In a hilarious twist of events, we now have Swara Bhaskar as the Prime Minister of the country, well at least on Twitter. The Nil Battey Sannata actress, who doesn’t shy away from voicing out her opinions against the present establishment, has yet again found herself at the receiving end of trolls, this time it is laced with humour.
On Sunday, when Swara’s fans and netizens discovered an exchange of tweets between her and journalist Rohit Sardana, the hashtag #SwaramustResign began trending with some demanding her resignation from the Prime Minister’s post. In a tweet, Rohit asked why Bollywood celebrities have maintained a stoic silence on the Muzaffarpur shelter home rape case in which almost 40 inmates were sexually molested over the period of two years.
Responding to him, Swara pointed out the misdirection of this intended question as actors are not the parliamentarians, or a part of the current government, which has also largely maintained silence on the issue. Since then, the netizens took it upon themselves to have her back through what can be accorded as positive trolling. Realising the absurdity of Rohit’s and few other Twitter users’ tweets, they pointed out the shortcomings of the current government, including demonetisation, the hypocrisy, corruption, the Nirav Modi scam, hike in petrol and diesel prices among others, and directed it to Swara, asking her to quit. They also referred to her as PM Swara, pointing at the ridiculous misdirection of the questions, which should have been asked to the actual PM.
Some netizens also indulged in their creativity, with images, gifs, and memes that had Swara’s face photoshopped on Modi’s. Even the actress joined the banter, retweeting and responding on the social media handle. “It was really funny and unexpected when I saw the #SwaraMustResign trend while holidaying in Spain. I didn’t know it would organically become such a trend and Twitterati would creatively use it to express their opinion on current affairs. It’s funny and creative and also shows the power of humour as a tool of protest. And I thank everyone who stood up for me against the random and unfair questioning,” says the actress.
Although, as serious and sharp the undercurrent of the trolling is on social media, this time it’s being taken in good humour. The actress, who has been subjected to incessant trolling in the past was delighted to jump on this bandwagon of sarcastic tweets and jibes.
The Internet can be a volatile space, especially the social media sites and often have to bear the brunt of trolling. Earlier the actress was trolled for a masturbation scene in Veere Di Wedding, with trolls targeting the supposed ‘immorality’ of the scene. The same tweet has been shared by a number of people, which says, “Hey @ReallySwara just watched #Veer DiWedding with my grandmother. We got embarrassed when the masturbation scene came on the screen. As we came out of the theatre my grandmother said “I’m Hindustan and I am ashamed of #Veere-DiWedding (sic).” Not the one to take things lying down, Swara retorted, “Looks like a certain IT cell sponsored the tickets, or definitely the tweets!!!!”things lying down, Swara had retorted, "Looks like a certain IT cell sponsored the tickets- or definitely the tweets!!!!"
