Sulli/Bulli vs Udupi case: Hypocrisy and dehumanisation of Hindus

On 21st July, a Karnataka-based organisation, All College Student Power (ACSP), wrote the Superintendent of Police, district Udupi, about an incident at Netra Jyoti College where three female students of the Muslim community secretly made a video of Hindu female students.

The college took up the matter, and three students responsible for recording the videos were suspended effective immediately, pending internal investigation. Though the victim(s) did not wish to file an official complaint in the matter, the college went ahead and informed the police keeping in mind the sensitivity of the matter.

The media initially did mention ‘two communities’. It also mentioned that the video was circulated among community groups by the Muslim girls who clicked the video of the Hindu girls.

As soon as the details of the case were out, including the name of the Muslim women, the Left-Islamist cabal went into overdrive trying to whitewash the case. Interestingly, the police left no stone unturned as well, seemingly, to downplay the case where women’s dignity was compromised. Almost immediately, the police declared that there was no communal angle to the case. There had also been no FIR registered against the women who videotaped Hindu women in the washroom – a crime by any standard where the process of the law should have been followed. The police also declared that no videos were shared over Whatsapp or any other social media platforms. In fact, the police went on to claim that they looked through the phones and found no such video at all.

The News Minute, which was one of the loudest voices whitewashing the case quoted the police saying, “We looked through the phone and didn’t find any such video. We thoroughly investigated the matter, and there is no evidence that the video was shared. It was a one-off incident in the college and had no communal angle to it. The purported victim doesn’t want to file a police complaint.”

The News Minute report which quoted the police, in fact, shamelessly went on further to whitewash the crime. At the very beginning of the report, TNM wrote, “While the college management and the police maintain that there was no criminal intent and that the video was deleted, right-wing groups have been mobilising public opinion by spreading the rumour that sexually explicit videos of many Hindu women have been circulated to hundreds of Muslim men by women from the community as part of a larger Jihadi conspiracy”.

TNM went on to further claim that the action of the Muslim students videographing the Hindu women in the washroom was a mere prank and that they deleted the video in front of the victims. They also used the fact that the students were acquainted with each other as a peg to downplay the crime.

One has to wonder if the TNM staff, run by a woman herself, Dhanya Rajendran, would be comfortable if such a “prank” was played on them. TNM essentially furthered this shameless narrative, very clearly saying that there was no criminal intent since it was supposedly a “fun prank” and therefore, the Muslim women should not be held legally liable for their actions.

The TNM does not just stop there. They, in fact, go on to paint victims of Muslim women. They quote the chairman of the institute saying that the Muslim women were scared for their safety because the Hijab row had also erupted in Udupi.

Here is how TNM decided to end their report on the Udupi scandal where Hindu women were targeted by Muslim women (even though there was supposedly no communal angle, according to the police):

Adding to the already charged atmosphere, this incident occurred a year after the hijab ban controversy in Karnataka. Udupi became the center of a heated dispute in colleges over the wearing of hijabs by Muslim students. The conflict gained international attention when photographs of Muslim students studying on the stairs outside their classrooms surfaced, leading to protests and violence. While the recent incident is not related to the previous hijab ban dispute, authorities emphasise that it should not be communalised. The college management and the police call for restraint and unity in dealing with the matter.

Essentially, even in a case where 3 Muslim women victimised Hindu women, TNM ensured not only to dehumanise the Hindu women by calling the crime a mere prank but also ensured that it is the Muslim women who are branded as the REAL victims (since they are scared after the Hijab ban in schools). For TNM, clearly, videotaping secret videos of topless Hindu women is a prank, but the Muslim women who committed the crime are the real victims since they are scared because the court asked them to not wear hijabs in schools and stick to their school uniform.

An Archive version of the TNM report can be read here.

Taking a cue from The News Minute, the dog-whistler in chief, AltNews’ co-founder Mohammad Zubair also proceeded to downplay the crime.

Zubair, who is famous for whitewashing crimes against Hindus, randomly came forward and claimed that the tweets by Rashmi Samant and Shefali Vaidya, demanding justice for the Hindu women, were fake news. He launched a vicious attack against female right-wingers and activists, including Shafali Vaidya and Rashmi Samant, for raising their voices against the heinous incident. When Zubair was called out, he played the victim card and said when he exposes fake news; people accuse him of dog whistling.

