The news cycle in India has been dominated this past week by Nupur Sharma’s alleged ‘blasphemous’ comments on Prophet Muhammad. Funny thing is that Nupur did not even comment on Prophet Muhammad, she just asked ‘what if’ she comments on him the same way that several people were commenting on Shivling over the past fortnight.
Ever since news broke that a Shivling has been found inside the disputed Gyanvapi structure during the videography there, jokes on Shivling have flooded the Indian internet. You can not be online for more than 2 minutes before coming across a ‘joke’ or an outright offensive comment about the Shivling.
The trend for these jokes was started by alleged journalist Saba Naqvi, who hid behind a “WhatsApp forward” to display her bigotry. The tweet has since been deleted but it started the online trend of mocking Shivling in the most offensive ways imaginable.
Apart from the usual anonymous troll brigade on Twitter, several “blue ticked” handles joined in to mock Shivling and the Hindu beliefs. Saba Naqvi at least had the courtesy or fear (since a Police complaint was filed against her) to delete her tweet, but none of these blue ticked handles even bothered to do that. The brazen mocking of Shivling and Hindu beliefs is still just a search away for anyone who wants to check them.
Even politicians like the Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, who is famous for her screeching, joined in and mocked the Shivling. Obscure politicians like “Peace Party” guy also posted tweets mocking the Shivling. Even though he subsequently realized that his tweet is in bad taste, he did not bother to delete his tweet mocking the Shivling, because in India it is not blasphemy if you mock Hinduism, every other religion is out of bounds.
judge sahab can seal this area when someone claim it as #shivling pic.twitter.com/JpJC49tIlh
— Shadab Chauhan شاداب چوہان (@shadab_chouhan1) May 17, 2022
If offensive tweets weren’t enough, Economic Times (unofficial campaigner for Samajwadi Party) brazenly published memes mocking Shivling in their print edition. Obviously, neither the editor nor the columnist faced any action for pissing in the face of Hindus.
In the face of such public mocking of Hinduism, Nupur Sharma asked a question- What if Hindus mock anyone else’s belief like this. She didn’t even have to mock the beliefs, we already got the answer. Nupur’s political career is over, she is being attacked on social media all over the world, has got a 1 crore bounty on her head, and her address has been shared with everyone who wants to kill her.
If only the Indian state had acted against Saba, Mahua, or Economic Times, and shut down the jokes on Shivling, maybe Nupur wouldn’t have asked that question, maybe there would not have been the need to ask that question, and maybe we could have avoided the last 10 days’ shitstorm.
