BENGALURU: A day after the arrest of five human rights activists from across the country for alleged connections with Bhima-Koregaon violence and for sympathising with Maoists, Twitter turned into a battlefield over the issue. #MeTooUrbanNaxal - popular among tweeple against the arrest of the five, and #UrbanNaxal - popular with the other group were the hashtags that trended throughout the day, as social media users made their stand known on the micro-blogging site.
The trigger was a controversial tweet by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri), who tweeted late on Tuesday evening regarding the arrests. “I want some bright young people to make a list of all those who are defending #UrbanNaxals. Let’s see where it leads. If you want to volunteer with commitment, pl DM me. @squintneon would you like to take the lead?”, was the tweet.
On Wednesday, however, several Twitter users who saw the tweet began responding with the hashtag #MeTooUrbanNaxal. Soon, there were more than 50,000 tweets with the hashtag, which primarily took a dig at the controversial remarks of the filmmaker. Among those condemning his stand included stand-up comedians, journalists and people from the film industry, even as few others batted in support of Vivek.
By evening, the tide of the hashtag battle had turned with #UrbanNaxals among the top trends in Twitter. While the first hashtag was mainly critical of Vivek’s remarks, the second hashtag was primarily used to defend the ‘Urban Naxals’ remark, which co-incidentally is also the title of his book.
Tweets with #MeTooUrbanNaxal
If standing up against
right wing nationalism, fascism and atrocities against minorities makes one an Urban Naxal
then I’d rather be one #MeTooUrbanNaxal
Rebekah Eve
@RebekahEDaniel
Tweets with #UrbanNaxal
I don’t know what they are complaining about. Urban Naxals like them in their fatherland, the Soviet Union, would have been shot without warning. Stalin had a useful term for them - “useful idiots”. #UrbanNaxals
Abhinav Agarwal
@AbhinavAgarwal