Two medical students in Kerala inspired a good cause, conveying a message against hate in an Instagram Reel as they danced to ‘Rasputin’ in the clip. The two students, Naveen K Razak and Janaki M Omkumar received lots of admiration and support after the 30-second Reel was posted on the social media platform.
Amidst all the praises and support, a few netizens made distasteful comments about their religion and differences. Naveen K Razak, in spite of the hateful comments in the comment section of the post, ignored to reply to them, but he made another post as a response to the distasteful comments.
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Razak released a new video along with some other students, who were of the dance group ‘Vikings’ of Thrissur Medical College. This video had more people compared to the older one, but they danced to the same song as the one used in the older video, and also with the same moves. The message this time was ‘unity in diversity’. The caption read, “If you’ve decided to hate, we’ve decided to resist”.
In response to this, many other student bodies including the students’ wing of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) began putting up online dance video competitions. It was IMA that launched the trending #RasputinChallenge, and the Student Federation of India (SFI) wing of Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) put out #StepAgainstCommunalism. These videos have also sent out strong messages against hate.
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“We were concerned about two statements on social media. One, that doctors shouldn’t dance. And second is about communal hatred, a deeper concern. We strongly condemn both these statements and have started a #RasputinChallenge. We are getting a lot of inquiries from people not even associated with medical colleges”, told Vishnu Gopan, the state convenor of IMA’s Medical Students Network (MSN) to NDTV
