In this past week, we saw yet another controversy ranking high enough on the weirdness and angry-rich-man scale for mainstream media to care about queer people and their lived realities.
Bhavish Aggarwal, the co-founder and CEO of Ola, an Indian cab-hailing giant, worth almost $2 billion, lashed out about pronouns. And where do entitled people who dispense opinions like candy, do so? The hellscape we all lovingly used to call Twitter. In a series of Tweets and later a LinkedIn post by Mr. Aggarwal (yes, I used Mr., you’ll soon see why) ranted about what he described as the ‘pronouns illness that most Indians had no clue about’ earlier.
His tweets quickly went viral, as expected. He even went so far as to claim that some MNCs were promoting this culture of pronouns in the country ‘without us Indians even realising it’.
Gasp!
A secret disease was spreading within Indian society like wildfire and it wasn’t low-paying jobs, hunger, or hate. It was the use of pronouns which according to this tech-bro, even many ‘big city schools’ were teaching to our kids. Aggarwal went on to lament that the CVs he receives also have the shame of pronouns attached to them, with job-seekers including he/him, she/her, or they/them, after their names. One wonders if Mr. Aggarwal ignores the CVs with pronouns more than he ignores the CVs with no pronouns.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others, right?
Then came the usual tirade that we queer people have heard for years if not all our lives. The ‘need to draw the line in following the West blindly’.
The need for urgent policy reforms? No. The need to pay employees a living wage? Absolutely not! The need to make sure that the unemployed youth of our nation do not fall into the sick ways of sharing their pronouns openly? Bingo!
What prompted this sudden rant on social media from a CEO no one really knew about? Mr Aggarwal asked the AI chatbot of LinkedIn, a professional community-building network, the question that we all have on our minds- ‘Who is Bhavish Aggarwal?’
The chatbot responded dutifully that Aggarwal was the co-founder and CEO of Olacabs.com. A former Research Assistant and Intern at Microsoft Research India who had graduated from the prestigious (if not infamous for its casteism) IIT Bombay. Rather than focusing on the accuracy of the bot or revelling that someone outside the tech circle knew him (albeit a soulless software), Aggarwal quickly took a screenshot, painstakingly circled all the uses of ‘they’ in reference to ‘him’ in the copy, and then proceeded to post it promptly on Twitter with his long rant about the pronouns and its attack on Indian culture.
One wonders if Aggarwal’s English teacher met with a similar rant when pronouns were being taught in school. Was Wren and Martin his sworn enemy? Was Shakespeare the nightmarish demon of his dreams because even ‘thee, thou, and thy’ were akin to pronouns right? Several questions remain to be answered. Only some will eventually be. How deep does this ‘pronouns illness’ go?
The crusader answered in an X post on May 11. In a lengthy lament, Aggarwal has gone on to slam ‘Western companies’ like LinkedIn and Microsoft for their ‘wokeness’. A point to note is that he uses the word ‘wokeness’ as if it were another illness and something to be weary about.
Aggarwal goes on to say India does not need “lectures” from such companies, ignoring the fact that no one needs lectures from him as well. “On a personal front” he says that upon visiting Ayodhya last year, he “learnt about how [transgender persons] had been accorded special respect in our culture since ancient times.” Did he miss out on the fact that trans people are also forced to beg, live and work on the streets and often die of exhaustion (this relentless heatwave!) and exclusion? Perhaps not.
As if this was not enough, he goes on to slam this “western DEI system” calling it an “entitlement mindset” and vowing to “fight it.” Diversity, equality, and inclusion? Surely, we need to fight them, tooth and nail.
Finally, Aggarwal says that he will put his “money where his mouth is” and invest in an Indian ‘Digital Public Infrastructure’ or DPI that would be governed only by Indian law and not by Western-made “community guidelines”. He also announced that Ola would be moving away from Microsoft’s Azure cloud to the Indian-made Krutrim.
While make-in-India is welcome, the motivations for his shift are suspect at best.
Looks like, in addition to ‘putting his money where his mouth is’ he is also finding room for his foot in there.
Putting aside all jest and sarcasm (with a heavy heart), incidents like these reveal a dangerous trend that is quickly becoming a newfound social currency. The degrading and belittling of queer people or for that matter any person who does not fit into the category of a rich, English-speaking, urban male, has become a mark of respect amongst the communities that people like Aggarwal embody.
The Ola CEO has 487,500 followers on X and 187,000 on LinkedIn. Considering that his reach does not transcend his followers, which it certainly does, this is a community of close to 6.7 lakh people who follow and read what Mr Aggarwal thinks and shares. One can safely assume that many also aspire to be like the man. He has after all cracked the great Indian dream of studying in an IIT, working in some of the world’s biggest tech firms, and founding a billion-dollar startup, whose services millions use every day.
This sets a very dangerous precedent.
What India has just witnessed is what the West has already done and continues to do so since the rise of the techiest tech bro of all tech bros – Elon Musk.
Musk, one of the richest people on the planet, is known for his transphobic comments that he frequently shares on X. This is despite him having an openly trans daughter, who incidentally, has said that she no longer wishes to be related to him in ‘any shape or form.’
Aggarwal has just taken a leaf out of Musk’s book of spreading hate and shovelling one’s opinions down the throats of other people, without the self-awareness that comes with money and power in society.
Unfortunately, such men have become gatekeepers to our online lives. They determine what we see, what we consume, and in turn what we believe. One would think that these people with the power to influence millions of young minds would think before they speak. Aggarwal while tweeting should have thought about a closeted trans person working in Ola who will now not even think about coming out at work, for fear of their colleagues following the path their boss has clearly laid out for them- one of bigotry and queerphobia.
The shattering of the gender binary and the insistence of people to show their true selves are somehow slaps on the faces of successful cis-het men and they sure are fighting back.
The controversy has passed and Bhavish Aggarwal will continue to revel in his cathartic post-rant relief. He surely has learnt nothing, considering how a day after launching his war against pronouns, he re-tweeted a post about a woman ranting about how she was a ‘pregnant woman’ and not a ‘pregnant person’. This came on the heels of the Supreme Court noting that genders other than women can also bear children and thus ‘pregnant person’ is a more inclusive term. Bhavish Aggarwal has a problem with the apex court too.
But his words are now out there for thousands if not millions of young people to read and wonder- ‘Is he right? Should I remove my pronouns before applying for a job?’
Responsible dissemination of one’s views is what is required, but it remains an elusive dream while open hate speech against queer people and the usage of terms like ‘illness’ to describe them has become all the more real.
It is time for the ones in power to reconsider what they say and post because we, and most importantly, the keepers of history (or is it time we announced it as their-story) are watching.
Oh, and if you’re a new recruit at Ola Cabs, be sure not to reveal your pronouns lest you be branded as having caught the much dreaded ‘pronouns illness’.
