Social Media users go gaga over selfie with daughter

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s deeply polarising influence was on display once again, as social media buzzed with his #SelfieWithDaughter mantra.

The hashtag, which Modi promoted on this Sunday’s edition of his radio programme “Mann Ki Baat”, had by Monday evening generated more than 1.5 lakh tweets.

Some, like BJP leader Vijay Goel and actor Jackie Shroff, did exactly what the hashtag said—posting photos taken with their daughter. Others chose to take a swipe at the prime minister, either by taking to pointing out how he had empowered four women from his party, who are now embroiled in scams and controversies, or by simply lampooning the move.

Yet others latched onto a photo of Ishrat Jahan’s mother accompanying her body, or the photo posted by deceased Congress MP Ehsan Jafri’s daughter Nishrin Hussain Jafri, to bring up the issues that have haunted Modi since his stint as Gujarat chief minister.

Ishrat was killed in 2004 along with three others by the police, who said they suspected the quartet of being terrorists. The case registered in this regard, alleging that the encounter was fake, is still in court.

Jafri, meanwhile, was one of those killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre that was part of the 2002 Gujarat riots.  However, the hashtag’s goodwill seemed to have trumped these naysayers, with even foreign nationals getting in on the trend by posting selfies with their daughters on Twitter.

In between the two polar-opposite factions were the fence-sitters, who either chose to stay content with saying that #SelfieWithDaughter was a commendable initiative, or decided to point out better and more proactive ways to improve the sex-ratio in certain pockets of the country.

And then there were the ones who were just having fun, either by suggesting that they wanted to see Lalu Prasad post a selfie with his seven daughters, or saying they were disappointed to find out there was no eligible bachelor around them.

In the midst of it all, Twitteratti also found time to thank Sunil Jaglan, the sarpanch of Bibipur village in Haryana’s Jind district, who had started off the hashtag by posting a selfie with his daughter on Twitter.

Haryana happens to have one of the worst sex ratios in India, with the equation so skewed towards boys that there are scores of villages that do not have a single girl, and boys of marriageable age have to look for alliance outside the state, and sometimes even outside the country.