Joseph, one of the most familiar names in the world, has become a weapon of religious profiling and misinformation in India.
Disha Ravi, the young climate activist arrested on the charge of sedition for editing and sharing a toolkit on the farmers’ protest, was the target of a vicious campaign on Wednesday on social media that sought to project her as a Syrian Christian from Kerala.
A flood of tweets with the hashtag “DishaRaviJoseph” was top-trending on Twitter by noon.
That it is a lie is secondary. The venom behind the campaign is a telling comment on how depraved a vocal section of India has become.