Are you sick, Randeep Hooda? Rape threats are not funny

Dear Randeep Hooda,

As an actor of immense calibre, and we don’t have to tell you, empathy should be something that you must have foremost in your mind.

Exactly why then did you think that the 20-year-old DU student, Gurmehar Kaur, whose message was against the toxic hooliganism by ABVP members vitiating her university, didn’t deserve your empathy?

In your Facebook post, you ask of us this: “Don’t hang me over a laugh!” But let us then ask of you, you really thought Virender Sehwag’s insensitive and fallacious comment was really worth your “laugh”, coming though it was at the expense of a young girl’s well-being, who had received threats of rape, physical assault and other forms of mental and emotional violence because she sent out a message of courage and peace?

Do you know Randeep Hooda at what point you laughed? You laughed when Gurmehar was already being subject to enormous sexually charged virtual violence from those she had riled with her stance. That’s what you missed, Randeep. You missed the context. You missed that your laughing at a joke cracked by a cricketing superstar over the strong and emotionally challenging position taken by Gurmehar meant that the hooligans who have made her life miserable now feel stamped by your complicit laughter.

That’s the thing, Randeep. Your “laugh”, for which you don’t want to be shunned or criticised by sections of media, and social media, wasn’t in a vacuum. It was, even if you don’t realise it, an intervention by you in a highly charged political and ideological battle, a battle which has been now reduced to one between human compassion and mindless violence.

You said: “Viru cracked a joke and I admit I laughed. Damn!! He is so witty and this is one of the other million things he’s said that has made me crack up. That was it!!”

You see, that was not it. Viru’s “wit”, admirable though it might be, in this case, is plain bullying. Wit, dear Randeep, is an intelligent, fun-filled exchange between equal partners. Equality is important because otherwise you can be witty from a pulpit and laugh at others’ misery. Look at our prime minister. He often does exactly that. Or, the president of the United States. He’s drowning in his own pudgy idea of wit and taking the country down with him. That’s not wit, Randeep.

You know Randeep, in your often deeply emotive performances, we have noticed how you have absorbed your character so completely that you lost yourself in that role. We loved you every time you appeared onscreen. The thrill of seeing an actor, just immersed in his acting and not worried about stardom, a maverick in many senses, is truly otherworldly. Randeep, why then did you fail to absorb the torturous universe that now threatens to engulf Gurmehar?

You say: “But now, lo and behold, I’m being held responsible for instigating hate threats against a young girl, shockingly by the girl herself. That’s absolutely untrue. That was never our intention and our tweets is not the source of all the hate she might be receiving.”

Randeep, you might not be the “source” of all the hate that Gurmehar might be receiving, but you sure gave that your stamp of approval. You laughed at a girl when she was at her most vulnerable. Imagine the scenes in that poetic and deeply disturbing film, Highway. Imagine if your character had laughed exactly when Alia’s character was being manhandled, slapped around. Or, if a joke had been cracked at Alia’s expense? Would you find that funny?

Since you laughed at Viru’s joke, who in turn thought making a deeply illogical and hurtful comparison of Gurmehar’s father’s death during Kargil War with his bat and the centuries he scored is funny and completely okay and actually would earn him kudos from his followers, you, Randeep, gave a virtual pat on the back of every ABVP lumpen and their highly organised social media army who were instigating the hate campaign against Gurmehar.

So yours and Viru’s camaraderie, your supposedly harmless and “unintentional” tweets, emboldened the ABVP members all the more. An endorsement from a Bollywood actor and a cricketing legend — you know what that does to those beating up university professors, leaving them with broken ribs and internal organ injuries?

You know how rapes on campuses force women students to slink back in fear into their hostels, which too are raided, and open threats issued? You know what happens when a political party patronises its student wing to terrorise a university campus, and teachers and students are not allowed to inculcate a fertile trend of doubt and questioning the regime?

You know what happens when a woman stands up to that brutal establishment? Haven’t you heard of instances when the threats become all too real and the violence — which now gets channelised via the virtual world — is right there, breaking you into pieces, scarring your forever if leaving you not dead?  

You said: “She spoke up, she stood for something she believes in, so then, she must also have the courage and fortitude to listen to the voices against it. To point fingers at someone else (in this case me) and hold him responsible for the reactions to her actions is not right.”

You know Randeep when Gurmehar Kaur spoke up, the ABVP members had already issued rape threats against the women, teachers and students, who wanted to peacefully protest the cancellation of a talk by a JNU scholar, Umar Khalid, whose dissertation is on the state oppression of adivasis. Umar Khalid is not the only one pursuing this line of research, but his Muslim name (he’s a staunch atheist) and his undaunted mind that sees how struggles for justice, economic, political, cultural, need to come together, means that he’d be singled out over others.

