Women and Gen Z in no mood to forget or forgive, show PM the mirror

India's women and Gen Z are in no mood to forgive and forget. If social media posts are any indication, the trolling of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has intensified after the PM's fourth attempt at posting an Instagram reel, in which he declared that he "wanted to forgive" the "naughty children who abused him and his mother" at last month's protest sites.

The PM's reels have triggered a spate of videos by women and young people savagely trolling him. In his latest reel, the prime minister was at his patronising best. He said he understood the anger in the country over the vulgar language used by "young and misguided children". Attempting to sound reasonable, the PM added that young people do make mistakes, but they can be corrected, and that he would like to forgive them for abusing him and his mother.

What was intended as an olive branch to Gen Z instead acted like a red rag to a bull. 'Why should children abuse you,' some asked mockingly, 'when they can abuse opposition leaders instead?'

'Prime Minister, you sound surprised that children are using cuss words and say it came as a culture shock. They learnt those words from you and your own. Didn't you promote the film Dhurandhar? The children learnt the obscenities from the film that you promoted. Have you been oblivious to the language used by your supporters and members of the IT cell? The rape threats and hate speech they have been spewing for the past decade or so?'

X user @iArpitSpeaks said, 'Kisi bhi sabhya samaaj mein gaali shobha nahi deti — toh ye baat apne IT cell ko samjha do ek reel banakar (abuse does no credit to any civilised society — so explain this to your IT cell in a reel).'

'Adult women don't need your moral policing,' posted @MsAnjaliRB. 'They aren't your daughters. Men abused you too, yet your boring as...f...k lecture was reserved for women.'

'Amit Shah can use cuss words on the floor of Parliament, the chief justice of India can call people cockroaches and parasites from the bench, police can abuse student protesters on camera with impunity. But kids swearing on the streets suddenly becomes a sanskriti and sanskar issue,' read another angry reaction to the PM's reel.

In a reel, former JNUSU and AISA president Sucheta De wondered whether the prime minister was ever shocked or outraged by rape threats from BJP trolls against women, the 'Sulli Deals' targeting Muslim women, the defence of the Kathua rape accused by BJP leaders, misogynistic attacks on JNU women, or mob lynchings and hate campaigns.

Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha posted: 'Get your own paid supporters to rage, get your own paid media to witch hunt, and then come and do drama of being the bigger man. Do these techniques of gaslighting still work?'

Fellow Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair added: 'Sir, if you really want to set an example, then please start unfollowing the abusers you've been following since 2014.'

A woman from Uttar Pradesh (we are withholding her name) asked the PM: 'If "abuse doesn't solve anything", then why are women in India abused and given rape and death threats on a daily basis by your supporters? Not only that, police in BJP-ruled states actively protect these serial abusers. I have been physically attacked by a violent mob of your party people. In spite of the attack being recorded, UP Police did not even file an FIR. So, please stop playing the victim card.'

Apar Gupta, one of the founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation, also joined issue with the PM. 'Doxxing young women for protesting isn't "controversy"; it's a crime, and the Delhi High Court has already said the physical danger it creates "increases exponentially". Twenty-three-year-old Shraddha Singh is getting death threats. A minor is facing FIRs that don't fit the facts. If the PM was defamed, the law offers a remedy: a private complaint, not mob-sourced hunting of women online.'

Why, then, is the prime minister or the home minister not ordering a stop to the witch-hunt of young women by the police and by the BJP's stormtroopers if the PM is serious about closure?

'The government is asking who danced, who used cuss words, who wore what, while Gen Z is saying: reform education, redo NTA, ban pellet guns, withdraw FIRs against protesting students. It is obvious to the world who is serious here and who is behaving like a particularly dim ostrich,' quipped Frontline editor Vaishna Roy.