What's behind India's viral videos? - BBC Extreme, BBC World Service

BBC Trending

2023-12-28

17 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

Videos taken across India are going viral on social media. They show hordes of men harassing and even attacking young couples ...
更多

单集文稿 ...

  • This is BBC trending, part of our Extreme series, where we're taking a look at life on the fringes of Internet culture.

  • I'm Shruti Menon, a journalist with the BBC's Delhi bureau in India, and I've been investigating the Bhagwa Love Trap, the controversial idea that Hindu men are trying to seduce Muslim women and lure them away from their communities.

  • It's a theory that's taken off online in recent months, provoking harassment on social media and violence in the real world.

  • And it isn't the only controversial theory that's prevalent online.

  • Love Jihad, an opposing narrative which claims Muslim men are plotting to seduce Hindu women has been around for much longer and spread much further.

  • Evidence in support of either theory is scant, but the animosity between the two groups is real.

  • It's been one of the defining themes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's time in office.

  • This is a story about religious tension, gender politics and what they tell us about Modi's India, almost a decade since he came to power.

  • The shift inside of me as a reporter was when I saw this barrage of videos going viral on the Internet.

  • This is Fatima Khan, a journalist with the Quint in India and one of the first people to write about the Bhagwa Love Trap, highlighting videos of aggressive and violent confrontations circulating online.

  • Initially, I saw one video and then the second video and then the third video.

  • And then I saw that there's a whole slew of videos where Muslim women are being harassed, are being assaulted by a mob of evidently Muslim men.

  • And it's not limited to one part of the country.

  • Across India, videos like this one are being shared online.

  • Filmed in a city in East India, we can see a Muslim woman wearing a hijab and a man who appears to be Hindu being heckled by a mob.

  • The crowd seems to be made up of Muslim men.

  • They drag the Hindu man to the side of the road and beat him until he pleads with them to stop.

  • The exact circle.

  • The circumstances of this video are unclear, but it's been posted like the others with the same hashtag, bhagwalovetrap.

  • The idea that Hindu men are trying to entrap Muslim women and either marry them or abuse them in some way.