Author: Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil

Kerala Convention Centre Blasts: The Reichstag Fire That Wasn’t

The Sangh parivar became excited when a bomb exploded at a prayer convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kerala. The spontaneous solidarity and almost visceral rejection of fascist designs by its political class, its vernacular media and its people helped Kerala narrowly dodge a cataclysm.

In February 1933, around a month after Adolf Hitler secured the chancellorship of the Weimar Republic through democratic elections, an anarchist set fire to the Reichstag, the German parliament building.

The new regime that had already initiated the installation of a fascist state pounced on the Reichstag fire and attributed it to communists and other political opponents.

This event was used to justify the issual of the draconian ‘Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State’, which suspended civil liberties, followed by the Enabling Act, which concentrated power with Hitler and accelerated the transformation of Germany into a brutal ethno-nationalist dictatorship.

On October 29, 2023, the Sangh parivar became excited when a bomb exploded at a prayer convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a marginal Christian sect in Kerala, that tragically killed four and injured dozens.

The unique demography of the state and the frustrating commitment of large sections of Hindus to secularism meant that, to win elections, the Sangh had to attract Christian voters into their fold.

The same Sangh that demonises and assaults Christians in most other regions in the country has nurtured a category of “Chri-sanghis” as a shrill and viscerally anti-Muslim voice to break the longstanding alliances among minorities.

Conveniently, the event also happened in Kalamassery, a pocket numerically dominated by Muslims.

This bombing tragedy was shaping nicely for the Sangh parivar as their Reichstag Fire. It is in the nature of fascist movements to instil fear among common people, intimidate opponents and usurp the state machinery where electoral oppositions are formidable. They are confident of their proficiency to widen social cleavages, organise street violence and engineer communal riots.

Given the bleak electoral chances in Kerala, President’s Rule was not a far-fetched hope. This was an opportunity they had been waiting for.

Disappointment

The entire Sangh establishment immediately swung into action, salivating and laser-focused. The BJP’s vice-president K.S. Radhakrishnan rushed to note in alarmist tones that Kalamassery has a history of extremist activities and demanded investigation by Union government agencies as the state police had failed.

Sandeep Varier, another prominent BJP leader, posted ignorantly on Facebook that Jehovah’s Witnesses was the same as Judaism, and linked the blast to Hamas.

The most virulent and consequential post was by Union minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who posted this:

He went much further in an interview with ANI to claim that the blasts were directly linked to anti-Israel events being held in the state. This view spread in the rest of India and reinforced the systematic efforts underway by the Sangh and its affiliates to malign Kerala.

Disappointingly for the Sangh, the perpetrator surrendered within hours and turned out to be nothing of the type they wanted – an unassuming English teacher, Dominic Martin, who was a disillusioned member of the sect. Not the ideal name or profile for a terrorist.

The Sangh campaign petered out, with many deleting their tweets and backtracking from their positions. As palpable as the dejection of the Sangh parivar was the huge wave of relief that swept over the citizens of Kerala and mainstream political establishments.

A few factors that contained the Sangh’s designs stand out.

What worked

The role of the opposition parties led by the Congress in thwarting the Sangh’s design turned out to be crucial. The maturity of its senior leaders to keep aside intense rivalries and provide mature and measured statements brought the majority of the public together against hate.

The leader of the opposition, V.D. Satheesan, when responding to the media in the immediate aftermath prioritised medical care for the victims instead of pointing fingers at the government. He underlined that this was an issue to be handled with utmost care and warned of the dangers of spreading misinformation.

The all-party meeting called by the government was another venue for the display of unity against polarising misinformation and curtailing the tensions being fuelled by the Sangh’s apparatuses.

The roasting that Chandrashekhar received at a press conference in Kochi for his communal statements was heartening. In these bleak times, when the media has become a lapdog of the regime, the moral outrage of mainstream journalists and their ability to speak truth to power was on full display.

Sharp questions forced Chandrashekhar to deny that his statements were communal. He tried in vain to convince others that his statement was about Islamic radicalisation in the state and its consequences, rather than related to this particular event.

