Source : India MediaWe have a daughter. She has just turned 13. Is my love and affection for my daughter to be made public? Should I take a #selfiewithdaughter and post it on Face Book or Twitter?
If I did so, what would that achieve? Other than getting lots of ‘’likes’’ from friends who in any case know about us dad and daughter?
Why am I asking these questions more than a week after the Prime Minister proposed rendering the public domain pink with people’s love for their daughters?
Because I was thinking all this while. I feel it is a cheap trick.
The head of my government is asking me, a citizen, to breach my daughter’s right to privacy.
My affection for my daughter is a private moment between us. A father is expected to love his children. It is natural. It is expected. Where it is not, a change in attitude will not be effected by a non-daughter-loving father seeing my selfie with my daughter and beginning to love his own daughter.
Secondly, my daughter is a minor. Why should her image be in the public domain? Is not there a rule in the social media not to register under-age children for the specific reason that it breaches their privacy?
Third, even if I were inclined to post a selfie with my daughter on the social media, why should I impose that inclination on my daughter? She has a choice, whatever her age. In this instant, my daughter laughed off the Prime Minister’s initiative.
Fourthly, once the selfie is in the public domain it is subject to mis-use, intentional or otherwise. Look what happened with Congress leader Digvijay Singh. Some idiotic media house picked up a selfie of his and posted it on its site. Unfortunately, it was a selfie of Singh and his current partner. How embarrassing it must have been for him. What about his daughters? He has four daughters. Can that idiotic media house undo the damage?
Obviously, the head of my government did not think this through. A #selfiewithdaughter is not like doing yoga on a mat in the centre of Lutyen’s Delhi (where, incidentally, the Prime Minister refused selfies with school children!).
We are of a country which is run by slogans. Because sloganeering does not take much effort. You keep repeating a phrase on and on, there are enough of us idiots who will take it up and make it look like a national cause in no time.
#Selfiewithdaughter is a slogan. The only thing it achieves is making a private moment public. Does it serve the purpose of saving the girl child from all kinds of abuse? A big no. During the past one week when most of us were unthinkingly – may be even with good intentions – popularizing this slogan, scores of cases of rape of young girls, molestation of older girls in schools and institutions, forced marriages of under-age girls, were reported. Probably an equal number of other evil acts went unreported.
What should the Prime Minister have done instead of this slogan? He did not ask me. So, I am not going to tell him. I am sure he is aware of the problems of girls and women in this country and yet, perhaps owing to a weak emotion, believes that the slogan will shame all of us into not harming our daughters. Dream world. Let me give him an illustration.
There are millions of men in India – many of them fathers of daughters and brothers of sisters – who cannot tolerate sharing any status with women or women who think for themselves.
There is this lady, Shruti Seth. An Indian. She too has an infant daughter. Reacting to the slogan, she wrote in the social media.
To quote the concluding portion of her write-up which is addressed to the Prime Minister: “If you truly wish to empower women I urge you to condemn this kind of hatred being spread in your name. Regretfully, I deleted my initial tweet because of the backlash. But I stand by what I said and I'll reiterate it here: ‘Selfies don't bring about change, reform does. So please try and be bigger than a photograph. Come on!’ And as for my initial reservation about the initiative being nothing more than eyewash, I am deeply saddened to see that, in the end, I was proved right.”
I am unable to quote the initial part of her write-up. Because, I am ashamed to do so. Because, in that portion she talks of her hurt, thanks to the hurt and abuse hurled at her on the social media by rascally and cowardly Indian males who could not digest the fact that Seth could be an independent woman who also thought independently and did not automatlcally and blindly follow anyone or anything. (http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1smtdi6)
Do read her letter in full (use the link). What she is saying is that the average Indian male is dense, his skull is more dense, his attitudes are most dense. No selfie can penetrate them to his core which is black and corrupted.
I ask the Prime Minister: Can you please reply to Shruti Seth? My daughter is eager to know what you have to say.
Post Script: Cowardly and abusive males will be wasting their time criticizing me because for me you simply don’t merit acknowledgement.