Twitter has 'anti-Hindu' bias, allows glorification of Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan: Wokeflix to Delhi High Court

Twitter is following a double standard policy where “Hindu sentiments” are allowed to be disrespected whereas “genocidal tyrants like Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan” are normalised, administrators of accounts including Wokeflix which were suspended by the micro-blogging site told the Delhi High Court. .The allegations were made in the written submissions filed by a batch of handles through advocates Raghav Awasthi and Mukesh Sharma before the Delhi High Court.The accounts had approached the High Court after Twitter had taken them down.Besides plea by Wokeflix, the High Court is also seized of around half a dozen case related to such ban on accounts by social media companies.Justice V Kameswar Rao had, on March 8, issued notice to Twitter, Meta and Central government on Wokeflix's petition..Twitter had subsequently, told the Court that the accounts were suspended or their contents were taken down because they violated its policy on hate speech..In their written submissions, the handles have contended that according to historians quoted in the New York Times, the Mughal King Aurangzeb was responsible for killing of four million people and when the figure is adjusted for population levels, the number is higher than the victims of the Holocaust by Hitler.Citing several Twitter posts that allegedly contained “Hindu-hating” material, the submissions said that their continued presence on the site “is a mockery of the sentiments of the Hindu community”.“The question that we need to ask ourselves in a secular country wherein 80 percent of the population is Hindu is whether the Respondent No.2 (Twitter) would dare to allow posts extolling the likes of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler or Reinhard Heydrich by neo-Nazi extremists. If the answer is in the negative then we must ask ourselves as to why similar courtesy cannot be extended to Hindus in this country,” the submissions read..It said that the fact that Twitter is allowing what can only be termed as hate speech against Hindus is symptomatic of its “anti-Hindu” bias.The submissions further said that the petitioners believe in the right to free speech to all citizens but the said right has to be made available to all communities and the Hindu “community cannot be children of a ‘Lesser God’”..Earlier, the Central government had also said that social media platforms like Twitter should respect fundamental rights of people and resort to taking down of accounts only as a last option.“Social media platforms should not resort to an outright ban of an account if only some portion of the content is unlawful, the Central government told the High Court,” the Centre had said. .The matter is likely to be heard tomorrow by Justice Yashwant Varma for final arguments..[Wokeflix ban] Social media platforms should respect fundamental rights, taking down account should be last resort: MEITY to Delhi High Court