Did Zaira Wasim Concede To Her Online Bullies?

Zaira Wasim, the actress who earned praises for portraying the daughter of Aamir Khan’s character in Dangal, has gotten involved in another controversy. But the sequence of events looks very different from her previous hullabaloo. Also, this one involves a central minister.

On 18 January, Vijay Goel, the Minister of State for Youth Affair and Sports, shared a photo from the India Art Fest in Delhi on Twitter. It was the painting of a woman in a hijab which also features a woman inside a cage. This is Goel’s tweet.

But Wasim seems to have taken this statement of encouragement as an insult. She responded to the minister.

Goel’s tweet was made in connection with an earlier issue faced by Wasim when she was embattled by a regressive group called “Fakhr-e-Kashmir” for doing what the group considered “polluted” and against “religious norms”. But at that time Wasim responded differently, by apologising in a Facebook post (Wasim has since deleted the Facebook post) to all the people who had been “offended and displeased” by her “recent actions”.

At the time, few from Bollywood had condemned Wasim’s online bullies. But when this silence was called out online, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap tried the balancing act. Kashyap earlier tweeted that Bollywood needed to stand with those who speak up, at the time of Meryl Streep’s speech. But then, he went ahead and associated OpIndia co-founder Rahul Raj with Wasim’s online bullies, saying he condemns both.

But it seems like Wasim herself, in essence, agrees with her abusers. It did not look like Goel was identifying ‘hijab’ as a tool of oppression but the painting which symbolised that. She seems to feign ignorance as to why Goel’s tweet was made. Which brings to mind the question: Is there any point for liberals to defend Wasim if she is essentially accepting criticism without opposition and chastises those standing up for her?

Read Also: Is this the reason why Dangal star Zaira Wasim apologised in a Facebook post?