On October 10, Hindu IT Cell (HIC) issued a warning to Youth Ki Awaz, that claims to be a writing platform for students, to delete objectionable content against Bhagwan Ram. The article and social media posts titled “How I Made My Grandfather See The Sexism In Ramayana At The Age Of 80”, written by Mrittika Mallick, had been posted by the platform on the website and social media handles.
In a social media post, HIC had said, “Youth Ki Awaaz, we are giving you the deadline of 5 hours to apologise and remove the objectionable content, or we will take the appropriate and stern legal action against you. Mocking and maligning our culture and deities won’t be tolerated in any manner. Your time starts now.”
Within three hours of the tweet by HIC, Youth Ki Awaaz replied to their post and said on Twitter, “Hello, under Section 79 of the IT Act, Youth Ki Awaaz is an intermediary and an open platform where anyone can publish a post. We understand that this post hurts your sentiments. We apologise for the same and have taken the post down from all our social media handles. Thank you.”
As the platform apologised for the mistake, HIC has decided not to take any further action against the platform.
Finally, @YouthKiAwaaz has apologised and accepted their mistake. So we have decided not to go ahead with legal recourse against them.
— Hindu IT Cell (@HinduITCell) October 10, 2021
Our message is loud and clear, we will not tolerate any sort of activism or mockery which hurts our religious sentiments.
जय श्री राम || pic.twitter.com/j2j7jwOMZw
However, it has to be noted that the article they had published was up and running on their platform since October 4. The platform has also deleted one old article from 2017. Titled “Valmiki’s Ramayana Shows Hinduism’s Inherent Misogyny And Sexism”, it was deleted in October 2020. Notably, in both cases, the article was published or deleted close to Diwali that is celebrated as the day when Bhagwan Ram returned to Ayodhya after 14-years of exile.
What was in the latest article on Youth Ki Awaaz?
The archived version of the article is available. The author talks about how she tried to “reverse-parent” her grandparents and “teach” them how Bhagwan Ram misbehaved with Mata Sita. Quoting a book on Ramayana, she claimed that Mata Sita’s feelings were always belittled by Bhagwan Ram.
She further wrote, “If age-old myths like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have such fatally flawed men, why are they at all worshipped even today and the women still blamed? It was never possible to remove the Islamophobia in my grandparents’ hearts, but narratives like these do arouse questions in their own religion and religious heroes. Unless the strong pillars of a conceited belief in faith bears cracks, no human can possibly welcome new ideas.”
Interestingly, for the author, if alleged “Islamophobia” cannot be removed from the grandparents’ minds, it was okay to plant a narrative that would force them to question their faith in Bhagwan Ram. It was a very clever attempt to drive her grandparents away from the faith that they had in them for decades. And what it seems from the conclusion of the article, she might have succeeded to do so.
Also, this was not the only derogatory article that Youth Ki Awaaz had on Ramayana. One article from August 2020 titled “My Conversation With Lord Ram On His Ayodhya Mandir” showcases the hate its author Lenin Raghuvanshi (ironic that he calls himself Raghuvanshi, the same Vansh to which Bhagwan Ram belongs) has for Hindus and Bhagwan Ram. He tried to put his words in Bhagwan Ram’s mouth in the whole article and presented as if Bhagwan Ram was angry on Hindus for demolishing the disputed structure in Ayodhya.
There are several articles on YKA about Ramayana, Bhagwan Ram or Mata Durga. In another article from 2019 by Anjani Wishu called Mata Durga a prostitute and tried to propagate the infamous and derogatory twisted story of ‘Mahishasur Vadh’.
