Right-wing trolls have targeted the 16-year-old daughter of a Brigadier who died with Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat in Wednesday’s chopper crash, digging out old tweets she had posted criticising Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
The attack on Aashna, who has been slammed as “woke” and “military brat”, began even before the funeral pyre of her father, Brigadier L.S. Lidder, had been lit here on Friday. She has since deactivated her Twitter account.
At the funeral, the young girl had bravely said she was soon going to turn 17 and that she would live with the memories of the 17 years spent with her father. But she added: “I feel scared as I was really pampered by my father.”
Opposition politicians expectedly condemned the trolling but leaders of the BJP, a party of muscular nationalism that professes to revere the military and its martyrs, maintained a deafening silence.
Aashna had earlier this year tweeted: “Woke up to watching Yogi Adityanath undermine the Opposition. I get it. This is politics. But it is cheap and absolutely not ok to say things like ‘she’s only capable of sweeping floor.’ I mean, wow, toothless tiger doesn’t stop roaring, truly. Yogi, clear the turmoil in UP first.”
With the tweet, Aashna had attached a news report that carried a purported comment by Adityanath in the context of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra sweeping a room where the Uttar Pradesh police had detained her.
The report quoted the chief minister as saying: “Janta unko isi layak banana chahti hai (The people want to leave her capable only of this).”
Aashna’s tweet seems to have been dug out by @kashyap_1407, whose Twitter and linked Facebook handle introduce the user as A.V. Kashyap, a food process engineer from Vijayawada .
“This is what woke culture can do to you, even if you’re a military brat, more so if you’re a daughter of a fallen hero,” Kashyap posted. His Twitter bio mentions “Hindutva”.
The tweet was later deleted but had by then been captured by many and shared in both support and condemnation.
The trolls castigated Aashna for being “woke”, “radical Left” and the “next Gurmehar Kaur”.
Kaur, daughter of Captain Mandeep Singh, an army officer killed in a militant attack in 1999, had been heavily trolled for a 2016 video calling for peace between India and Pakistan.
Congress MP Karti P. Chidambaram tweeted: “Shame on the faux ‘patriots & nationalists’ who have hounded a young educated & thinking girl off @Twitter #Aashnalidder.”
The Shiv Sena’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, Priyanka Chaturvedi, tweeted: “17 year old, grieving yet holding strong, has just cremated her father, a decorated army officer, is being trolled for her views, they want to moderate her woke-ism, military train compulsorily, want her to be corrected. In the process got her to delete her account. How low will you go?”
17 year old,grieving yet holding strong,has just cremated her father,a decorated army officer,is being trolled for her views,they want to moderate her woke-ism,military train compulsorily,want her to be corrected. In the process got her to delete her account. How low will you go?
— Priyanka Chaturvedi(@priyankac19) December 10, 2021
The BJP has, however, focused solely on social media handles mocking Rawat. Its chief minister in Karnataka, Basavaraj Bommai, told reporters he had asked the state police chief to book anyone making “derogatory comments” about the late general.
Trolls and Right-wing conspiracy theorists have gone on an overdrive since the chopper crash killed Gen. Rawat and 12 others. Senior TV journalist Ravish Kumar has been attacked for allegedly questioning the presence of Rawat’s wife on the chopper —remarks he never made.
Some have accused without a shred of evidence the now vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and a purported Indian affiliate of the group of engineering the crash.
Pro-government academic Madhu Kishwar has tweeted: “One of the prime suspects in the murder of #GeneralBipinRawat is the #SinoWahabiAlliance since General Rawat himself identified these genocidal forces as the biggest threat to India. Anxiously waiting to see if @PMOIndia cracks down on these forces. NoMore #BhaiBhaiSelfDelusion.”
So far no evidence of foul play in the crash has been reported.
The Indian Air Force, which has ordered a probe, had on Friday tweeted: “The inquiry would be completed expeditiously & facts brought out. Till then, to respect the dignity of the deceased, uninformed speculation may be avoided.”
