When a text can trigger a lynching: WhatsApp and incendiary messages in India
reuters.com
reuters.com
I usually tell people not to believe anything that comes on WhatsApp, because that's how low the general quality of conversation on it happens to be when it's looked at in totality.
The Indian government has been curbing free speech and attempting to increase its control on speech over time. People have been wrongly arrested and punished for liking something on Facebook, forwarding something on WhatsApp (that those in power don't like), etc. These incidents only serve to add more fuel to the government and many citizens who actually support higher control and monitoring of all conversations.
In the last four years of this central government, the rhetoric of "you don't have to worry if you have nothing to hide" has been doing the rounds among many citizens who would otherwise not support such measures if some other parties were in power. It's as if they can't see the issues or don't want to see the issues.
If not for the Supreme Court, which runs on its own pace and rhythm, India would've become an authoritarian "democracy". The only hope, IMO, lies with the judiciary. No political party is different on these lines. Whoever comes to power wants more control and power.
Without better education and awareness (with even the so called educated people falling hook, line and sinker to fake news), there's not much hope. It's worrisome how much ammunition these incidents provide to the government to curb speech.
P.S.: India has a restricted form of free speech, where vague terms like public order, affecting the sentiments of others on religious grounds, and such can be legally used to deny speech and also punish people arbitrarily.
P.P.S: India doesn't yet have a data privacy law either. The very concept of privacy was laughed at for quite sometime, until August 2017 when a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court declared that the constitution, through various articles, does grant privacy as a fundamental right.
That's putting it mildly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2017/india
https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/29/india-shut-off-internet-...
Unlike USA India does not have any right "against government". For example while American bill of rights mostly goes like this "Congress shall not pass any law restricting ....."
All Indian rights have a bottom section that says.
Indians have right to X. Nothing in this subsection will prevent government from passing any law that violates this section.
All Indian constitutional rights are essentially "as long as government likes it".
> The Indian government has been curbing free speech and attempting to increase its control on speech over time.
Any specific examples please?
> If not for the Supreme Court, which runs on its own pace and rhythm, India would've become an authoritarian "democracy"
That's a very stretchy argument. India is not even 2% closer to authoritarian state and with 10's of political parties and a very strong democracy, I don't think we need to worry about that.
> India has a restricted form of free speech, where vague terms like public order, affecting the sentiments of others on religious grounds
Every country has that. Go say like "X religion is bad or the way things happen with Y religion people is crazy". You don't get to use your freedom of speech to incite anger in the masses.
> India doesn't yet have a data privacy law either
This is true. India should have a privacy law and I hope it comes sooner than later. But, India is just getting there in terms of digital penetration. So it will take time obviously. Just don't look at the West and feel bad.
No they don't. The US is pretty unique in having absolute freedom of speech, but plenty of countries leave religion unprotected.
You can, ie, argue how death penalties should be applied to politicians who violate a certain rule.
You cannot and should not be able to threaten one specific individual. If anything, we need more of that kind of enforcement. So many deaths could be prevented if only all jurisdictions handled this matter as seriously as the Secret Service does.
EDIT: wording
However, the act of threatening someone is punishable, and it does not matter whether they are a politician or an ordinary person. What matters is that you committed the act of threatening to kill someone, and that is a crime regardless of the medium or act through which the threat is conveyed.
Does hate speech against a religious community protected under freedom of speech in the US? Because my comment earlier was in that context.
[+]Generally, under First Amendment law, such speech is treated as both speech and as action, and it is the action of inciting violence that is punished.
Fixed that for you. It's far beyond WhatsApp, it's every social media site, every fake news site, almost everything. Assume everything is fake until proven otherwise.
Lynchings do not get triggered by text. Indian people, even the poorest ones are not that stupid. Most often it is a case of genuine crime that the government fails to address. Recently two people of lower castes were badly beaten up for "using water of higher caste".[1] In reality the owner of the well was of even lower caste. The boys were swimming and pissing in the only well the entire region had of drinkable water. After several complains and requests the owner took matters into his own hands.