One does not particularly know what Zubair was going on and on about. Rashmi Samant and Shefali Vaidya tweeted that 3 Muslim women had made secret videos of Hindu women and circulated the video in community WhatsApp groups – information that was widely reported by the media. Zubair claimed it was fake news and the Karnataka govt filed an FIR against Samant. It is pertinent to note that the Congress govt in Karnataka has allied with AltNews to bust misinformation – ironically.

He then amplified the narrative that the Muslim women taking secret videos was merely a prank.

Rashmi Samant and Shefali Vaidya immediately started getting hate directed towards them. They were being abused and threatened while Zubair, who was calling the Udupi case a mere prank, was playing the victim.

Essentially, The New Minute, Mohammad Zubair, Anusha Ravi Sood and other Islamists and Leftists had the following assertions to make about the Udupi scandal:

1. The Muslim women had no “criminal intention”.
2. There was no “larger nexus” or crime here.
3. The Muslim women were just “pranking” the Hindu women by making their topless videos by secretly planting cameras in the washrooms.
4. This case was being exaggerated and blown out of proportions by “right wing accounts and organisations”.
5. The Muslim students were scared because of the Hijab row a year ago.
6. The real victims are, therefore, the Muslims here (the criminal women and every other Muslim because of the hijab row that happened a year ago) and the real culprits here were the Hindus (the mean people asking for an investigation).
7. Anyone who is actually offended at the criminal act and wants an investigation is a Hindu terrorists and therefore, must be put behind bars.

Their entire propaganda fell like a house of cards when after widespread outrage, the Karnataka police grudgingly filed an FIR against the 3 Muslim women and the university administration – for making the secret videos, destroying evidence and failing to provide evidence and documents to the police.

Even after the FIRs, Zubair, Sood and others continued to peddle half information to further their lies about the case, leaving out crucial information about the FIR. The details of that propaganda can be read here.

While The News Minute, Dhanya Rajendran, Zubair and others continued to demonise the “right-wing” and claim that it is the Hindus who are communalising the issue, one could see blatant disregard for the privacy and dignity of the Hindu women in just how the cabal conducted itself when this case surfaced. The sole aim seemed to have been to shield the perpetrators since they were Muslim women, blame the ‘right wing’ and turn their protestations the fulcrum of the case and gaslight the Hindu victim by repeating, over and over again, that the Muslim women were “young girls” merely playing a prank. The Home Minister of Karnataka went a step further to say that this was just a “minor issue between friends” and that it was the BJP who was politicising the issue.

Such dehumanisation of the Hindu victim is not unusual, but one has to marvel at the brazenness of the cabal that only seems to be on an upward trajectory. As the Hindus get more vocal, the Left-Islamist nexus becomes more shameless. That is just how it is.

Sulli Deals, Bulli Bai and the Udupi case: How liberals and Islamists dehumanise Hindus and their shameless hypocrisy

We are often tuned to wonder how would this very cabal, which is today deeming the Udupi case a ‘minor prank between friends’, react if the roles were reversed. What if the victim woman was a Muslim and it was Hindu girls who were filming her? Would these very people react the same way? Would they call it a mere prank? Would they say that demands for justice were an overreaction, politicisation or communalisation?

One recalls the Bulli Bai and Sulli Deal controversy which erupted in 2021 and 2022. Essentially, it was a bunch of teenagers taking publicly available pictures of some Muslim women and putting them on an app which was hosted on GitHub. Apparently, they were “auctioning” these images. Now, since they are publicly available images, nobody would buy those images. It was not even meant for that. It was an asinine move by a bunch of over-zealous teenagers who did not realise the ecosystem they were up against.

As a woman, I understand the indignation and humiliation that the Muslim women felt. I know what it feels like when one’s images are misused – I experience it on a regular basis on the internet by Muslim men who believe I should be killed or raped for my ideological moorings. However, let’s be honest here. These were publicly available images. The teenagers had no access to the women’s intimate or private images which they had not themselves put up on the internet. If one is to define a “prank”, in the true sense of the word, this was it. A disgusting one, but a prank nonetheless.

