Ram Subramanian has become the architect of a very powerful social media campaign aimed at taking India and Pakistan to the place that Rabindranath Tagore imagined in his famous poem "Where the mind is without fear" where he saw a time "Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls".
His #ProfileForPeace hashtag campaign has gone viral overnight on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thousands of Indians - from Gujarat to Bengal and Kerala to Kashmir - and Pakistanis, inlcuding those who are expats in the USA, UK, Europe, Africa and the Middle Easti have changed their profile pictures to one with a note stating the place of domicile and a simple straightforward message stating whether they belong to India or Pakistan and asserting that they do not hate each other.
Ram Subramanian told IBT-India edition: "This is not my campaign anymore, I just put up a post and people made it happen, it speaks about what regular people want. I saw a post of a gentleman from another country using the idea to spread peace in his country... It's already happening, people will use #ProfileForPeace to fight for peace wherever two nations are fighting. No regular, normal, sane person wants war. "
Ram Subramanian's campaign is directed towards the politicians and fanatics in both countries who are rattling sabres and calling for war, even nuclear war, and destabilising populations within these countries by spewing religious and communal vitriol.
This is the point Ram Subramanian is trying to make across the borders of the two nations.
36-year-old Bandra-based Ram Subramanian, calls himself an artivist. He is creating a counter-image of peace using viral media to the images of hate being purveyed by Hindutva outfits like the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal, the BJP and Shiv Sena. Sena goon squads had prevented a concert by Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali in Mumbai recently.
Watch this video to understand why and how Ram Subramanian decided to do this here.
Ram has come under fire from hatemongers in India especially. There are those on his page who have put up comments like: "Please stop this nautanki", "You mxxxxxxing dog, did you some paki fxxxxed your mother in brothel which produced a bxxxx like you?.. if you have so much itch to cosy up with pakis then go cross over the border and stay there.. eunuch cowards like you are real problem..."
And here are representations of the result of this trending social media campaign:
