‘Bulli bai’ victim to VP, TISS student union

Mumbai: Ten months after her name cropped as one of 100 Muslim women whose details were made available on Bulli Bai, an application made on open source-platform, GitHub, which allowed users to take part in their “auction”, 22-year Nidha Parveen was elected as the new vice-president of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Students’ Union

Mumbai: Ten months after her name cropped as one of 100 Muslim women whose details were made available on Bulli Bai, an application made on open source-platform, GitHub, which allowed users to take part in their “auction”, 22-year Nidha Parveen was elected as the new vice-president of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Students’ Union.

Mumbai, India - October 17, 2022: Newly-elected student vice-president of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Nidha Parveen, poses for pictures outside TISS, Chembur, in Mumbai, India, on Monday, October 17, 2022. (Photo by Pratik Chorge/Hindustan Times) (Pratik Chorge/HT PHOTO)

Parveen, who hails from Kannur, Kerala studied at Delhi University and took part in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) / National Register of Citizens (NRC) movement in 2019 before joining TISS to pursue a post-graduate degree at the Centre for Criminology and Justice at the institute’s School of Social Work.

Late on Friday night, Parveen – president of Fraternity TISS, part of the students’ wing of the Welfare Party of India, with meagre 12 members on campus -- was elected as the new vice-president of the TISS Students’ Union, bagging 676 votes over her main opponents, Progressive Students Federation and SATH (Students’ Association for Transformation and Harmony) who secured 393 and 221 votes respectively.

Parveen contested as part of an alliance formed by The Ambedkarite Students’ Association (ASA). The alliance backed Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, Northeastern and Queer candidates and went on win 10 out of 11 posts. Pratik Permey, a queer and tribal student activist became the new president, while Dalit student leader Shivani Ilangovan was elected new general secretary.

Digamber Surlata, a PhD scholar at TISS and an ASA member said Permey, a student of the School of Social Work, created history as the first gender-fluid person to be elected to the post of president of students’ union.

Permey said, “With this election, we have hoisted a flag representing the ignored, invisible, marginalized voices.”

“The win was unexpected. Two weeks of campaigning was stressful,” a hijab-donning Parveen dressed in a grey and white salwar kameez said on Saturday.

Praveen recalled a moment during her campaign, when a male student told her that she could not use “the Muslim card”.

“I was addressing a class and I started my speech saying, ‘As a student, as a Muslim woman’, and a male student said I can’t use the Muslim card. About 100 students applauded him. When we assert our identity, we get to know what others think of our identity,” she said.

In July 2021, an app ‘Sulli Deals’ uploaded photos of several Muslim women, without their consent, for an ‘auction’ to online bidders, which was subsequently taken down. “But since there was no action taken against those who created the app, we knew it would happen again because there is lack of belief in the justice system,” said Parveen.

In January 2022, Parveen’s details were among those of several Muslim women that were made public on the Bulli Bai app in a bid to malign and humiliate them by allowing users to take part in their virtual ‘auction’.

“The experience still haunts me. When I talk about it, I am told that I am playing the Muslim card, the victim card. It has come back here (on campus) too. But when I ask them about the Bulli Bai app case, they don’t know about it,” she said. “They are quick to call me Taliban, but don’t want to talk about real issues in the country.”

Parveen said the representation of Muslim women on TISS campus is mostly in the Progressive Students Federation, which is a left-wing student body. “But they don’t assert their identity because they want to be in a safe space. If they do, they are tagged jihadists, Islamists or conversations become communal.”

As the vice-president, Parveen will take up issues on financial aid, scholarship and accommodation facilities for students. “Regardless of the hate campaign, we won. This means, people are ready to hear us when we assert our identity. That to me is hope.”

As a student in Delhi, she led the anti-CAA/NRC movement in 2019.

“As a Muslim living in India, I had to participate in the anti-CAA movement to fight for our self-respect and dignity. I knew we would be targeted,” said the first-generation learner in her family.