Let me sell you online
BULLI Bai is not just another crime but a design to humiliate Muslims; treating this as just another crime amounts to reducing the gravity of the sinister machinations.
Tomorrow the hate-mongers will easily find another way of harassing Muslim women online.” warned Dr. N.C. Asthana in his recent write up published in the Wire. He further said, “In a similar incident last year, an app called ‘Sulli Deals’ had taken publicly available pictures of mostly Muslim women and created profiles, describing the women as deals of the day.
On October 30, 2021, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) had reported that even 118 days later, in spite of the furor and two FIRs having been lodged against it, no arrests had been made. Not surprisingly, they have still not been arrested.”
Bulli Bai is in fact the name of a mobile application hosted on the open-source software platform Git Hub.
According to different media reports, the Mumbai Police had registered a First Information Report (FIR) against unidentified persons following complaints that doctored photographs of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded for ‘auction’ on the app called Bulli Bai without any permission. It all happened on the first day of the New Year 2022.
Most of the targeted women included journalists, lawyers and active social media users vocal on burning political and social issues. Moreover they all belonged to different age groups.
A very alarming rather shocking fact is that the handlers of this app tried to give the users an impression that this web-application is supervised and patronized by the people belonging to the Sikh community by giving photographs of turbaned persons in their profile pictures.
In the comments section of the app, the handlers intentionally used text in the Punjabi script just to mislead the users about their identity.
Experts say that this childish attempt of putting the Muslim women on sale was nothing but an attempt to create religious tension in Punjab where elections are due this year.
Though the cyber cell of Mumbai Police has arrested a 19-year-old girl and a 21-year-old engineering student from Bangalore for allegedly working as the ‘brains behind the scene’ but the criminal silence of the BJP hierarchy is being severely criticized all over India.
Different social and political leaders have condemned this cyber harassment and called for strict action against the culprits.
The Delhi Minorities Commission has termed the matter as ‘ very serious’ and issued a notice to Delhi police chief Rakesh Asthana to look into the matter and submit a detailed report by the 10th of January.
‘Bulli Bai’ is the second such attempt in less than a year, following the ‘Sulli Deals’ in July last year. A lady journalist Rana Ayyub works for the Washington Post in Mumbai.
She said in her report commenting on the Bulli Bai, “This app has taken hate crimes in India to a new dangerous level where Muslim women are virtually assaulted and turned into a free-for-all for a bigoted mob. These auctions of women from the minority communities display the moral degradation of India and its constitutional values.”
Unfortunately, this insult and humiliation of the women in India is not limited only to the Muslim women; almost all women belonging to the minority communities are facing the same type of exploitation and black-mailing.
Jhanvi Sharma a well known researcher on India’s social problems said in an article published in the Pleaders that India is ranked — as the world’s most dangerous country for women due to the high risk of sexual violence, human trafficking and slave labour. Women are more prone to violence, both sexual and non-sexual; many researchers have declared India unsafe for women, especially during riots.
The crime rate against minority women is as high as ever, according to a recent study on the government’s crime records, a crime is committed against a Dalit every 18 minutes in India. The writer further says, “Every day, six of their women are raped, and 11 are beaten up.
Numerous cases of rape against minority women across country fail to get highlighted due to the failure of criminal justice system.”
It is not only the women belonging to the Muslim or other minorities; tough time is for all who are not Hindus.
On 23 December 2021, The New York Times published an article of Jeffrey Gentleman and Suhasini Raj which said, “The issue of conversions to Christianity from Hinduism is an especially touchy subject, one that has vexed the country for years and even drew in Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, who fiercely guarded India’s secular ideals.
In the past few years, Mr Modi and his Hindu nationalist party have tugged India far to the right, away from what many Indians see as the multicultural foundation Nehru built. The rising attacks on Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the population, are part of a broader shift in India, in which minorities feel less safe.”
This pathetic situation is certainly not a ‘new-born’ situation. It all had been the same even eight years back.
A report prepared by an organization ‘Sisters for Change’ could be an eye-opener to those who feel satisfied in referring to India as the ‘Shining India’.
The report said, “In 2014, crimes against Scheduled Castes or ‘Dalits’(the lowest hereditary Hindu social class in India) rose by 19%. Of crimes against Dalits, sexual assault and rape account for the top two crimes.
Violence against Dalit women is borne from intersectional discrimination in terms of gender, poverty and caste and has become a social mechanism to maintain Dalit women’s subordination and reduce their capacity to participate in society or realize their rights.” Let us wait and see if BJP succeeds in winning the support and favours of the minorities in the next election.
—The writer is Principal of a Government College and senior columnist, based in Multan.
