The Wire journalist Rohini Singh on Wednesday took to Twitter to share an image wherein she claimed that her child drew a mosque and a temple side by side and wrote an essay on tolerance.
Our children will save us. pic.twitter.com/noCTIwDoLn
— Rohini Singh (@rohini_sgh) August 5, 2020
On the left side, Singh claims her child painted the green mosque next to a red coloured temple and wrote on ‘tolerance’. “Tolerance is not about accepting bad behaviour, but accepting “people” for who they are and treating those how “you” wish to be treated. Being tolerant of differences doesn’t mean sacrificing your own heritage or beliefs. We can be proud and stand by those beliefs 100% while continuing to celebrate the differences of others,” the child writes. Except both the things are plagiarised.
This was part of something he had to write for school and he chose tolerance.
— Rohini Singh (@rohini_sgh) August 5, 2020
In her subsequent tweets, she does not clarify whether the child came up with this exact thought on tolerance on his own or was she instrumental in helping form his views. It could be because she perhaps needs to imbibe those lessons herself.
Aren’t you Sikh? Why are you interfering with Hindus?
— Rohini Singh (@rohini_sgh) August 5, 2020
However, Singh’s tolerance or lack of it is not the point. The point is that the image she claims the child drew on his own has an eerie resemblance to some of the viral images on the Internet. Twitter user by the name ‘befittingfacts’ pointed out the similarities.
.@rohini_sgh downloaded a pic from net to teach tolerance to her son. But why she didnt ask her son to draw Gurudwara and Church? Boss ko khush karne ke liye kya kya karna padta 🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/flJCM9cIZj
— Facts (@BefittingFacts) August 6, 2020
Of course, one can argue that the child might have seen the image and it might have registered in the mind and no one is accusing the child of plagiarism here. Speaking of plagiarism, the little essay the child wrote appears verbatim on child development self-help website.
Even the texts were copied from the following link.https://t.co/I4Knh2WGo6 pic.twitter.com/zYE1f3mSiy
— Krazy Programmer (@KrazyProgrammer) August 6, 2020
The child being smart has skipped “Remind your kids of this constantly” from that self-help website because well, child wont tell himself to remind the child of how to be tolerant.
It is quite likely that the child did not write it up on his own but it was perhaps Rohini who essentially dictated this stuff to her child so he can make a political point on Twitter. The essay written by her child is a verbatim copy of a carefully chosen text from a self-help website. It is unlikely that a child that age, went on to the internet, searched a self-help website on parenting and carefully editing that portion to copy 2 lines verbatim.
Thus, it appears that Rohini dictated the excerpt to the child, leaving out some portion, to make a political point on Twitter. Using children is a tactic which is now unknown to liberals and Islamists alike.
This, of course, isn’t the first time Rohini Singh has tried to pass off her passing thoughts as something children have said.
In October 2019, Rohini Singh, tweeted an entire thread where apparently, at a 5-year-old’s birthday party, some ‘little Zoya’ was asked to ‘go back to her country’ to which she said she ‘is not Pakistani’.
I was at a 5 year old’s birthday party. Usual stuff- tattoos, bouncy castle, cake, coke, pizza and 20 kids on a sugar high. Families I have known since ages. Kids that are growing up in front of me. Out of the blue, a little boy tells little Zoya Khan to go to her country. (1/n)
— Rohini Singh (@rohini_sgh) October 4, 2019
Rohini had conjured up a 5-year-old Muslim girl, Zoya, attending a birthday party of the upper-middle class elites. One such elite bigoted child had asked Zoya to ‘go back to her country’, Rohini had claimed.
The mothers, were horrified. The one whose son said it apologised profusely to Zoya’s mother. Said they never speak like that at home etc etc. Zoya’s mom accepted it graciously. But I saw her eyes. And something died inside me today. There is no hope for our society. None. (3/3)
— Rohini Singh (@rohini_sgh) October 4, 2019
As if on cue, Zoya instinctively knew ‘her country’ is Pakistan. As Singh had said that there was no provocation, perhaps 5-year-old Zoya knew that her identify is Muslim and if anyone ever tells her to go to ‘her country’, it would only mean Pakistan.
Less than a year back, 5-year-olds were bigoted babies. Today, same children are hope for our country.