So, the “fortitude to listen” that you tell us that Gurmehar should have, isn’t fortitude at all. How is it fortitude to accept rape threats as a tool of state-driven hypernationalism? How is it fortitude, Randeep, to listen to vicious, disgusting, physically abusive trolling? That’s not conversation, is it? That’s virtual lynching because the language is one of sexual assault. Rape is the tool of war because patriarchal state and its foot soldiers want to punish women for being women as much as for their speaking up.

Your expecting from Gurmehar “fortitude to listen” is not therefore about a young DU student standing up for her fellow students and teachers in the face of grave threat. Your idea of “fortitude” is the patriarchal, sexist male’s expectation that a woman must listen, no matter what. How is it fortitude to accept bullying from a swarm of abusive ABVP sympathisers?

You say: “She has the right to protest against what she feels is wrong and it’s also Viru’s right to make a joke about it. We live in a democracy and enjoy the right to freedom of expression! Accusing us of bullying and trolling the girl is wrong.”

You are absolutely right that we have freedom of expression because we live in a democracy. No, neither you, nor Viru have technically broken any law. No, you haven’t technically trolled Gurmehar as well. But what you have ended up doing, unwittingly perhaps, actually has grave consequences.

The two of you thought it was okay to laugh at a girl who is asking you to think afresh about easy generalisations about nation and nationalism, about patriotism, about war and peace, about not branding an entire country, Pakistan, the people of which suffer the brunt of its own military-jihadi-industrial complex by losing many, many more people to terrorism than India does, as the “enemy”.

When Gurmehar said “Pakistan did not kill my father, war did”, she’s literally making the much larger point about the permanent culture of war and war preparation that eats up a country from within. Pakistan is the biggest example of that. But India too is inching close. We are embracing the worst elements of the Pakistani state and its militaristic worldview. But instead of appreciating her caveat and her concern, you laughed when Sehwag fortified the walls of the echo chamber in which Pakistan must be held responsible for each and everything ailing India and Indians.

You see Randeep, even though you didn’t “tag” Gurmehar in your tweets, neither did Viru, but together you just gave your sly approval to those who are berating her for her liberalism, secularism in the face of great distress. Hers isn’t a secularism of convenience, Randeep. She has lost her father to Kargil War. But Virender Sehwag, as part of his international tournaments, had little qualm about shaking hands with Pervez Musharraf, the architect of Kargil War.

Just like Viru wasn’t wrong then — it’s protocol and decency to be nice to the head/former head of the neighbouring state — Gurmehar isn’t wrong now. But the two of you latching on to a bandwagon — “antinational Gurmehar”, “Gurmehar of the poisoned mind”, “deluded Gurmehar” — which the ABVP would like everyone to believe, justifies that bandwagon, despite its viciousness.

You say: “How’s DU violence is connected to her appeal against war? How’s Viru’s wit connected to supporting violence? The point is that it’s not, but is very pointedly being manipulated into being so.”

Randeep, ask yourself, and for a moment try to keep aside the fact that your mother is part of the BJP, what is the source of DU violence? No, it wasn’t a “clash” between rival student groups. It was orchestrated by ABVP, along a pattern to dismantle the liberal university as a concept. Do you want the universities to look and sound like RSS shakhas? When you say “threatening a woman with violence is an even more heinous crime”, why don’t you realise the associations that Gurmehar’s standing up to ABVP, or the hypernationalists on the campus, or on social media, or even on TV channels, would have with those who only appreciate a militaristic definition of the nation?

DU violence is as strongly connected to the culture of warmongering as it is to the politics that thrives on it. And you laughing at a joke on a girl, who wants to show you the bitter truth, is therefore creating what a New York Times reporter has called “circles of enablement”.

When you laugh at Viru’s “wit”, threatening Gurmehar becomes “okay” because celebrities are cheering on. Your nuanced and conveniently secluded laugh is lost on those who operate as an organised and mercenary cell of hatred, for whom issuing rape threats is part of the hate arsenal.

While you are “not worried about our future because we have such brave and outspoken youngsters around”, don’t you think that as persons with considerable cultural influence, you should be a tad more responsible than the ordinary troll who finds purpose in social media hatred because of deep insecurities that the government isn’t allaying, but exploiting for its nefarious ends?

“Ironical humour”, dear Randeep, is therefore the nitrous oxide to their hate-filled engines of viciousness. Your drawing room humour, like Trump’s laughing at the disabled reporter, or Modi’s laughing at those queuing up at ATMs, losing wages, losing lives in 120 cases at least, is not in the least in good sense.

No, we won’t hang you for your laugh, Randeep. No one should be hanged anyway for anything. It makes a murderer of a state or a mob. But can we ask you to think a bit, if laughter is really that harmless when the recipient of that laughter is being viciously attacked from all directions?

Was your laugh worth it after all?

Also read: Gurmehar Kaur's bold message of peace over war has rattled the coward patriot