On January 1, 2022, Quratulain Rehbar, a journalist from Indian-administered Kashmir, woke up to a different reality. She was among a list of 102 women published on an online site called “Bulli Bai”, a pejorative term along with “Sulli” for Muslim women in India with hypersexual and misogynistic connotations. The site claimed to host “auctions” of the women as “deals of the day”.
It wasn’t real, but the site’s objective was clear: to degrade and humiliate the women, with impunity. The women – mostly outspoken journalists and human rights defenders – had one thing in common; they were all Muslim, and vocal about human rights violations under the current government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Rehbar has been reporting on human rights issues for many years. That day, she was shocked to be attacked, but was not entirely unfamiliar with the format of hate. Just a few months back, she had covered a similar hate site called “Sulli Deals” that targeted Indian Muslim women.
“The site uploaded my personal photo as well as tagged my X account,” Rehbar shared, noting how it mobilised trolls to attack her. While her fraternity and family lent support, she didn’t expect to be policed about her digital behaviour and outspokenness.
“Some people started saying that women shouldn’t upload photos online, or behave a certain way in the digital space,” she said. “This made me doubt and blame myself. I started questioning whether I’m the one responsible for this.” Out of the blue, Rehbar said, she started experiencing panic attacks, sometimes even in the middle of conversations with people. “My stomach would churn, there would be breathlessness, and a sense of doom. I had no idea what was happening to me.”
For about three years, Rehbar was effectively silenced. She cleansed her social media of personal details, didn’t post anything political, and even stopped reporting for a while. “Whenever anyone would ask me about [the hate site], I would get triggered,” she said. “I never wanted to be seen as a victim. But this incident impacted me a lot.”
In India, Facebook has been found to encourage Islamophobic conspiracy theories despite their own employees flagging it.
Being a Muslim Woman in Indian Digital Sphere
In India, rising Islamophobia and gendered violence closely intersect with a rapid proliferation of Silicon Valley’s Big Tech. India is one of the biggest markets for the world’s top social media platforms, with 362 million users on Meta, 25.45 million on Twitter, and 491 million users on YouTube. At the same time, these platforms have seen an unhindered rise in extremist content and organised hate, often to benefit the ruling elites and authoritarian governments.
This story was originally published in genderit.org. Read the full story here.