Campuses in Delhi are massive hubs of debates,
discussions and opinions. For a student coming from Mumbai, it is a fascinating
experience. One such debate was about the increasing violence against
rationalists and liberals. The death of Gauri Lankesh shook everyone. The
period will be marked as the time when the whole media fraternity came together
in one voice. Now, amongst other things the discussion was about people like
Ramchandra Guha, who are quite famous and yet voice out their voices against
the government. How safe are people like Guha, who can come in the public
domain very easily? Well, I am of the opinion that the people who’d be attacked
or would probably come in the harm’s way are the lesser known people like Gauri
Lankesh. No one would risk hurting the comparatively known liberals.
Anyway, the article isn’t about the killings
and the fear associated with it. After the discussion, I read a piece by Guha,
which was called, “The Hindutva Hate mail” where he had made a collection of
abuses that people threw at him on e-mail. (This is a much older piece, when
the social media hadn’t kicked in as yet; thus, hate ‘mail’) And I started to
relate to that article; paragraph after paragraph, word after word. The amount
of hatred spewed on social media is tremendous. You write something criticising
the government; the next thing you know is, your wall or the comment section is
filled with long messages of hate and abuse. The rhetoric is more or less the
same, ‘Lord Modi is the only Messiah of the living people of Hindustan’. Now,
there is a considerable difference in the abuses which Guha faced and the ones
which we see today, on social media on every other post. The group of tolerant civilians
has gone down drastically. Everything has to be addressed, every statement
needs to have a counterstatement today, and every discussion has to end with
personal bashing. This is not restricted to the right wing only. Even the left
is accused of being less tolerant towards the ‘stupid’ right as they like to
call it. We on social media are forced into believing things. We are constantly
bombarded with information that creates strong perceptions for or against
something or someone. The only difference, and probably a massive one is that
the, politically right people tend to believe these ‘things’ on social media
more than the people with liberal ideas. This bombardment of information, and many
a times the wrong one pushes this group of people more towards the right, and
thus the hate comes in extensively. Intolerance, dissent, Freedom of expression,
etc.; these are just fancy terms. These people have a romantic affair with the
RSS-BJP!
Now there’s a process and pattern to it. It isn’t
as simple as it looks. There’s a huge team of people with mobile phones and Jio’s
internet ready to attack any idea that goes against the narrative of the
government. They will copy-paste the same message over and over again on
multiple posts, until people start believing it. Ever wondered why the top
comment on every news post on Facebook does have to be a pro-BJP one? People are
paid to like the comments so that, that particular comment is displayed at the
top. And usually the top comment garnishes more attention than the post,
itself. I and many of my friends face this problem of hurling abuses from unknown
people on social media. Some asking us to go abroad to our neighboring country,
some are so bad that I can’t mention them here. They paint every one with the
same colour, Muslims are called names like ‘mullah’, etc. I have a very
different set of religious beliefs, thus these abuses don’t affect me much. But,
there are people who are fundamentally attached to their beliefs which makes
all the more difficult for them to deal with these abuses. BJP has been bagging
on this formula for quite some time now. And they have been successful at polarising
the opinion. The information flow which is supposed to be multi-dimensional on
social media has subconsciously become unidirectional with a limited few acting
as gatekeepers.
It is a very disturbing situation that many of
us face all throughout the day. The culture of defaming people on social media
is perpetrating in the system very fast. People talk about each other in a very
insensitive way, and it’s not just about the psychology of the people. We apparently
are being played. The BJP wants the Hindus to believe that the Muslims are an
immediate threat to their existence in the country, and also they pretty much succeeded
in making Muslims think that they are cornered in the society. The question
arises is why is the BJP playing it so defensively? Why are they not allowing
an alternative voice gains space in the society? Why are they so selective
about what’s right for the country and what’s not? Why are rationalists like
Lankesh murdered? (Although I do not directly blame the RSS-BJP for this) Even
after having won a lot of states in the previous year, why are they still
politically vulnerable? I think the BJP is getting uncomfortable with the
upcoming elections and there’s fear of losing some states before 2019 general
elections.
One cannot perfectly predict the future, but
the cheap social media tactics are going to increase tenfold as the election
season approaches.
An Egyptian friend of mine, asked me that how
come India is one even after so much diversity in culture. (Looks like a cliché’
question but she had a fair point because Egypt has a very monotonous culture,
yet the problems and violence that the country is facing is tremendous) Very
frankly I didn’t have an answer to her question. I guess we are structured that
way from generations. We have learnt to live along with different kinds of
people, and the ‘secularity’ which our scholars like to define every now and
then is actually hereditary. I really hope that this “Go back to Pakistan”
trend ends. But making hopeful statements isn’t a wise thing to do!
