Salil Tripathi: Outrage as Twitter suspends account of top Indian human rights activist

Salil Tripathi shared the last tweet on the anniversary of Babri mosque demolition on Sunday, marked as ‘victory day’ by Hindu extremists

Salil Tripathi and Lauren Walsh pictured in March 2020 in New York (Getty Images for PEN America)

Twitter suspended the account of leading human rights activist and journalist Salil Tripathi on Sunday after he tweeted a video of his recital of a poem on the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 in India.

Several leading personalities, including British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, Under-Secretary-General UN Shashi Tharoor and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, voiced their anger and called it “outrageous”.

“This is an outrageous act of censorship against one of the most important advocates of free speech. Twitter, stop it now! Jack what’s going on?” Rushdie wrote.

“Outrageous!Twitter suspended account of Journalist Salil Tripathi, chair PEN International’s Writers in Prison. One of his tweets reported as “offensive” was a video of Tripathi performing a poem he had written for mother, on the demolition of Babri Masjid!,” said top lawyer Prashant Bhushan.

The action was reportedly taken by Twitter after Mr Tripathi’s last tweet, a poem he shared on the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindu extremists on 6 December 1992. It was a poem dedicated to his mother.  

A sixteenth-century mosque was razed on 6 December 1992 by Hindu mob, which claimed that the mosque was built over a pre-existing Hindu temple. The demolition of the mosque was followed by worst communal riots in India’s history, lasting two months. The riots accounted for about 2000 deaths between December 1992 and January 1993.

A part of the poem in the tweet in question read: “On December 6, 1992, as you called me at my office in Singapore, when they destroyed the Babri Masjid. We have just killed Gandhi again, you said.”

"As Hindu mobs went, house-to-house, looking for Muslims to kill. After a train compartment in Godhra burned, killing 58 Hindus in February 2002. You were right, each time,” he said in the poem.  

Yesterday, several supporters of ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) marked 6 December as Shaurya Divas (Bravery Day) to celebrate the day. However, many Muslim politicians including Asaduddin Owaisi called it injustice, lamenting that those accused in the demolition have been acquitted from the case.

Salil Tripathi is Chair of writers’ body PEN International’s ‘Writers in Prison Committee’ and board member of English PEN from 2009 to 2013 in the UK. The noted human rights activist received the Red Ink Award from the Mumbai Press Club for human rights journalism in 2015 and awarded third prize at the Bastiat Awards, New York for journalism in 2011.