Not desiring Gauri Lankesh's fate, Humans of Hindutva quits Facebook

Mumbai: Popular Facebook page ‘Humans of Hindutva’ (HoH) has made its way out from the social media platform by deleting itself on Thursday, following repeated threats to the admin’s family.

The admin, who had remained anonymous throughout his 8-month extremely popular stint on Facebook, posted on his blog website satyanash.com that he was “quitting of his own accord,” and had not been forced to do so by mass reporting or any other action taken by Facebook itself.

HoH started this year on April, after the admin noticed a sudden increase in the number of Facebook pages that offered “alternative facts,” obviously suited to right-wing explanations.

He sounded extremely helpless as he said his family had been threatened, which he could not take lightly. 

“I am outnumbered, live in a BJP state and come from a middle-class family with no political or police connections. I have no desire to end up like Gauri Lankesh or Afrazul Khan,” he said, referring to veteran journalists who were killed this year for allegedly reporting against the Government. 

The admin called an end to this “David vs Goliath” fight, congratulating “Hindutva” for winning it, as he himself surrendered the table.

As the news spread, social media exploded in support of the HoH admin. 

Jairaj Singh, friend of the HoH admin, who himself also runs a parody page called “Beef Janata Party” on Facebook, tweeted, “Had a brief chat with my friend who runs the Humans of Hindutva page. He told me that trolls have got a hold of his phone number and they're sending him death threats. He's scared for his wife and children, so he's shut the page for now. The nation can't take a joke.”

People began asking why trolling other political parties or persona like the Congress, the AAP or Laalu Prasad Yadav (RJD Chief and former chief minister of Bihar) never amounted to death threats, but joking about the saffron brigade did. 

There were posts which also saluted the HoH admin, hoping that one silenced voice would inspire many others. 

The social media population was distressed at the trouble faced by the page which has made everyone laugh for so many months, with a funny, sarcastic take on the radical right wing in India.

In an interview that he had done in September this year, the admin had said the page had resulted directly from “heated exchanges with online trolls and nationalist friends.” 

He had also mentioned that the hateful, abusive messages that flood his inbox everyday, keeps him going, otherwise he would have quit a long time back.

It is not hard to imagine, therefore, the level the threats amounted to, for a person who claimed to “feed off people’s hatred” to have actually quit the page.