In India, #PKMKB usually trends every now and then on Twitter. Translated into English, it roughly means “the vagina of Pakistan’s mother”.
A few days ago, BJP leader Tajinder Singh Bagga attended a TV news debate wearing a saffron T-shirt with #PKMKB printed on it. He uploaded the picture to Twitter with the hashtag. It was retweeted more than 4,000 times and #PKMKB began to trend.
It is ironic that a nation that claims to worship women as goddesses is so obsessed with the word, commonly hurled as an abuse, that it fondly chants it to supposedly decimate rivals.
#PKMKB LIVE on TV in front of Pakistani Panelists pic.twitter.com/9CORsWXshX
— Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (@TajinderBagga) June 7, 2020
The bigger irony here is that Pakistan was carved out of undivided India. By regularly hurling misogynist slurs like #PKMKB, the so-called nationalist sons of ‘Bharat Mata’ are actually insulting India.
Even if one detests Pakistan, is this how a leader of India’s ruling party ought to register his protest? After mass reporting, Twitter took down the viral hashtag. This invited the wrath of the IT cell and spurred the next trend – #TKMKB.
Bagga knows that indecency sells in India. Earlier, his enterprise ‘T-shirt bhaiya’ was in the eye of a storm when he sold a t-shirt with Farooq Ahmad Dar’s helpless effigy printed on it. Dar, a Kashmiri civilian, was tied as a ‘human shield’ on a military jeep by Major Leetul Gogoi in Kashmir.

Screenshot of the page selling the T-shirt.
Gogoi was first awarded by the army for his ‘sustained efforts’ in counter-insurgency operations. The controversial officer later faced a court martial for what the officials called “fraternising with a minor local woman” (the girl’s family called it blackmail and harassment). He lost seniority and was posted out of Kashmir.
Anybody who sells such t-shirts is essentially selling a badge that says the wearer cherishes human rights violations of Kashmiris. It is intended to shame an entire people. The fact that Bagga was allowed to mock and sell the agony of an individual with full impunity speaks of how our system as a whole has failed to protect the dignity of ordinary Kashmiris.
Also read: Tajinder Bagga, BJP’s Go-To Man for Spreading Hate, Stirring Controversy
In his widely-acclaimed book The Argumentative Indian, Prof Amartya Sen describes Indian civilisation as one with a very rich tradition of debate. As #PKMKB trended on Twitter, I wondered if Sen’s book was a work of fiction as the harsh truth of the matter is that it is ‘the abusive Indian’ that lives large in India.
A cabinet minister and a chief minister (who was earlier excused as “fringe” by the BJP itself) raising “goli maaro” slogans, the home minister’s electric shock comment on Shaheen Bagh, or the prime minister’s talk of identifying rioters by their clothes are a few recent lows in an endless list of lows.
It’s clear the past six years have seen a retreat of public decency. Politeness means cowardice in Modi’s India.
Notably, Bagga came into the limelight after he assaulted and abused lawyer Prashant Bhushan in 2011. To everyone’s surprise, the former Twitter troll became mainstream in 2017 when the Delhi BJP appointed him as their spokesperson.
However, he is not the only one who made it big by saying problematic things on social media. Many, including primetime TV anchors, say far more hateful things on TV and Twitter. This abusive culture promoted by far-right influencers has been normalised and is celebrated as gallantry.
While the BJP IT cell and Bagga were busy trending #PKMKB, actress Payal Rohatgi made a series of equally vulgar, misogynist and Islamophobic comments on Twitter targeting jailed pregnant student activist Safoora Zargar.
This was followed with more vitriol against Ladeeda Farzana, journalist Sania Ahmed, and actor Swara Bhaskar. She repeatedly refers to the women as “kutiya” and makes explicit taunts. After Gauri Lankesh’s murder too, a troll followed by the PM celebrated her death by calling her a “kutiya“.

Tweets by Payal Rohatgi.
While Safoora languishes in jail for allegedly conspiring and inciting a roadblock, those who made hate speeches, called for slaughter and the boycott of minorities on camera, and instigated mobs by deeming the violence as a ‘Dharm Yudh’, are yet to be booked.
Safoora has faced nauseating slander. Ministers of the ruling party have made filthy jokes about her pregnancy. Trolls have compared her unborn baby to a time bomb.
Reason, freedom and desire for justice is tantamount to treason now. Those who have appreciated how people in the US stood for their black minority and have yearned for a similar solidarity with minorities in India are being accused of instigating violence.
Journalist Vinod Dua and former Amnesty International chief Aakar Patel have been slapped with FIRs for for allegedly trying to instigate minority communities in India to protest in a manner similar to the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US. People demanded Swara Bhaskar’s arrest for asking people to protest for Safoora and other political prisoners.
The erosion of India’s moral fabric is complete now. While all direct provocation and calls to violence are ignored, legitimate demands for equality and justice are penalised.
Still, last month, Rangoli Chandel’s account was suspended from Twitter after huge uproar over her open call for a Nazi-style genocide of Muslims.
A few days back, Abhijit Iyer Mitra, a far-right columnist with The Print and a serial hate peddler on Twitter, trolled Alt News’ co-founder Mohammed Zubair. He hurled all sorts of filthy communal slurs.

Abhijit Iyer-Mitra’s tweet.
The Print’s editor Shekhar Gupta was questioned by several journalists and colleagues for providing space to Mitra on his platform. This was an important question, especially since most alternative media platforms claim to be uncompromising on ethics – unlike the so-called godi media, who generate, on any odd day, at least five top hashtags against minorities, protesting students and the opposition.
Neither the law of the land nor these social media platforms have shown a firm resolve to rein in this obnoxious hate. Reportedly, Mark Zuckerberg believes that Kapil Mishra’s Delhi violence speech is a precedent of hate speech for Facebook, yet nothing is actually being done to tackle the flood of hate on social media in India.
After Zuckerberg’s statement went viral, Union law minister Jaishankar Prasad angrily warned Facebook of dire consequences for being one-sided. This threat came despite the fact that Facebook takes no action against anti-Muslim hate pages. While social media platforms have checked Donald Trump’s comments on social media, what does their ignorance of the immense hatred, violent calls, fake news and propaganda in India tell us? It simply tells us that these social media giants have first rate standards for the first world and third-rate standards for the third world.
This does not start or stop on social media. It is the result of decades of mass mobilisation against minorities by far-right organisations. With the advent of social media, this fascist mobilisation has reached new heights. It has percolated to every nook and corner of India; even beyond the borders now. Several NRIs have faced strong ramifications for sharing hateful content in the past few months. Doctors refusing to treat Muslims, people denying tenancy to Muslims, the economic and social boycott of Muslim vendors and rabid mobs committing hate crimes – all of them get their daily dose of hate from social media and mainstream media propaganda.
Young kids are picking it up from their seniors and parents. If India continues to pass this on, we will end-up raising a dull and dirty generation of man-eater zombies.
Mohammad Alishan Jafri is a second-year journalism student at the Delhi School of Journalism. You can read his blog here and find him on Twitter @AsfreeasJafri
Featured image credit: Jon Tysson/Unsplash