Aasha Khosa/New Delhi
Khalida Parveen, a social worker from Hyderabad whose name figures in the list of 112 Muslim women on the since-closed BulliBai App hosted on GitHub, says “this time their tactics have backfired.”
“By including the names of 67-year-olds like me in the list of Muslim women, whom they want to put up on sale or do whatever and cause mental agony to them, they have lost the game,” says this grandmother of 11 children, who is otherwise known as a gutsy social activist from the city of Charminar.
Khalida told Awaz-the voice that the inclusion of her name and that of “Najeeb’s 65-year old mother” has raised a wave of anger and repulsion to the very idea even among non-Muslims. “Even the policemen are saying that they (those behind the act) are sick,” she said.
Khalida has lodged an FIR with police against the BulliBai app while she says other women may not be in her position to be free to fight the case. “I will fight for all the women,” she says. Najeeb Ahmed was a student of MSc Biotech at Delhi’s JNU, who went missing in October 2016, under mysterious circumstances.
Khalida says she realizes why she has been targeted by the hate brigade. “I have been working as a social activist for nearly two decades. However, for the past eight years I have been very active on Twitter and have made use of the medium to air my views and boost my work as a social worker,” she said.
“I am very vocal in my views both offline and on social media. I have spoken against the recent remarks in Haridwar Dharam Sansad, on triple talaq, CAA, Shaheen Bagh protests, farmers’ protests.” She says the Covid-19 pandemic made her become friends with social media. “Today if I put out an appeal for blood donation for a needy person on Twitter, I am confident that within 10 minutes I will have a donor ready,” she says.
Khalida says otherwise her work involves empowering Muslim women and thereby contributing to nation-building. “During the Covid-19 first and second wave, I moved mountains with using Twitter and since then I am hooked on to it to boost my work and also air my views on everything.”
Khalida says after she came to know about the arrest of three young men and a woman for the BulliBai app, she felt sorry for them. “What kind of world they are going to create tomorrow if their minds and hearts are filled with so much hate?” she told Awaz the Voice.
She said the persons caught for their involvement in the Bulli Bai app are not the real culprits; they are young minds that have been exposed to a lot of hate propaganda and got influenced by it. “Our police are very smart. If there are allowed to have their way, they will reach the real culprits who are behind spewing and fanning hate.”
Khalida says the young people involved in the BulliBai must worry about the environment their mindset will unleash in this country. “They must worry if their approach will make anyone, including their women,
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