The hate trolls of the ‘neo middle class’
This piece is from the Indian news magazine, Caravan. It is about the plague of social media trolls in that country, and the damage they are causing to freedom of speech – by forcing more decent people off line.
The parallels with Malta are, as with many other facets of Indian society, very strong. Take the following excerpt, for example, which may as well describe the ‘new mittilkless’ troll supporters of Joseph Muscat on social media here in Malta.
Note: ‘lakh’ is the word used in India to denote the number 100,000.
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While their politics are clear, socially these trolls seem to be made up of the “neo middle class” – a class born of liberalisation—described by Modi as comprising those who have risen above the poverty line, but are not yet middle class.
In a perceptive piece published in his Times of India column on 11 July, the writer Chetan Bhagat fleshed out the sociology of Modi’s neo-middle class bhakts as possessing the following attributes: exclusively male; having weak communication skills, especially English, leading to an “inferiority complex”; “generally not good at talking to women,” “they do desire women, but can’t get them” and are therefore “sexually frustrated.”
Despite being overwhelmingly pro-Hindu, he added, they have an “overriding sense of shame about being Hindu and Hindi speaking.”
But where Bhagat errs is arguing that they have no BJP support. “In fact the PM had to tell them off,” he argued. However, the prime minister told them off in much the same manner in which he “tells off” Hindutva hotheads: not publicly.
Most of the journalists I spoke to alluded to Prime Minister Modi’s brazen patronage of Hindutva trolls, though no one actually said that he has set them up against journalists. However, all of them cite a much publicised meeting of the prime minister with 150 active social media users, held at his residence on 1 July, where he reportedly told the trolls to “speak about positive things.”
Kumar was of the opinion that the “attacks are organised” and have “organisational support” of “social media cells.” This was a point echoed by Chaturvedi: “Why did Modi meet 150 social media activists?” She could not fathom why the “PMO follows these guys.”
During my conversation with her, Chaturvedi named some of the trolls who were hosted by the prime minister, and who have made a cottage industry out of abusing journalists online: Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, a user with almost 86,000 tweets and over a lakh followers was one of the invitees to the event.
Kumar has been a blogger and a voracious user of social networking sites since 2008 and said that the social media environment in India became vitiated “only around 2013”— coincidentally about the time when Modi was anointed as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. “Every time there are elections, trolling peaks. This time also with Bihar polls round [sic] the corner there is a marked increase in abuse and harassment,” he remarked.
