Modi Critic Prof Ashok Swain Deactivates His Twitter Account After Abuses and Threats
November 26, 2020
Prof Swain, who is a known critic of rightwing politics, would frequently write Tweets critical of the policies of the Modi government
Clarion India
NEW DELHI — Since Thursday morning, social media was abuzz with speculations that Twitter had deleted the account of Indian-born academic Prof Ashok Swain, who teaches peace and conflict studies in University of Uppsala in Sweden.
However, the 55-year-old scholarly analyst has confirmed that it is his own move as he has decided to deactivate his account to take “a break” from using social media.
In an email conversation with Clarion India, Prof Swain said: “It has been extremely stressful for me for some time…abuses and threats to me and my family. Needed a break, so I have deactivated my Twitter account.”
Prof Swain, who is a known critic of rightwing politics, would frequently write Tweets critical of the policies of the Narendra Modi government. For this, he would face abuses from trolls.
For example, in May, he had tweeted that the kind of protests that were being witnessed in the United States of America and Canada regarding ‘Black Lives Matter’ needed to be replicated in India to “oppose extra-judicial killings of Muslims in the country”.
In 2017, he was appointed as the UNESCO Chair of International Water Cooperation and became the first UNESCO Chair of Uppsala University. He has a regular column in Dubai-based daily, Gulf News.
