I wrote an article last year on my experiences as a Dalit on dating apps. My comment that ‘upper-caste’ men only want to argue about reservation and EWS offended many men — including those from my own community.
Five days after the article was published, I was in Jharkhand covering the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. I was travelling back to the hotel after covering MLA Kalpana Soren’s campaign in Giridih, when I received an X post that said, “She is a Dalit journalist demanding reservation on dating apps.”
The reason I am writing this now is because the trolls have resurfaced. On Tuesday morning, just a day after Diwali, a friend sent an Instagram post. The same photos, the same trolling.
The casteism I faced on these platforms that scream of modernity was real. But never did I imagine that my personal story would generate such backlash on social media. And the phrase “agree to disagree” doesn’t cut it. What I faced was not disagreement — it was bullying. Trolls mocked my body, skin colour, caste, origin, family, and friends.
After the article was published, a lot of Dalit men and women reached out to me saying how they had a similar experience.
The social media posts targeted me using two photos of mine — in the first one, I am wearing a pink T-shirt and black denim, carrying two heavy cameras on my shoulders. The other one was a selfie of me in a brown shirt.
These are not just any photos; they are a source of strength and pride for me. They may not matter to the trolls who use words like “truck” and “kali” to abuse me, but for others, here’s the context behind them.
Photos that speak a thousand words
The first photo was taken while I was covering the 2022 Punjab Assembly election at the Aam Aadmi Party office in New Delhi. It was the result day. The photographers and camerapersons were standing under a makeshift shade. Someone clicked a photo of us standing there.
What I found striking was that I was the only woman photographer there. I posted that picture on X with a caption: “Select the odd one.”
That photo, which speaks a lot about the presence of women photojournalists in India, was used to abuse and target me.
Thousands of likes and reshares, and hundreds of comments targeting my body, caste, and colour. The trolls fat-shamed me using a photo that is nothing but empowering for women journalists like me in India. My experiences on dating apps were proven correct: there is no space for hyper-independent, fat, Dalit women.
The other photo, a selfie in a brown shirt, was clicked while I was travelling from Mizoram to Manipur through National Highway 102B. I was tired and exhausted. And that photo was used to show how “ugly” Manisha is — asking men from any community if they would ever date a person who looks like this.
The trolling continued for a week or more. I lost track, as I deleted X from my phone, only to find that the poison had spread to Instagram.
Also read: Being Dalit on a dating app. Upper caste men only want to argue over reservation, EWS
What’s seen and what’s hidden
In Delhi, you will hardly find women photojournalists in the sea of men covering news every day. There’s Anushree Fadnavis and Sahiba Chawdhary, both photojournalists for Reuters, and then there’s me.
We are women in a male-dominated field. There are signs of change and more women are entering the profession, but it’s incremental.
We live in a society that freely promotes a certain kind of beauty standard and shames fat women as “undesirable.”
I have been a photojournalist for seven years. The photos I have clicked are etched in my heart. My cameras and lenses have witnessed my journey — whether it was the farmers’ protest, the Covid lockdown and deaths, or the Hathras gangrape victim’s forced cremation.
Many journalists face online bullying for their reporting. For women from oppressed castes and minority communities, the burden is even heavier.
It’s exhausting and hurtful to see such comments and having to choose not to respond, because how do you respond to ingrained hate? It’s not my fault that our society has an objective view of beauty and that men and women are routinely empowered to praise some and abuse others based on their looks.
I am born this way, and I am beautiful, pretty, and sexy.
Will I be trolled again for this with these photos? I don’t know, but if you do, know this: you are often a nameless, faceless troll hiding behind your keyboard and gathering likes to inflate your ego and suppress your complex over your own sense of beauty. Me? I am just being myself — clicking and getting clicked, taking pride in myself and my work.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)