Things Fall Apart
Social and electronic media was manipulated to create an intolerant Indian. And now it is a cycle that feeds itself
It was always there. That mythical “they”. It was innocent, but it was there.
When I first asked my mother why my classmate had flogged himself during Muharram, her reply was, “Who knows why they do what they do.” It was not judgmental. But she was acknowledging a difference she could not bridge.
In the 1980s, while not openly bigoted, the mainstream media helped feed the narrative of appeasement. The Shah Bano case was clothed in the robes of ‘appeasement politics’. Though almost everyone could recognize the lady with the kohl lined eyes, very few would have been able to explain exactly how what the government was doing was ‘appeasement’. Yet the term stuck.
Jump forward a couple of years.
Post the Mumbai riots, when in many cities, Muslims moved into single community locations for safety, this concentration of Muslims was turned against them. Instead of recognizing the fact that they were forced to huddle together for safety, the narrative was turned to make you think that you would be attacked in those localities. That nothing of that sort ever happened didn’t matter; you stayed away from those areas, except when you went there with your friends to gorge yourself on kebabs.
Gujarat 2002 exposed the faultlines. For a few weeks, some people displayed their Islamophobia without shame. But the numbers were small. The majority were still largely neutral.
It was somewhere in the last decade, that the manipulation of the collective imagery began in earnest. While reporting on violence, the stock images would show men in skull caps. Photographs of voters lined up outside election booths would invariably feature women in burqas; without it being told to you, you were being led to believe that “they” elected the politicians who represent you. A “Hindu khatre mein hai” narrative was being created, however ridiculous it may be.
People openly spoke about how Muslims with their four wives and dozens of children were going to overrun the nation. What was never discussed were the facts. Between the Census of 2001 and 2011, the growth rate of the Muslim population fell by 5% as against a drop of 3% for Hindus. While the overall growth rate was still higher for Muslims, there is absolutely no basis for fearing that Muslims would ever ‘overrun’ the country.
Post 2014, it became more brazen. Memes replaced news, and fake information was easily dispersed. The Triple Talaq Bill was beautifully packaged as something that empowered the ‘poor Muslim woman who didn’t have a voice’. If you tried to explain how it benefited nobody, least of all the women it was meant to save, your credibility was questioned, and you were asked to appreciate the magnanimity displayed by the Supreme Leader.
Every evening, the electronic media which is often the most vocal member of the household spewed its own version of truth. Through judicious use of background imagery, provocative hashtags and devious scrolling headlines, the narrative was controlled. Photographs and videos cast the angry Muslim against the benign Hindu. It was subtle, but the very subtlety made it even more insidious.
Opinions were repeated so often they became fact. Smart one liners were used to ensnare a gullible population- ‘hum citizenship dene ki baat kar rahen hai, lene ki nahin’ was one such that was used to discredit you when you spoke about CAA. A lot of otherwise sane people fell for this narrative because it was the only one they saw.
An average educated English speaking Indian genuinely believed that hearing something on Times Now and having it confirmed the next day in the Times of India was ‘multiple sources of information’. Articles from Swarajya were shared so often on Facebook, the subtle bigotry they peddled became a part of the consciousness of many people.
Misreporting became the norm. If not for social media, most people would not even know the truth about any of the events that occurred between December 2019 and February 2020. Most people are unware of how one sided the violence in North East Delhi was- the media told them it was a ‘minor communal clash’ that began with Muslims attacking a police station and they see no reason to disbelieve it. Even now, fake narratives are passed off as facts- buses that were allegedly torched by anti-CAA activists are being used to justify the violence that followed.
Mass movements like the one at Shaheen Bagh, which none of the political parties were able to bring under control, are now sought to be discredited by giving them political overtones.
With the print and electronic media compromised, battles have now shifted to social media. Twitter is the favourite battlefield because of the anonymity the platform provides. While the pro-Hindutva handles continue spewing as much venom on Twitter as they do in real life, on Twitter, they are matched by pro-Islamic handles that believe that the best way to counter hate is by generating more hate.
A small fringe of Muslims proudly proclaim they are Hindu Reformists, and work overtime spewing hate. Hindu gods are debased. Hindu practices condemned. Hindu religion dismissed as being regressive. Anyone attempting to counter these narratives is labeled as Islamophobic, and is made the object of scrutiny by a troll army almost matching that of the other side. Though it is a very small number of handles that actively generates hate, many more fall for the narrative that since Muslims are targetted in real life, it somehow makes sense to hit back on Social Media.
The Intolerant Indian has now been created. He accepts nobody who does not exactly confirm to his expectations. It is not enough to support the same ideas and fight the same system; everyone is expected to be a perfect clone. Anyone who is not, is denouced with a ferocity which would be better suited to use on the real enemy.
It is a cycle of hate that feeds into itself, and converts cracks into unbridgeable chasms.
What we now have a population that is majorly fed on propoganda and is not even aware that there could be another side to the story that was fed to them. The few people who could try to educate them by countering propoganda with facts are busy fighting each other on Twitter. There are a few independent journalists but their reach is limited and in the absence of financial backing there seems little hope they will be able to enter the households where they are most needed.
When, if and how this vicious cycle will end is anybody’s guess.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”
W.B. Yeats
