On October 31, Elle India published an article targeting Hindus for raising their voice against brands that have been targeting Hindu culture and festivals. The Hindu outrage irked the magazine and the author who penned the article to the extent that they tried to make Hindus look like villains for not allowing brands to “run wild with creativity”.
The question here is, can just outrage irk someone so much that they decide to paint Hindus as villains? There must be something deep-rooted in the sense of intellect among the people behind Elle India and that particular report that caused the unrest.
OpIndia decided to dig the profiles of a few people linked to the article, Elle and the illustration they used. First of all, let’s talk about Ruman Baig, the author of the so-called satirical article titled “Politics Of Shades & Silhouettes – India’s Latest Fashion Trend”. Baig has a very limited presence on Twitter, but it is more than enough to reveal her thought process. While doing our own research, we noticed that Vijay Patel, an investigative journalist, has also dug some history on her.
Ruman, who has now locked her profile, does not tweet much, but she loves retweeting some “intellectuals” and “eminent” journalists on Twitter. One of the notable names among those was Afreen Fatima. In the tweet that Baig had retweeted from August, Fatima had talked in favour of Sharjeel Imam, the same person who had talked about cutting off Assam from the rest of India during anti-CAA protests. This is the same Afreen Fatima who had spewed venom against Hindus and Ram Mandir verdict in the past.
Another interesting person who she had retweeted was Puneet Sharma, who had blamed Hindus for targeting Muslims in India. In the tweet, he had written that Muslims and Muslim things are like drugs for Hindus. If, for some reason, everything related to Muslims vanished from India, Hindus would have withdrawal symptoms.
The tweets she has liked provides further insight into her ideology.
Now coming to the Digital Editor of Elle, Ainee Nizami Ahmadi. She has also locked her profile since the outrage happened against Elle’s article. Digital Editors are responsible for the content that goes on the digital platform of any brand, in this case, Elle. Again, she has a limited presence on Twitter. However, in December 2020, she has retweeted a post by Aysha Renna where Renna, along with other women, were standing on a vehicle during anti-CAA protests and raising anti-India slogans.
Under Ahmadi, the illustration on Elle’s Instagram account was posted in which Hindus were seen closing down shutters of FabIndia and other brands. The illustration was created by one Lord_VoldeMaut, a 19-year-old “artist” who often post anti-Hindu content on Twitter and Instagram. Now here is a catch. The “artist” has claimed that Elle… wait for it… STOLE THE ARTWORK! The illustration was allegedly posted without his/her permission on Elle’s Instagram account.
To give Elle some points here, they did give the artist due credit and tagged his account. But their tag backfired for the poor artist as a wave of critics approached him and checked what kind of content he had been posting. Lord_VoldeMaut has deactivated his Twitter account and locked his Instagram account.
Furthermore, it should be noted that Lord_VoldeMaut ran a whole series of contentious posts throughout October in the guise of “#Inktober” which is a hashtag used by artists to publish new work every day in the month of October.
In a post that is only available in the form of screenshots on social media, the artist had called out Elle for publishing his artwork without his permission. He alleged after the outrage, Elle deleted the name of the writer from the post but kept his name intact that directed the critics towards him.
BTW the artist is back with a changed handle as Comrade_Kira.
Another person associated with Elle that raised eyebrows is the publisher Arif Ayyub, brother of so-called journalist Rana Ayyub. While he has very little presence on Twitter, he often shares reports and posts about his sister on his Facebook account. While Rana is extremely vocal against the government, it seems like the other Ayyub has toned down his voice on social media but feels free to propagate anti-Hindu material via the magazine.
Meanwhile, Elle India has deleted the controversial cartoon from their social media handle after receiving backlash over the same.
Update: In January 2022, Elle India took to Twitter to inform that Arif Ayyub is no longer associated with the publishing house. As per the tweet, he had resigned in August 2019.
