By Merlin Francis

Photo credits - The Charmer

Last evening, while travelling by auto, I had an interesting conversation with my auto driver. 

Auto Driver -  “Are you from Mumbai?”

Me - “I used to live in Mumbai before moving to Bangalore.”

Auto Driver - “I looked at you and guessed, you are from Mumbai.”

Me -  Just Smiled, wondering to myself, what made me look like someone from Mumbai.

Auto Driver - “Are you a Muslim?”

I was taken aback. Was it really important for him to know, what my faith was? Would my faith have made a difference to his attitude towards me?

This morning a friend tagged me on a Shahrukh Khan video on Facebook, the making of his Gerua song, asking me to watch it. The next instant, there is reply to her comment by some stranger stating “ Don’t watch if u r true indian.”

Really? Now I have to prove my Indianness by not watching movies of people I have grown up loving for who they are and for values they stand for, irrespective of their faiths.

When did our faith start defining us. When did we start judging others basis their religion?

Today the country is embroiled in the intolerance debate. We feel hurt when someone says we are intolerant, but like many other things in this country, even this issue was blown out of proportion. Those who started protesting against intolerance were protesting against the silence of the state in countering fringe elements who were dividing the nation; its inability to reign in those who were resorting to mob justice in the name of religion.

Our anger should have been focussed on them, these elements who do no good to the nation, other than creating an atmosphere of tension and strife.

Unfortunately, the political forces succeeded in deflecting the issue and in turning the intolerance debate on its head and attributing it to the people in general.

It offended us, the janta; We were never intolerant, we were regular people going about our lives, harming no one. The tag of being intolerant was unacceptable and we started fighting against the notion and anyone who mentioned, it existed.

In between all this, we missed the point that intolerance is not something you can measure statistically, most of it is a feeling born out of one’s personal experiences. It is a sense of things around you and the treatment meted out to you. It could vary from individual to individual.

I spent my childhood in Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh, a communally sensitive city. I have seen the city burn during the riots of 1984, and 1992-93. Even then I did not think, India was intolerant, because I saw how on each of these instances, the entire colony we lived in, people from different faiths, came together to protect each other. All the men (including my Dad) used to man the 500 family campus through the day and night. Not one family within our campus was harmed, even though outside the scenario was pretty gruesome.

Once while the riots of December of 1992, were yet to settle down, during a curfew break, I had to step out and walk a little distance to get some grocery, when a mob of rioters with swords in their hands surrounded me and started asking my name. I froze, not sure what to say, as they shouted and shook me, a man appeared out of nowhere and said, “Yeh hamari bachhi hai” (She is my daughter), “I am so and so, leave her.” He then drove a dazed me to the safety of my house.

That was the India I grew up in, I had no reason to fear. I still don’t have.

Communal disharmony is not new to India, our priced freedom from the British raj and history of finding our own identity as an independent nation is soaked in violence and bloodshed in the name of one’s faith. 68 years of our existence since, have been marked by many such communal riots and incidents that shook the very essence of a secular India envisaged in our Constitution; And yet, we managed to survive it all and have stayed as a single unit.

Then what has changed so much in the last few months that many in this country feel the need to raise their voice and say, they fear that the India we know is rapidly changing?

Take a moment and think, when did you sense intolerance growing in recent times? Was it while watching the prime time debate on National Television, or while reading through your social media timelines? Do you think you would have heard or known about some religious leader uttering some nonsense in some obscure corner of this huge country and felt outraged if not for your news anchor instigating you to take a stand, to share your opinion, to make your voice count? Nah! I don’t think so, you may have let it pass as just another aberration in a country like ours. Unfortunately today we live in an era, where the voices around us are more prominent, every passing thought is aired and finds a platform. In fact the more vicious it gets the more popular you will be.

I have lost respect for more people I follow on social media in last year or so, than I have in my entire life. The sensibilities and the thoughtfulness we may show offline seems to take a backseat when online.

The fourth estate the respected media has mastered the art of making national issues of otherwise irrelevant things. Media ethics has been at its lowest, there are absolutely no rules followed, when reporting news in a diverse country like ours, where one can never be too careful in hurting sentiments. Everything is twisted and blown out of proportion to garner TRPs, it could be a quote by the Home Minister or by a bollywood actor, as long as they can create a controversy around it and call for a debate on prime time, all is well.

Recently, in Mumbai in a Cinema theatre, a family was asked to leave because they refused to stand up for the National Anthem. Every media house that featured the story made it a point to mention the community the family belonged to again and again. As if the community they belonged to was the reason behind their decision to not stand for the anthem. Can one family represent the views of millions in this country? The social media took the cue and went berserk.

I think responsible journalism just breathed its last in this country. When and how did we become such petty minded is beyond me. Is it so difficult to see, we are being manipulated.

We live in times, where everything we read and hear should be taken with a pinch of salt. A news is only as good as its virality quotient. Sane, matter of fact news reports rarely make for viral content.

Emerging trends in news reporting will make you question the little credibility enjoyed by the fourth estate today. According to the new policy introduced recently by a leading daily, 25 per cent of its journalists’ paychecks will be now be dependent on their social activity online; which includes ‘breaking news on whatsapp groups’, ‘online first’ articles, ‘at least one comment on an article and their timely response to it’ and  ‘number of tweets per day’. It is not too difficult to imagine, the outcome of such salary clauses on the quality of content across the virtual space, we will get to see in the coming days.