Vijay Goel didn't deserve to get trolled on Twitter for this
It's about how you look at things.
So, in a trigger-happy world of Twitter, where your sensitivity towards any situation is judged by the swiftness of your reaction and outrage on the micro-blogging site, Union minister of youth affairs and sports Vijay Goel found himself on the wrong side of the Twitterati sympathy again.
He was trolled heavily and ridiculed for being "insensitive to the visually challenged” after the minister blindfolded himself to play a bit of cricket while inaugurating the 2nd T20 World Cup Championship for the Blind on January 29.
In this Lutyens Kingdom of the Political Blind, one blindfolded is the king! Camera-crazy mantris can be foolish. But this is so insensitive https://t.co/bUot2Fw937
— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) January 30, 2017
Er. Really. Is this the most sensitivity we can manage? https://t.co/Dv0FKcczv0
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) January 30, 2017
The minister (who himself is incidentally another trigger-happy tweep, remember Zaira Wasim) explained his actions by saying that he was requested to play in such a state as an encouragement to the visually impaired players. He also tweeted the poster of the event which featured prominent cricketers – Virat Kohli, Gautam Gambhir, Ashish Nehra, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul and Umesh Yadav – all blindfolded.
Dear @ShekharGupta & @BDUTT I was requested by @blind_cricket officials to play w/ the players in that way to encourage them. Also check pic pic.twitter.com/LTFcCHrzEm
— Vijay Goel (@VijayGoelBJP) January 30, 2017
But that didn't stop the trolling.
What is difficult to understand here is if these people were really being sensitive towards the visually challenged or were just doing their day’s job of ridiculing people with the best-possible punchline. (By the way, it’s also a matter of great pride on the Twitter world who spotted someone doing something FIRST. Another reason why Twitter has become the breaking-news source for everybody, including mediapersons).
Interestingly, it wasn’t the minister who was insensitive this time.
Firstly, it was not his idea to play blindfolded (he was requested to, he claims). Secondly, a number of such events, where celebrities choose to take the blindfold challenge to encourage visually challenged people, are organised across the world. It’s strange how nobody ever noticed it.
Although we doubt the minister too has any idea about such events (or else he would have posted some such pictures to defend himself), the smart-alecs of Twitter forget it’s not what they see and perceive has to be right always.
Some Twitter users even had problems with Goel for calling it an event for the "blind" and advised him that he should have used the word visually challenged on his official Twitter handle (So is it okay to call them blind or anything else unofficially?). They forgot the name of the event is T20 World Cup Championship for the Blind. This also reminds us of the sympathetic terms used by some people (but popularised by the media) such as “differently abled” or “special people” for persons with disabilities.
A disabled rights activist once took grave offence at the special coinage and said: “We don’t know why the press thinks we are differently abled or special or the use of any such term would make us happy. We are okay being acknowledged as disabled or handicapped. All that we want is acknowledgement and equal treatment, not special terms.”
So before jumping into any conclusion, maybe we should change the way we see things.