Social media and the emerging crisis of lynching in recent times

Following closely on the heels of cow vigilantism, mob-lynching - pursuant to fear-mongering spread by social media posts - has quickly become the new bane that modern India is having to grapple with. Of late, rumours of child lifters spread through Whatsapp have resulted in lynchings at various places in the country. Two of the latest incidents of lynchings, however, have compounded manifold the seriousness of the issue at hand.

In one of these incidents, Sukanta Chakraborty, was lynched by a mob on June 28 in a crowded market in Kalachchara area of South Tripura (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/four-policemen-suspended-over-lynching-of-anti-rumour-campaigner-5245989/). Incidentally, he was a part of a government announcement team that was hired by the authorities to dispel the rumours related to child abduction. He was killed in broad daylight in a crowded market area with the presence of policemen nearby, who were, however, unable to prevent the mob from carrying out the heinous act.

In the second such incident (among the several that have taken place throughout the country), five nomads of the Dongrinathpanthi Gosavi community were lynched by a mob at Rainpada village in Dhule district of Maharashtra (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/maharashtra-dhule-lynching-mob-thumbed-nose-at-police-they-are-dead-take-them-away-5243288/). All these five men had registered with the local police and had valid Aadhaar cards. At the time, they were locked inside a room by some good Samaritans so that their lives could be saved. This, however, could not prevent the mob from killing them. The most alarming aspect of this gruesome act, though, was that the murders were completed by the mob in the presence of police personnel, who were handed over the dead bodies by the mob only after ensuring that there were no signs of life remaining in the victims.

The common factor among these lynchings has been the spread of a certain kind of rumour through social media, mostly Whatsapp, which is circulated and re-circulated multiple times without anyone bothering to check the veracity of the message being circulated. In no time such messages go viral and create a pressing feeling of immediate panic and fear among the recipients who then indulge in such unthinkable violence. The monster that has been unleashed has now grown to such proportions that no amount of counter-efforts by the authorities seem to be working. On the contrary, those involved in spreading awareness are themselves becoming victims of these murderous mobs.

Mob psychology, also called as herd mentality, has been an area of interest for various scholars in multiple fields. The idea of a “group mind” or “mob behavior” was first put forward by 19^th century French social psychologists Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality). The results of one of the researches conducted by Leeds University demonstrated that it only takes 5% of confident looking and instructed people to influence the direction of the 95% of people in the crowd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality). Taking another example, the functioning of share markets, the world over, has always been susceptible to the vagaries of mob behavior.

With known and proven dangers of mob mentality, is there anything that could have been done or can now be done to discourage this dangerous behavior that is being observed with increasing frequency? I, for one, think the answer to the above question is in the affirmative.

One of the reasons for the fast-growing trend of mob violence that is being witnessed in our society, first in the case of cow vigilantism and now the lynchings based on rumours spread through social media, is the deafening silence of the authorities in power. The raging mobs enjoy a kind of impunity that encourages them to take the law in their own hands. One reason for this might be the sheer strength of numbers and the security that facelessness and namelessness guarantee. But the primary reason I think is the latent knowledge that this behavior might not have remained as condemnable as it should have been, that somehow it will eventually be accepted, after a few cursory noises are made, forgotten and even condoned. This belief is an indication of the kind of society that we are turning into, a society that attaches a minimum value to humanity and human lives.

The rampant misuse of social media is surely the immediate cause of the rise of this lynching phenomenon yet banning its use or trying to control it may only turn out to be temporary stop-gap solutions. The bigger requirement and challenge today is for us to think about the deeper values that we choose to cherish as a society. Do we want to repose our trust and faith in the time-tested values of humanity, empathy and inclusiveness or do we want to continue our march on the path of symbolism, divisiveness and sheer untruth? If we choose the former values, we might still be able to retain a hope of a future world that is livable, though we would have a lot of work to do towards achieving this aim for the sheer reason that we have come very far away from a society that cherishes such values. However, if we continue our march on a road that is built on the second set of values, it is very likely that we may not even have a world to live in for much longer. The choice is ours, and only ours, to make and the time is now. Hope we choose fast and wisely, lest we will have only ourselves to blame.