Friday 23 November 2018

Twitter CEO upsets Hindu nationalists during India visit

Jack Dorsey accused of hate speech after posing with sign criticising country’s caste system

Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has upset Hindu nationalists and some members of the Brahmin caste in India by posing for a picture with a placard reading: “Smash Brahminical patriarchy”.

A leading policy officer for the company has apologised to users, and told them neither Twitter nor Dorsey endorsed the sign’s message that the oppression of the Hindu caste system – which places Brahmins at the top - must be dismantled alongside male dominance.

That, in turn, has angered Indian activists who oppose patriarchy and the caste system.

The Twitter chief, Jack Dorsey, poses with students at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images
Dorsey has been touring India, one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets, meeting figures including the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan.
Last weekend, the Twitter chief met a group of journalists, writers and activists in Delhi to hear about their experiences on the website and app, which has been criticised for facilitating the abuse and harassment of prominent Indian women.

Among the attendees to the off-the-record event was an activist belonging to the Dalit, formerly “untouchable” caste that occupies the bottom rung of the intricate system that still determines the shape of most Hindu lives.

The Guardian understands the activist gave Dorsey the sign at the beginning of the closed-door session, and that he was still holding it at the end when the photograph was taken.

It sparked anger among some Brahmins, who are regarded as the highest caste, as well as from Hindu nationalists, who seek to downplay the religion’s fissures and unite adherents under a single cultural and political umbrella.

Among the critics were senior journalists and business people, as well as prominent figures on the Hindu right.




“I’m very sorry for this,” Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal and policy head told one user. “It’s not reflective of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us – we should have been more thoughtful.

“Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all,” she added. “We failed to do that here & we must do better to serve our customers in India.”

That apology angered others, who argued Twitter should forthrightly oppose Brahminism, the system of beliefs and practices that perpetuates the place of Brahmins in India’s social order.



It was the latest misstep for a major Silicon Valley company in India, a frontier market where many technology firms have been focusing their resources as their customer bases in Europe, the US and Australia become saturated.

India has about 330m smartphones in circulation, the second highest in the world, but it has the world’s largest offline population: more than 1 billion people in 2016, according to the World Bank. Hundreds of millions of Indians are expected to come online in the next decade.

Twitter is estimated to have about 34.4m active monthly users in the country.

Facebook attempted to give away a free, limited version of the internet in villages across India in 2015. But the plan, called Free Basics, was criticised as “digital colonialism” and was found to violate net neutrality.

Snapchat also faced a public relations storm when a disgruntled former employee claimed its CEO, Evan Spiegel, had said the app was “only for rich people” and that he did not want to expand into “poor countries like India”. The company denies Spiegel made the remarks.

Twitter, on its official account, seemed to sum up the situation in a tweet on Monday night. “Awkward,” it said.

(Source: The Guardian)

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