Foreign secretary Vikram Misri was mercilessly trolled by hardline members of the Hindutva parivaar after he announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan on May 10. The toxicity of the trolling, which was also aimed at his daughter, a lawyer who has represented members of the Rohingya community, was as incredible as its pusillanimity and plain stupidity. The trolling shone a light yet again on the politics and the ideological frame of Hindutva peddlers, not to mention their mental sickness. To begin with, it must be noted that many jumped to Misri and his daughter’s defence, even as they roundly denounced the troll army. Among them were associations representing bureaucrats, former foreign office mandarins and a slew of opposition politicians. Unfortunately, there was no official or personal condemnation of this savage trolling from the government or its senior members. Thus, the people who had decided on the cessation of hostilities and tasked Misri with delivering the message to Indian citizens failed to come to his defence. An act of pusillanimity of no lesser order. Of course, the brave internet warriors who trolled Misri and who would like to conduct a war, the enormity of which their limited intelligence is not equipped to grasp from the safety of their drawing rooms, don’t have the courage to take on the man who ultimately ordered the ceasefire: Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi’s outsize persona has now received a further boost with the success of ‘Operation Sindoor’, though what success exactly means in this context is a little difficult to define.
At any rate, it was Modi and the highest councils of the government that decided to cease hostilities with Pakistan for the time being. This decision, we are all well aware, is far above any career diplomat’s pay grade, even if he is the country’s highest-ranking one. It is inconceivable that the members of the troll army are not aware of this simple fact. We must then conclude that redirecting their frustrations at a diplomat and his daughter is a statement of some kind. Quite apart from the exhibition of cowardice it was, the trolling also suggests that the Hindutva peddlers have the agenda of constantly roiling the political space by attacking any support for liberal principles. Thus, also, the vicious trolling of Himanshi Narwal, wife of Navy officer Vinay Narwal, who was slain in Pahalgam, when she made her brave and moving plea for sanity in the midst of her bereavement. Sanity and reason clearly do not sit well with the objectives of the hardcore Hindutva right. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done to shut this army down, other than a change of course in the politics of the nation’s mainstream that will leave them beached. One hopes we will not have to wait too long for that to happen.
