They say a man’s true nature comes out in a crisis, and as the second wave of the coronavirus has hit, the masks are slipping from the people who call themselves liberals.
Former AIB member Rohan Joshi today shared an Instagram story in which he mocked ‘bhakts’ who’d lost their loved ones to Covid. “To all bhakts who have lost loves ones during the crisis, be strong. Your dad and Akshay Kumar are building you a lovely temple where you can go and pray to their departed souls,” he wrote.
If that wasn’t nauseating enough, Joshi didn’t stop there. “People calling the last story rude, I think you underestimate the degree of my fury and contempt. Fuck bhakts. They are directly responsible for this. Directly. I can literally see plenty of them still defending him. I have nothing but contempt for them and not a shred of empathy. Fuck the high road,” he wrote.
It’s still unclear why Rohan Joshi is angry — he lives in Mumbai which has a non-BJP government, and health is a state subject. But while it was hard to find logic in Joshi’s deranged rant, what was unmissable was the hate — Joshi not only mocked grieving ‘bhakts’ who’d lost loved ones to Covid, but also made fun of temples. Joshi didn’t specify if he meant Hindus or Modi supporters when he used the word bhakts; if he meant Hindus, that’s nearly a billion people, and if he meant Modi supporters, that’s still more than half a billion people, given how around 40% of the country had voted for Modi in the last elections.
This isn’t the first time that Rohan Joshi has spewed vitriol against bhakts. When Shefali Vaidya had spoken about listening to the national anthem when she was going through a complicated pregnancy, Rohan Joshi had attacked her. “She is further evidence of the fact that bhakts themselves are useless garbage that should throw themselves off cliffs and save us from their stupidity. Ugh. And she wants to parent children. God knows what they’re learning from a Nazi slug like her,” he’d then said. Shefali Vaidya had then said she’d file a complaint against Rohan Joshi.
To be able to tell pregnant women to throw themselves off cliffs, and to rejoice in the bereavement of a possible half a billion people – that’s what being a liberal in India is truly about.
