One year ago, comedian Agrima Joshua made some jokes. People in the audience, laughed.
Today, the laughing has stopped; because anyone with even an ounce of sensibility is shocked to their core.
If you are reading about this for the first time, here is what happened: In one of her sets, Agrima made jokes, with the statue of Chatrrapati Shivaji Maharaj as the premise.
The premise. Her material wasn’t based on him, but some answers on Quora that she found hilarious. Here’s the clip of that.
Some people found this offensive, leading to a huge furore on social media.
Things got so out of hand, that the Home Minister of Maharashtra tweeted, saying that he has instructed CP Mumbai and IG Cyber to take legal action against her.
Which is strange in itself. The government getting involved in a matter like this, where someone’s joke wasn’t appreciated by a section of people is really not needed; but I suppose I’ll leave that for now.
Anyway, ultimately Agrima deleted the video, made her Instagram account private and issued an apology for hurting people’s sentiments.
Now, what happened next is this: A guy named Shubham Mishra (badassshubham on Instagram), blatantly gave rape threats to Agrima, in a video that he uploaded on his account.
He explained, in detail, ‘how’ he will rape her and made comments on her mother, that are disturbing enough to bring someone to tears (warning – the video has abusive and disturbing language).
He then went on to ask his followers to teach her a lesson, so harsh that she trembles before taking Shivaji Maharaj’s name again.
All this, while saying, “I respect women, but I can’t respect a slut like her”.
As of now, Shubham is free, enjoying his ‘rights’ as the citizen of this country.
I am a woman. I have spent my entire life in India. I have experienced harassment, I have read about it.
And this scares me.
It scares me that a man has the audacity to give rape threats to a woman whose jokes he didn’t like.
It scares me that hundreds of people support him.
It scares me to think what can he do in privacy, if he can say stuff like this publicly.
Now, normally I would have asked, what was Agrima’s fault even?
But today, I won’t.
Because her fault, even if there was any, doesn’t warrant a rape threat. Nothing under the sun, does.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I can reiterate this a thousand times if that is what it takes for the a**holes to understand that it is wrong.
Should I have to, though?
Should I have to remind people that ‘listen, you can’t say you want to rape someone’?
Should I have to fight for the basic dignity of the women of the country, including mine?
Don’t rape us. Don’t say that you will.
What does it say about our country, our society, if this has to be stated?
If I, and millions of women like me, have to explain that threatening someone with physical assault is wrong.
What does it say about our country, if we still wake up to videos like the one Shubham uploaded?
The guy is now saying that he didn’t mean to give a rape threat but he is removing the video because people thought that he was.
Announcing proudly that he will discuss the rest of the matter on Instagram live.
But before that, he posted another video, which was full of abuses as the one before.
He wasn’t apologetic. In fact, he was proud of what he did.
Which doesn’t come as a surprise, honestly.