The reaction of the Muslim community and those who ideologically back them was disproportionate. The teenagers involved spent several months in jail, there was global outrage about Islamophobia and the plight of Muslim men at the hands of “Hindu fascists”, the teenagers were branded Hindu terrorists and the entire community was put on trial for victimising Muslims – especially Muslim women.

Sample this tearjerker which was published by The Wire.

On January 1, 2022, while the rest of India was either forwarding New Year greetings to friends and family on WhatsApp groups or recuperating from the celebrations of the previous day, Muslim women in India were battling with themselves and with the world outside on how to address the threat, trauma and indignity that they had been targeted with once again.

‘Bulli Bai’, an app hosted on Github, was offering us, Indian Muslim women, on auction. Many women, including myself, opened their social media accounts to their photos with the phrase, ‘Your Bulli Bai of the day is…”

For those who may not be aware, ‘Bulli/Sulli’ are Islamophobic slurs referring to Muslim women, alterations of the term ‘Mulli’ often used by the right wing to troll Muslim women. In 2021, a similar app called ‘Sulli Deals‘, which was also hosted on Github, had listed hundreds of Muslim women for “auction” with their photographs doctored and sourced without their permission. For many women, they were listed in the first app as well as the ‘Bulli Bai’ app.

I had a nervous breakdown when the severity of the situation sunk in. As a Muslim woman in India, I am not new to Islamophobia or anti-Muslim narratives and hate. From outrightly being denied houses on rent because of my religious identity to workplace Islamophobia and hate, I have had my fair share. But this was a new low.

This article was written by Mariya Salim, apparently, a women’s rights activist.

Another article in a website called “religion news” read:

The roughly 100 women targeted are from different age groups and diverse career paths, but we had one thing in common: We are all Muslim and known for our vocal stance against Hindutva, the far-right extremist ideology driving much of the violence and hateful rhetoric against Christians, Muslims, Dalits and other minorities in India.

The woman says she was humiliated and felt like a prostitute for being put up for “auction”. She was not, of course. Nobody was auctioning her or purchasing her. These were publicly available images. However, the article went on to talk about Hindutva, Hindu “extremists”, the mythical trope of Muslims being targeted by Hindus in India, lynchings etc.

The very people who furthered the “prank” trope while Hindu women were quite literally violated by placing secret cameras in a washroom were outraging about this fiasco in 2021 and 2022.

Here is Dhanya Rajendran crying Islamophobia:

‘Bulli Bai’ is a direct result of state’s inaction on ‘Sulli Deals’ & Islamophobia. @dramadhikari spoke to @SaniaAhmad1111 @girlpilot_ @khushbookhan_ and @IsmatAraa. https://t.co/4rX7L1WsSz

— Dhanya Rajendran (@dhanyarajendran) January 5, 2022

Dhanya, who today defends her platform calling the Udupi case a mere prank, wanted trafficking charges to apply to the teenagers who were arrested in the case. Trafficking charges would mean that the teenagers involved go to jail for prostitution and flesh trade because they put publicly available images on an app.

Veteran Hyderabad activist Khalida Parveen has been listed on this vile ‘Bulli Bai’. She has rightly called for trafficking charges to be invoked on these people. @Bala__G writes. https://t.co/mVBMxZ39vU

— Dhanya Rajendran (@dhanyarajendran) January 3, 2022

She doxxed the teenagers accused. An 18 year old girl as well.

Who Is Shweta Singh, 18-Year-Old Arrested From Uttarakhand For Bulli Bai App? “Why is India not a Hindu nation?” 18-year-old Shweta Singh, asked the police on the day of her arrest.https://t.co/xI5ddfPxsa https://t.co/poJUFmGxvp via @boomlive_in

— Dhanya Rajendran (@dhanyarajendran) January 8, 2022

Zubair gave tips on how to investigate and arrested the teenagers involved in the controversy. The thread was a mile-long one where he said that Muslims were being victimised.

There are a number of ways in which the case can be investigated including tracking down the Twitter handles that claimed responsibility (@sullideals, @sdfrgt4rf and @sullideals786) for “Sulli Deals” GitHub repo, just the way the Mumbai police probed the Virat Kohli case.

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) November 15, 2021

He was outraged that these teenagers who used publicly available images of Muslim women were not arrested immediately, responding to another Islamist account that blamed all Hindus, especially Upper Caste Hindus.

