M D Nalapat
‘Hanging’ the gun used in a murder is about as logical a punishment as it is to try and choke off the few freedoms available to social media platforms in India.
Lynchings have
been taking place in India for centuries, the difference being that
these days, they are almost certain to get captured on the cameras
installed on cellphones. Child lifting is an execrable offence, and used
to happen frequently in several cities across India, notably Mumbai
during the 1960s, when small children living in mainly makeshift
accommodation used to disappear, only to emerge later in distant
locations with some of their limbs sawed off, or their eyes gouged out,
or their tongues chopped in half. Some had had substances smeared across
their bodies which caused eruptions that were horrible to behold, all
the better to make people throw coins at such unfortunate importuners so
as to make them go away. These days, there are so many other ways of
making money that such deformed child beggars appear to have almost
disappeared, despite the fact that practically none of those responsible
for the systematic mutilation of children so as to set them loose to
beg were caught by the police. “Hafta” (or bribes given to the police)
being commonplace even during those times, this was no surprise. In
these “modern” times, a considerable proportion of child lifting is
related either to ransom or to sex trafficking in the very young. Given
the uncertainties and delays in the justice system in India, it is not a
surprise that some citizens administer on the spot punishment (often
capital) to those they suspect of this crime. News reports about child
lifters and lynchings appear to have led to some perverted minds posting
photographs, locations and other descriptions on social media of
individuals they seek to destroy, whether this be because of jealousy,
or greed for the property that would be left behind by those lynched on
the basis of false reports about them. Expectedly, a call has risen to
“lynch” (through suppression or at the least severely controlling)
social media platforms.
This columnist is no addict of social
media, and does not even know the passwords of accounts that are
operated by a few dedicated well-wishers, mainly to disseminate his
work. It is as yet more proof of the innovation-smothering nature of the
governance system that unlike in China, there is no WeChat, Baidu,
Weibo, nor even a Jack Ma in India. There are, of course, some internet
companies that do data crunching work for foreign customers, a few of
which have parlayed their reputations into ensuring for themselves land
and other benefits from the state at very low prices. But there is no
domestic counterpart to Facebook, Yahoo! or Google or Microsoft, and the
fact that there are brilliant NRIs at the helm of some of these global
giants is scant compensation for India’s failure to emulate China in
creating its own web titans. Digital India is at present largely a
digital colony of the US and a few Chinese companies. However, seeking
to suppress them is not the answer, but ensuring an ecosystem where
domestic companies can grow to giant size. What would make the
difference is when Prime Minister Narendra Modi acts on his promise of
“Minimum Government”, by which he presumably means minimal state
interference with the lives and occupations of the 1.3 billion citizens
of this country. To act against the operation of internet platforms that
are used by hundreds of millions each day would be akin to declaring as
criminal implements such as a knife or a stick, on the grounds that
these are usually the weapons used by those who motivate putative
lynchers against their victims. India’s underpaid, overworked police
force seems unable to identify and apprehend the few who deliberately
spread toxic “child lifter” messages about other citizens on the web,
while our justice system continues to remain slow in coming to a final
verdict about any crime. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to
eliminate “unnecessary” laws, but left this task to the bureaucracy
(which, in its continuing 1870s avatar, seeks to retain all edicts that
add to their power and discretion over the citizen). Small wonder that
most of the laws that have been discarded are those that are
unenforceable because they have lost their relevance decades ago owing
to the changes in circumstances that time inevitably brings. Such
pruning of dead law is different from cutting away at the many
colonial-style laws designed to keep civil society under the heel of the
civil service. India is more “corrupt” than Norway because 90% of what
is legal in that Scandinavian paradise is illegal in an India still
under the jackboot of the 1862 Police Act.
“Hanging” the gun used in a murder is
about as logical a punishment as it is to try and choke off the few
freedoms available to social media platforms in India despite Pramod
Mahajan’s efforts at state control of the internet medium and industry
through an Information Technology (IT) law. The legislation he got
passed, and which was made still more regressive by the UPA (and left
undisturbed by the present government) caused the end of the phase of
hypersonic expansion that the IT industry had witnessed since 1989, the
year when Silicon Valley discovered Bangalore. It was Jawarharlal Nehru,
celebrated as a democrat par excellence, who oversaw changes in the
Constitution of India that have been used since then to punish free
expression. It is from this 1950s legislative root and its offshoots
that a climate of intolerance to dissent has grown in India side by side
with rituals such as the screening of the National Anthem in cinema
halls even during peacetime. It is from the longstanding absence of an
accommodative attitude towards the “other” (including, during the UPA
days, those who opposed appeasement of Wahhabism; and these days,
citizens who have a taste for bovine meat) that intolerant strains of
public conduct have multiplied. The mass lynching of a human being is an
act of terror, and should be treated in law and by the police as being
the equivalent of ISIS recruits cutting the throats of their captives.
It is not the medium nor even the message that is responsible for the
eruptions of barbarity that we see captured on cellphones in India, but a
mindset nourished on the restrictions, regression and restraints that
have continued with state patronage to remain commonplace in India even
after the colonial era. The time to fulfil the promise of “Minimum
Government” is long, long overdue.
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