In spite of Martin’s confession and arrest, Chandrashekar desperately clung to the hope that future investigations would reveal an Islamist conspiracy and debunk the “narrative being peddled” that the blast was the work of one person.

It is hard to remember a similar instance in the recent past where mainstream journalists held a minister in the present Union government to this level of scrutiny.

The seriousness with which the state government dealt with the blast also reveals an acuity about the political climate and the Sangh’s capabilities for organising violence.

Senior police officials and ministers were dispatched within hours. The health minister was at the forefront, organising emergency medical care. The chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, pulled no punches and accused Chandrashekhar of spitting the ‘poison’ of hate. The Kerala police followed up by registering cases against Chandrasekhar and others in the Sangh for the incitement of riots and disruption of order.

This absolute defence of secularism, intolerance of hate speech and the willingness to take on the Sangh using both political and legal strategies is something that other state governments could emulate.

Also Read: The ‘Real’ Kerala Story: Tales of Communal Harmony From Ground Zero

The response underlined the significance of vernacular languages in resistance. Some of the standard polarising idioms of Hindutva just don’t translate well. The equivalent translations of direct anti-Muslim rhetoric perfected in Hindi and other northern Indian languages (“Goli maro salon ko”, for example) sound laborious in the Malayalam that is written or spoken in the public sphere.

The presence of several deep-rooted and trusted vernacular news media organisations meant that there was no vacuum for social media, the Sangh’s favoured tool for its propaganda, to fill.

The power of the vernacular was on display when Chandrashekhar’s patchy grasp of Malayalam forced him to use broken phrases and wild gestures in the press conference; a stark disadvantage in comparison to the majority of home-grown politicians who comfortably provide sophisticated responses.

This suggests that the resistance to Hindu majoritarianism, which has failed to take off from predominantly English-speaking spaces until now, maybe more effective when launched from vernacular spaces.

A near miss

This event should be seen as a warning, a near miss. Any delay in the surrender and arrest of the accused would have allowed the Sangh to gleefully wreak havoc. The spontaneous solidarity and almost visceral rejection of fascist designs by its political class, its vernacular media and its people helped Kerala narrowly dodge a cataclysm.

This solidarity and alertness should be celebrated but also strengthened.

The outcome for the people of Kerala may not be the same in future. The next version of the Reichstag Fire can get fuelled into a conflagration that will burn down everything they value into ashes.

Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil is a faculty at the Centre for Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

CPI(M)’s Row With Asianet Shows How Profit-Hungry Channels Exploit Outrage on TV Debates

In the current context, these debates serve the same purpose as gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome: promoting a violent spectacle of duelling parties to distract the public from serious policy failures.

In prime-time TV news debates in Kerala, a scam surrounding a gold-smuggling case has usurped the COVID-19 pandemic to become the primary focus of public attention.

For over two weeks now, evening news debates have been centred around only one issue: the extent of the involvement of the chief minister’s office. The allegations aren’t entirely misplaced and cannot be dismissed, given that a key bureaucrat and a confidant of the chief minister maintained relations with at least two of the main accused persons. The level of involvement, however, remains uncertain.

Since the smuggling of contraband involved the consular offices of the UAE and the potential end-use in terrorism (both conventional and financial), the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over the investigations.

Given the murky nature of the case – and the opposition’s desire to attack the state government at a time when its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak has drawn international praise – it was inevitable that the issue would come to dominate the evening news debates.

The familiar format, which lasts for an hour, features four or five speakers from the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF, Congress, BJP and another category called “political observers”. Unsurprisingly, attacks by the non-LDF speakers against the government take up most of the time. The one-hour format does not allow the LDF speakers more than ten minutes to respond.