This was the first ‘Hindu Trad’ account to have tweeted pics of Pakistani women in June 14th. Later they added 80+ Indian Muslim women in July 4th. When there was no action against these Trad accounts, They did that again against 100 Muslim Women on Dec 31. #SulliDeals https://t.co/5YBrYnjROK pic.twitter.com/voOEU0WfAE

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) January 4, 2022

The fact that Dhanya Rajendran, Zubair and their entire ecosystem cried copious amounts of tears and ruined the lives of teenagers after the Bulli/Sulli deal controversy proves that they are capable of fighting for the rights of women, however, they are capable of sympathising with the plight only of a specific set of women – Muslims and those who align with them politically and ideologically.

When the injustice is met out to Hindu women, especially if the perpetrators are Muslims, the sympathy is thrown right out of the window and the task at hand becomes that of whitewashing the perpetrator and gaslighting the victim.

On June 9th 2022, audio of Clubhouse conversation between the alleged social media’ influencers’ started to make rounds on Twitter where the speaker normalised ‘hate sex’ with ‘sanghis’ because women are ‘hot’. In the undated conversation, that happened on the Clubhouse app in a room titled “sex with your ex” on the topic “Do you only date hot people”, one speaker identified as Neeraj Kadamboor (Instagram ID kadamboorneeraj) made a derogatory remark about women who are opposed to his political ideology. 

Neeraj essentially said that he finds “sanghis” “hot” and would like to have sex with them. Right at that time, his fellow “influencers” chimed in, saying that “Sanghis are not hot” because of their political ideology. At this point, Neeraj Kadamboor says that he would want to have ‘hate sex’ with Sanghis. 

Interestingly, one person who was involved in this entire episode was one Aishwarya Subramanyam. 

When Aishwarya Subramanyam, one of the moderators of the ClubHouse room, asked Neeraj if he dates only hot people, he responded, “No, I date all kinds of people but on the dating apps, I do sometimes thirst for these very hot Sanghi types, just for fun.”

To this Aishwarya responded that Sanghis are not hot, but Neeraj nevertheless defended himself saying he finds them hot. Neeraj further adds, “Just like the opposite of paper bag sex….”, to which a lady in the group remarked: “It is like having hate sex”.

After outrage about the dehumanisation of those women who these Leftist influencers don’t agree with politically, there was a shameless defence mounted which further dehumanised Hindus.

What was essentially being justified here is the use of sex as a tool to vent out anger and hatred against another individual. In that sense, the mentality here is not much different from the ones that motivate crimes against women. In many cases, rapists subject women to sexual violence in order to assert their dominance over them. In other cases, rapists attack women to humiliate and emotionally damage her husband and other men in the family. In the ‘hate’ sex scandal, a similar mentality was on display.

The liberal gloated over the fact that he is ‘f*cking’ someone he hates, exercising domination over an object of hatred and showing the individual his or her place beneath him. That’s the mentality at work here. It is essentially the weaponisation of sex against political adversaries.

This mentality is also one of the defining aspects of Grooming Jihad. As a part of the Grooming Jihad in India, Hindu women are entrapped by assailants who pose as imposters, intending to have a sexual relationship, marrying them and later manipulating them into eschewing their beliefs and faith.

It does not need the IQ of Einstein to realise why the weaponisation of sex is so problematic. It only leads to more crimes against women and dehumanises political adversaries. Once adversaries have been sufficiently dehumanised, all manners of crimes against them are justifiable.

The denial of the existence of Love Jihad, justification of using sex as a weapon against political opponents, the silence when Hindu women are gang raped and murdered in Bengal as political vendetta, the silence when Hindu women are hounded and abused and the whitewashing of the Udupi case – all point towards the shameless dehumanisation of Hindu women to a point where all crimes against them, if perpetrated by Muslims, will have a context attached to them as a justification, forcing people to look away because of the inherent normalisation of such crimes. Individuals like Zubair, Dhanya Rajendran and their likes are mere foot soldiers who further this narrative. It is perhaps time for Hindus to realise that these elements would piss on their dead skull and dance around their corpse if they could and instead of the insistence on being morally superior, it is survival that should drive them.