Negativity breeds negativity

A lot has been written on social media on the rise or the absence of rise of intolerance in India recently. Going from several comments, many believe that the rise of intolerance is a mere myth.

I personally disagree. Yes, there were incidences of intolerance and appeasement politics in India for a long time, as in banning Rushdie or Jaimes Laine or digging the Wankhede pitch for the India-Pak match, amongst others. But majority of such incidences were predominantly limited to political parties/ religious groups and protests/ rallies organized by them. Most of the general population was unconcerned or, at worst, only silently supporting these actions. But you didn’t see the average Indian gunning for blood.

Now however, intolerance and radicalism has gone beyond the fringe groups, and seeped into many an average Indian-a scary phenomenon. Cold-blooded murder is not something which is easy to commit psychologically; it needs a pretty extraordinary inciting factor. But now we are reading about innocent people being killed in a trifle due to mere rumors and text messages. Isn’t that a rise in intolerance? There was so much hatred bred in them by the incessant negative media they were exposed to, that the tiniest inciting factor caused them to explode.

The only other time I have seen something similar was during the height of Raj Thackeray’s anti-Bihari campaign. I could see hatred and anger in the average Maharashtrian on the street then. And manifest it did, with one innocent Bihari killed in the train because, well, he was from Bihar. But that incident opened everyone’s eyes; people realized they had gone too far and the average Maharashtrians (hats off to them) themselves stopped the hate campaign; they stopped talking bad things about Biharis and stopped sharing messages with negative connotations on social media, and turned their backs on Thackeray. And things did calm down almost immediately.

This time however the juggernaut is still rolling on and on. After three deaths (or maybe more), there is no remorse or regret. Unlike the Maharashtrians then, many of us who do agree that these deaths are ‘unfortunate’,  still fail to admit that this polarization is the result of ‘divide and rule’ politics bred by religious fundamentalists. We do not realize that every time we share another negative message or article, or speak aloud against the artists’ protests, against SRK, against ‘presstitutes and libtards’, instead of speaking louder against the needless deaths, the clamping of freedom of expression, or the beef ban, they are feeding the growing negativity, and such ‘unfortunate’ incidents will continue to happen as a result. Let’s stop sharing the negativity for a month, and I am sure things will improve.

I do hope good sense prevails again, and quick