Editorial: Curb Intolerance, Not Comment

When the Shiv Sena supremo took ill last week and it became clear that he was now on his deathbed, the media and the Maharastra Government went on an overdrive and ended up whipping emotions to a frenzy. Mumbai, as per media reports and the street-to-street deployment of police, the nation was told, was tense. No one wondered aloud why there should be tension when the founder-Shiv Sainik was dying of natural causes. Sorrow one could understand, but why fear a backlash? And why was enough not being said about how illogical and ill-informed a backlash would be because there was no culprit (perceived or real) to lash out against?
That said, one also realises that mobs in our country have a disturbing track-record of receiving sad/ bad news with violence. Why, even Sikkim has taken to this lapse of reason with its susceptibility to post-poll violence when overall victory celebrations are routinely marred by resentful violence in pockets where minor battles were lost. But the Mumbai episode did not even have these minor issues at play in the run up to the passing away of the Shiv Sena chief. And yet, the city was tense throughout. It did not help that later the media, politicians, industrialists, and even filmstars eulogised the departed leader, each, obviously in a race to pay the richest tribute. What this achieved eventually was not just a celebration of the man, but also de facto justification of his ideology – an ideology of paranoia, intolerance, hate and macho parochialism. These might not be character traits with which most of the nation or even Mumbaikars are comfortable with, but is obviously an ideology which sells enough to win votes and receive the endorsement of the more powerful. Not only was the cremation accorded State Funeral status, it also received wall-to-wall coverage on television news, with one channel even claiming to have deputed 50 cameras and reporters to cover the ‘event’. The passing away was a significant moment for Mumbai and Maharastra no doubt, but was it of as staggering a national impact as the media coverage made it out to be? Obviously not, but that is the message that went out and must have also whipped up not only emotions, but also the brand of provincial pride that Shiv Sena promotes. And into this mess of priorities arrived a 21-year-old girl from Thane who logged into her facebook account and posted what many must have been thinking and some might even have posted. To her circle of friends in her online social network, she wondered aloud why when the death of thousands does not grind the city to a halt, should the passing away, by natural causes, of a politician demand such exaggerated mourning. A friend ‘liked’ the comment and before any of their other facebook friends could advise them to play safe, they were arrested by Maharastra Police on charges of promoting hatred between classes (Section 505[2] of the IPC) and posting offensive messages “through electronic communication that are grossly offensive or has menacing character... for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will” (Section 66A of the IT Act). That was not all. An orthopaedic clinic run by the uncle of the Facebook poster was also ransacked by apparently protesting Shiv Sainiks in mourning. Apparently, there is no private space among online tattlers in our country anymore.
It is plausible that the Shiv Sainiks would not have reverted to vandalism so early in the wake of the funeral had their ideology and past conduct [the party has been consistently violent since it was launched in 1966] not been so outrageously celebrated all over the media. The police response [to the facebook post] was expectedly over the top because they had been on their toes anticipating a violent mourning. They found a convenient hook in the obnoxious Section 66A of the IT Act which is invoked routinely to ‘protect’ the image of the influential and the powerful. Some recent invocations of this section to arrest individuals for private comments about public figures are: the 31 October 2012 arrest of an industrialist for tweeting about the wealth amassed by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram’s son; the 18 September, 2012, arrest of a lady in Chandigarh for posting abusive comments against the police on the Chandigarh traffic police website; and the arrest of a Kolkata University Professor on 13 April 2012 for sending an email of a cartoon that poked fun at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee. The nation would be served better if the passing away of Bal Thackeray was analysed not so much for the jingoistic rabble rousing skills of the man but for the incidents, born from the legacy he leaves behind and which many others continue promote, which followed and what they say about some of the things disturbingly wrong with politics and governance in the country. Admittedly, the scale is not a patch on what some self-professed secular groups have unloaded on the citizens of the country in the past, but the incidents are still disturbing signals on aspects which need correcting in the nation and among its leaders...