By Sharanya Gopinathan
You must have heard by now about how Sakshi Rawat got rightfully pissed off after a tweet which contained a picture of her husband MS Dhoni’s Aadhaar card information was posted on Twitter by an over-enthusiastic village-level representative who was part of a group that helps in updating Aadhar information. The person who posted the tweet was not a government employee, but tagged Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in the tweet, which Prasad liked.
In a couple of furious tweets, Sakshi Rawat brought the issue to Prasad’s notice, and after one tweet of confusion, he responded with a polite acceptance of the mistake that was made and promised that action would be taken.
https://twitter.com/SaakshiSRawat/status/846730178902446084
This initial exchange is particularly important because of all the discussions and worries people have been having about all the new Aadhaar card rules. Not only are people concerned about the semi-mandatory status of Aadhaar cards, but also about larger questions of privacy and surveillance and whether the Government is prepared to handle the challenges a project like this could throw up.
Anyway, after Sakshi Rawat had this fairly amicable conversation with the Minister, trolls began to stir and creep out of the dark corners of the interwebs where they presumably stew all day waiting for any woman to say anything. They made a bunch of classically infuriating remarks, covering all the usual unimaginative bases of misogynistic trolling.
There were comments asking how she can expect privacy if she wears “chhoti kapde” while watching IPL matches and why she has a profile picture on social media if she wants privacy (um…), lots of disgusting wordplay (if you can call it that) on the words “private” and “transparent”, a dude who said only terrorists and the anti-national left wants privacy (everyone else wants only transparency it seems), plus the usual creatively worded abuse that’s directed to women every time they say anything that the right-wing takes objection to (tu chup saali etc etc).