the Earth is round and Facebook will probably block me if enough people report it. I hope someone from Facebook India contacts me so I can tell them my side of the story.”