For almost every single lynching that media reports as "whatsapp driven", the further detailed investigations point out either deep personal grudge, network of crimes such as cow thefts or pure political murder disguised as mob justice. I have not come across 1 single instance were people just killed someone for a whatsapp message.
[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...
What are you even trying to argue ? That the lynchings might have legitimate reasons ?
Doesn’t change the fact that they are lynchings.
Many parts of rural India are quite lawless and mob justice is the rule. You can be killed for the mere suspicion of having killed a cow.
Now fake videos circulating via WhatsApp have worsened the problem.
Even a cursory google search can find evidence of WhatsApp lynchings
But what you are saying is also true. Do you think it's only India/Indians though?
But we don’t need to be defensive either. India is the largest functioning democracy on the planet and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
Some international exposure on such problems might atleast convince those in charge to do a better job keeping things under control.
If India wants to join the league of the US EU etc then we must be prepared to be judged on those metrics.
China is getting more autocratic by the day and apart from the occasional post no one is as concerned because it isn’t really expected of them to hold up to democratic ideals.
Sorry. I do not agree at all. You think India can crawl on all 4 and these countries will give India a seat at the white people's club ? India will not win by playing into the hands of euro-us centrism. Our problems are ours to solve and US/UK etc. should butt out.
This isn’t about a seat at the white peoples club either.
International pressure has achieved many productive outcomes like the ending of Apartheid for example.
> Many parts of rural India are quite lawless and mob justice is the rule
I am the one who is living in rural India, they are not lawless provinces of Afghanistan. Most Indian villages have strong social structures, local laws and ways to resolve disputes even outside government run courts. I am claiming that foreign media just dumbs down things that they can not understand without putting efforts to find facts.
Are you going to trust BBC on issues that happen in India ? Is there any chance that the BBC rep himself is simply fabricating a story over phones ?
> 2 Dalits caned, paraded naked in Maharashtra for swimming in well of upper caste man
and you said the two were boys, so is it true that this guy caned and paraded two boys naked around the village for messing with his well? If so, I think this only confirms the foreign media's narrative.
I wonder why this logic is rarely applied to the second amendment? Guns can be used for tragic purposes, but also allow vulnerable people to defend themselves when the police can't or won't. Nobody is really sure whether they can prevent the next tyranny, but we're pretty sure that tyrants or slaveowners don't want their subjects armed.
I suppose its a good way to test one's position for consistency for such subjects. Apply the same argument of freedom/regulation to subjects like free speech, guns, privacy laws, drugs, throw in any other issue that's close to you etc.
That’s not to say guns aren’t important, or rights to guns shouldn’t be protected. It is saying however that comparing speech and guns makes apples and oranges comparisons look downright apt.
I’m not prepared to argue in favor of that, but without it, there is no real argument that some man-portable guns represent a credible self defense when compared to a government. If we look out another hundred years when robots are the majority combatants of developed nations, the issue becomes even more difficult to manage. The argument can still be made that a well armed populace wouldn’t be confronted by a well armed military as in the US declaring martial law and the army being turned loose. I’ve heard staunch 2nd amendment advocates point to insurgencies in everything from Vietnam to Baghdad as examples of how a relatively lightly armed populace can hold off the US. Even if we accept that st face value, the proposition certainly dies in the face of automated warfare.
You point out some differences, but who's to say those mean one is a right and one is not?
You could say something similar about abortion, for instance. Throughout most of history abortions were not available and certainly not in a safe form. But now they are recognized as a right.
It’s possible to be far more permissive with freedom of speech than it is with free access to modern weaponry.
Tyrants and slaveowners always want some of their subjects armed. People often cite Nazi Germany as an example of tyranny via gun control, but it's just as much an example of tyranny via gun ownership - the two went very much hand in hand. They armed their supporters while disarming their opponents.
For every person who owns a gun hoping to fight against tyranny, there's a person who owns a gun hoping to become a tyrant.
Police can get off-roster pistols and standard-capacity magazines and AR15s in California. People with the last name Trump or Feinstein are able to get carry permits, while normal citizens can't.
In the current internet environment, it's best to assume everything seen, found, rumored, or heard online is fake until proven otherwise.