Fake news, lynchings and mobocracy in India

hapur victim dragged lynching

India is the country of people belonging to varied regions, religions, sects, communities, castes; etc.From the past times till date, the multiculturalism and plural ethos of this country has set a strong precedent to the world about this land of diversity. This country is the country of its natives, be it hindus ,muslims,sikhs,christians,parsis,buddhists,etc.No one can escape its identity at the same time. This belongs to as much to one and sundry.

Gone are the days when there was narrow communication in the world due to a number of varied factors and barriers. However, it was the medium of communication which brought to fore the exchanges between the masses down the human history. Down the phases of passing times, communication surged to a remarkable extent and with the arrival of new scientific inventions and discoveries and paraphernalia, day in and day out, the channels of communication widened the world over and narrowed the communication gap with a renewed sway after the inroads of media in the world nation states. Media is considered to be the third eye and fourth pillar of a democracy. The recent century has seen a surge in the ascendency of media in general and social media in Particular, like, facebook, whatsapp, instagram, orkut, etc.Today, there are millions of users of the social networking sites in the world and in India too.

Today, the news in buzz becomes rapidly rampant and circulates at the skyrocket speed due to increased delivery over mass media platforms. News that originates in one part of the globe spreads like wild fire and it is the common man who is the sole player in the whole process. The post-truth era has even added a new framework of the news analysis. However, one cannot blindly believe in what one reads, hears or has a say about. Reality check is must for the same. Nowadays, the increase in the news platforms has seen such an upswing that it becomes a problematic affair for the common man to differentiate between reality and virtuality that is, real news and fake news. Single fake news generated and forwarded by a single foe of humanity destroys the whole fabric of the society and leads to ultimate social disorder and chaos.

Fake news is the new buzzword of the current times which has created an unhealthy atmosphere and given impetus to the anti-democratic forces and anti-human forces to run amuck and create fake and false narratives on the social networking sites or thereto so on and so forth about the people, which cause ultimately lynching of the people under the guise of wrong information and mere suspicion in India. This has wreaked havoc in India and snatched the precious lives of the innocent persons who have become victims of these unruly mobs.

This problem of lynch mobs is not only a law and order problem of the current times, but a major challenge to our democratic credentials of rule of law which has brought disrepute to India ,the world over in general and constitutional provisions in particular. Article 21 guarantees right to life to every tom, dick and harry of India. To snatch the life of a common Indian citizen through the vehicle of mobocracy is not only the violation of our democracy, but also tantamount to the murder of democracy.

India which is the largest democracy in the world is unfortunately metamorphosing into the mobocracy. The recent killing of the innocent victims at the behest of lynching mobs through brutal beating of rods, sticks and bricks is a tragic phase of our democratic slump.It was the tool of messenger which created the fake news and a wrong narrative of child-lifters in one part of the country, leading to the bloodbath of the innocent victims and added a bad and an unholy chapter to the historical chronicles of the times in India. Muslims are also the soft targets of these goons under the facade of beef mania. The overt and covert attempts of the cow vigilantes have already snatched the life of a number of Muslims, be it Ikhlaq of Dadri, or someone else.The recent lynching of Akbar Khan a muslim in Alwar,Rajasthan by cow vigilantes is a next gory chapter of brutalism in the name of vigilantism,which invited ire of congress leader Rahul Gandhi.The near lynching attempt of a muslim man under the wrong information of slaughter is a blot for our composite culture-laden Jammu and Kashmir,particularly those who have no regard of the old aged persons and cannot differntiate between cattle herders and slaughterers.Meanwhile,U.P. Chief  Minister has recently in an interview to a national channel said that there must be respect for the religious sentiments so far as faith is concerned.

The weird mob mentality of people and wrong and fake narratives about the people adds fuel to the fire. In India,a single encounter of the people with a Kashmiri person ,be  it a student, researcher, job aspirant, intellectual, tourist, patient,etc. adds a taunt of Pakistani narrative and militant name from the people of mainland India about the same fellow. Who has given the people the right to call the names of Kashmiri’s with such utterances? It is the media with a biased attitude that has constructed such very fake-cum-false narratives about the people of Kashmir and engulfed the psyche of the people who are seen with a needle of suspicion everywhere and elsewhere they go. Last year, when a video over social media appeared, wherein an old man of district Anantnag perhaps was seen saying that he along with another Kashmiri fellow were hurled invectives and abuses upon while travelling in some part of the country and people had called them as Atankwadi (terrorists) being Kashmiris.Not only this, People of North-East are also taunted everywhere, even in Delhi metros, with names.The attack on Kashmiri students last year in Haryana who were studying in Haryana’s central university by goons has time and again raised question about the safety and security of the valley students studying in differnet parts of the country.Even,People from Bihar are seen with a narrow and a different perspective. How sad and pathetic? While travelling in a DTC bus in New Delhi way back in 2011, a women hurled invectives on a person, calling him Bihari with ensuing taunts, who remained as a mute spectator at the scene. This can be called as the oral lynching of the people’s conscience of other parts of the country.

Cutting long story short, the problem of lynching has to cease, once for all in India. The role of government is mandatory and primary and people’s secondary. Without the intervention of strong law or making of a strong ordinance, the problem will continue to persist and loom largely in the land of sufis, sages, saints, seculars of India and what not and haunt the memories of people in the days to come.

Government needs to rope in a strong law to neutralise the menace of mobocracy and lynching’s in India.Also, social networking sites need to introspect and doubly-verify the news, before they forward it to the users. If the same situation persists in near future, India will be under the shade of complete mobocracy with ruling mobs without any fear of law and justice, where rule of law will be sidelined to the margins of the written confines of the document of Indian constitution, without any practicability of the same .

The author has done M.Sc.(Biochemistry),B.Ed from Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi,M.A.(History) and also qualified CTET from CBSE. Previously,he was also working as a project trainee at JNU,New Delhi.He has over dozen of articles to his credit on socio-politico-economic issues and currently works in J&K, government education department.He can be reached at [email protected].

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