Rupa Subramanya's Soni Sori tweet left me disgusted

There's a special kind of bilious talent that is required to derive pleasure out of someone else's misery, and Rupa Subramanya, you seem to have that in plenty.  

Your tweet, which you have deleted since, mocking a hospitalised Soni Sori, who was attacked with grease oil laced with a corrosive substance on Saturday night in Bastar, is an example of not just your routine display of insensitivity, but also a flippant spit-and-scram tendency to disown, twist and doctor every irresponsible comment with which you flood social media.

Not only was the tweet in poor taste, it showed acute disregard for what the Aam Aadmi Party member Soni Sori stands for: her tireless, extremely difficult battle for adivasi rights against a police state in Chhattisgarh, for which she has braved physical torture and custodial rape, rejected Maoist violence to embrace democratic politics.

No amount of damage control via an insipid disclaimer on Facebook (which too you have deleted, ostensibly because of "volume of racist and sexist tweets") would absolve you of the sheer odiousness of your unwarranted scorn at the Bastar activist.

SS of my statement. Kindly share this version.Have to disable FB page due to volume of racist & sexist tweets. pic.twitter.com/v3SWFzCUVN

— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) February 23, 2016

Your proclamations that you "support the rights of Adivasis and all disadvantaged groups" fall flat before the hideousness of your online behaviour, which is rarely about "making a serious point about a complex issue", and mostly irresponsible rumour-mongering.

Since you have a knack at issuing belated and half-baked apologies after airing profound callousness in the garb of taking on the Left, let me ask you how does "And the Oscar for best makeup goes to…" amount to "calling out such prejudice loudly and publicly"? And, how is it an antidote to "racism, bigotry, sexism and hateful prejudice of any kind"?

Rupa, if you condemn violence against women in all of its forms, then how is it that you yourself perpetuate the hatred on social media against those who have dedicated the best years of their lives to ensure violence against women - particularly adivasi women who face sexual assault, gang rape, mutilation and murder, at the hands of both the police and Maoist rebels - is exposed, brought to national mainstream, does not go unpunished?

How is it that you repeatedly and viciously condemn the handful of journalists and the websites that report attacks and injustices against the adivasi women and their men?

Why do you latch on to the flotsam of an unsubstantiated tweet to scream from your digital rooftop that it was Irfan Habib's son-in-law who wrote the Moody's report last year with an unflattering comment on India, even though it turned out that the actual writer had nothing to do with the eminent historian?

If this is how you "highlight legitimate issues about authenticity" and if this is "entirely in keeping with [your] overall philosophy of asking difficult questions", then I am sorry, you have no idea about either.

No Rupa, mocking a gravely assaulted woman, even if she belongs to a different ideological camp, is neither intellectual interrogation, nor is it a twisted search for authenticity. In fact, it is a reckless and graceless behaviour and utter callousness, which in common parlance is called the foot-in-mouth problem.

However, I wish it were only that.

For all your claims of "questioning the authenticity", all you need is one image, whether or not digitally enhanced, that will somehow corroborate your pre-arrived conclusions about everything and everybody.

Others who rely on such evidence, such as showing a photoshopped image of tricolour at Iwo Jima, or circulating doctored videos to harass a bunch of university students, are being exposed and nailed for their lies at present.

You have been nailed this time, Rupa. Yet, once called out, all you do is cry hoarse about being "misrepresented, misunderstood, misinterpreted".

[True, you too have been attacked with racist, misogynist bile. That is just as unacceptable as your revolting comments.]

How many times will you come out with postscripts like this? "Let me reiterate my apology for any hurt that the tweet has inadvertently caused."

Inadvertently? You mean you had no idea that your humour at Soni Sori's expense was hurtful, devoid of basic empathy, cruel and plainly stupid? If you didn't, exactly what are you doing being a "columnist" with Foreign Policy (even though the news and opinion portal has described you as a "freelancer", and has, naturally, distanced itself from that disgrace of a tweet)?

FP releases statement disavowing any association with tweet by freelance contributor Rupa Subramanya. More here: https://t.co/bJxTNxdVRt

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) February 22, 2016

For someone who calls herself an "economist" and a data journalist, Rupa, you sure show contempt for both data and truth. You seem to have no idea how figures and statistics jump out from pie charts and tables to gouge the eyes of a blinded nation that has turned into a simmering cauldron of prejudice, violence, and discrimination masquerading as hyper-nationalism and pop patriotism.

Your reality is a self-replicating, one-dimensional template of blind, vicious rage. Unfortunately, it is you who is trapped in it, not those you so rancorously malign through your relentless and facetious trolling.

Digital memory spares no one Rupa. Perhaps, it is time you concentrate on living up to your claims and not ask Twitterati to trend #RupaRocks.