This title looks more like a title of a youtube video of a standup guy. While we look at it from a higher perspective, situation within the country looks more laughable. Only if one could make a video and publish.
Let me first set up the context.
A judgemental society. while in the recent time, specifically in last decade, we have become more aware and acknowledging towards the society’s judgmental nature, and by society, we usually mean older generation. However, the problem is, the millennial and gen-y are mostly concerned about the things they are at the receiving end for, but remain oblivious to their own judgments. Let’s take a controversial example. Women have been at receiving end for being judged with loose character for being too open. Society’s mistake was to not keep up with the pace the world was (or is ) changing. However, on the other hand, for any random incidents involving men, many women happen to ultimately judge them for being pervert. Several incidents in recent time have come up where men have been victim of such media trial, mostly (though not only) involving women journalist. Again, one might argue, that more incidents have been proven to be true in the favor of women. But then, it does not justify that even if the ratio is 99:1. As they say, two wrongs do not make one right.
Well moving on to next topic, talking about selective activism, there can be no better example than India’s. Heavily contributed by the media, followed by politicians, and last but not the least, half-known celebs. There will be no dissent when I say Indian media is one of the most biased groups in the world, be it the pro govt ones or the pro opposition ones. Seems about right when you look at the major media houses being funded / operated by the people related to one or the other political party. Next in the list, politicians, who have their obvious reason. And then comes the worst of the lot, half-known celebs. I fail to understand how people can still fall for those out of work actors, mostly just 10th pass, with IQ less than that of an ape, pretentiously raking up the issues of their interests. Even for those who are not even that good the actors on-screen as well. I mean HOW?
Vigilante justice, seems to be taken over the India uniformly. This is probably the first generation who has their parents born after Independence or Emergency. This generation had never seen or heard the story of large scale revolt by public. But after the massive and impactful Anti-Corruption protests, young generation has come to know of a ‘new’ method. And not only that, they seem to be fascinated by it greatly. Gather in number, hold a mic, attract some cameras or even famous social media pages. And voila. The perfect recipe. Oh wait. Salt was not added. Actually, a silent protest by a non-affluent veteran, probably under developed students cant grab the attention. So? Let’s add some provocative statements and you are done. If you can add some chaos and confrontation, even better. Except a recent actually silent but successful protest by farmers in Maharashtra, there is no other example of a protest without the above two elements.
Under developed brain, borrowing the term from the above, this seems to be another concern in recent times. There is a reason why we call brain of a kid (or some adults) as underdeveloped. It has not been developed enough to understand certain aspect of a system as large as a life-size globe. For example, while I was a kid, every other kid, seem to have an opinion about why people are doing harmful things. Why the adults can keep India Pakistan from the war, Or why do people throw garbage here and there, or why people can’t properly destroy industrial waste. But when teacher asked back, what would you do to improve the situation, not a single kid would have any answer. I, along with the the whole class, didn’t know back then that kids can be famous without doing anything but just for being a victim (Malala) or just by reiterating a problem (Greta Thunburg). But thank god, Indian students, specifically from FTII and JNU seem to understand this well. Teacher is bad, gives assignments, let’s protest and grab some attention.
These four things, even if they seem unrelated, in conjunction, pose very serious problems. Lets see them together.
The recent rape incident of Hyderabad, had refreshed the memory of horrific Delhi rape and murder case of 2012. Co-incidentally, the 2012 case had also been in news recently due to the mercy petitions of the convicts. Shockingly, the case has not been concluded in 7 years which was supposed to run on fast track. As soon as the news of shocking Hyderabad incident, where the rapists burnt down the body of the doctor, spread across the social media, everyone was wishing for painful and exemplary deaths for the criminals. Surprisingly, police caught all the perpetrators within 24 hours. While it is admirable, if true, but then even more unexpectedly, all of the convicts, trying to flee the custody, die in an encounter while police were trying to ‘recreate’ the incident. Those voices have been silenced. Now the question is, what if police caught random people to save itself from the outrage that had started to spread, and killed them before the truth came out? Don’t pretend like this has never happened that the actions of police were doubtful. However, seeing the 2012 case still remaining unresolved, people were rejoicing considering the justice has been served. Or is it? If that was right, so should the students be who carried out protest following the execution of Afzal guru chanting slogans like ‘tere katil zinda hai’ even though it was a sentence followed by due procedure. But then none of even those who opposed the execution of Afzal and Yaqub like terrorist’s, raised any question about the encounter? Obviously it was not the thing that could attract the media attention. After all how much mileage could a non-dalit, non-muslim doctor have given to them? Not much right? Then even the half known celebs who went vocal to the extent of calling themselves ashamed of being Indian, when one such incident had happened in Jammu & Kashmir (read, the Aasifa case), were no where to be found. There were busy right? Or may be tired due to the protest just about a month before when they were outrageously active against cutting the Aarey forest for metro work. But that must be a right thing, no? while being quite in the past for the same thing when the forest cutting was carried out for film city?