Youth Congress activists protest outside the police commissioner’s office demanding the resignation of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Kochi. Photo: PTI

After two weeks of continuous engagement, the CPI(M) decided to boycott Asianet’s prime-time debate, which has the largest viewership in Kerala. The party said it was frustrated about not being given sufficient time to respond to the allegations. It argued that the viewers were being misled by presenting partisan individuals as neutral observers. In addition to the attacks from opposition spokespersons and observers, the news anchor also had his own monologues and interrupted government spokespersons when they attempted to respond while allowing opposition spokespersons unhindered speaking time.

Also read: Kerala: Contraband Gold Emerges Biggest Threat to Pinarayi Govt’s Popularity

For the time being, CPI(M) has chosen to continue participating in debates on other news channels including major channels like Manorama News and Mathrubhumi which are also aligned with anti-Left politics in the state. Thus, the boycott appears to be a tactical move to corner Asianet without giving the impression that the government has reasons to avoid any and all press scrutiny. In addition, the party has started putting out a series of videos on social media titled Satyanantaram (“post-truth”) to counter the mainstream media’s narrative.

Saving democracy or a business model?

Asianet’s chief editor, the widely-respected M.G. Radhakrishnan, responded to CPI(M)’s boycott by comparing it to the attacks on press freedom by right-wing populists – explicitly referring to Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Recep Erdogan – and their preference for monologues through social media, where they are not questioned.

What Radhakrishnan ignored was the fact that for months, the chief minister had actually been giving hour-long press briefings on a daily basis where he fielded a host of unscripted questions from journalists. He turned a blind eye to the fact that CPI(M) spokespersons were present on rival channels, and also chose to defend the Asianet anchor’s belligerently partisan approach as normal in the contemporary debate format.

On closer examination, Radhakrishnan’s analogies and unwillingness to self-reflect seem to have been triggered less from a concern for democratic ideals and more from desperation to preserve a lucrative business model.

Television debates and cable news serve the same purpose that gladiatorial contests did in ancient Rome – a violent spectacle of two or more groups duelling that distracts the public from the serious shortcomings of rulers. Viewers remain glued to these debates hoping for the spokespersons representing their parties to deliver “killer arguments” that “demolish” opponents. A well-articulated insult or contempt for the opposition by the spokesperson helps reiterate their own choice of political affiliation. These negative emotions, particularly outrage, can be addictive which, for commercial TV channels, translate into high TRP ratings and advertising revenue.

Also read: COVID-19 Tracing: How the Kerala Media Missed the Chance to Properly Debate Privacy

Without a CPI(M) representative, Asianet’s debates fail to ignite fervour in rival spokespersons, the anchors, and the anti-Left viewers who yearn to see the ruling party’s spokesperson publicly mocked. They also risk repelling the substantial left-leaning viewership in Kerala.

This is a channel owned by the BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar who has been quoted saying that he expects editors “to do what you have to do to get a large share of the market” even if that means maintaining a “leftist slant”. Radhakrishanan, who was brought in by Chandrashekhar, must only be too aware of these expectations.

Whether the CPI(M)’s boycott will make a dent in Asianet’s viewership is yet to be seen. The strategy seems to be working to the extent that anchors at Mathrubhumi and Manorama, who were equally disdainful, have become notably cautious with caustic remarks – one anchor apologised immediately after instinctively suggesting that the CPI(M) spokesperson is a regular “nuisance”. After all, none of the media houses can afford to ignore their commercial interests.

The episode should also bring into focus the futility of news debates for political communication or engagement with the press. The framing of news stories to provoke party spokespersons into delivering incendiary remarks, ad hominem attacks, misinformation and mockery against each other prevents a deeper analysis of serious issues. This also has serious consequences for society.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Photo: PTI

Television debates are polarising

It is wrongly assumed that public deliberations in any form are good for democracy. Political scientists have found that a certain kind of debate can lead to intractable polarisation, particularly when the groups are homogeneous. Individuals competing to signal deeper allegiance can push the group towards extreme positions that were not under consideration before the discussions began. The preferences of a group can also restrict the range of information and arguments that are considered for discussions. As a result, the discussions will progress only in the direction to which the majority of the group members were already inclined.

This means that debates which are framed for sensationalism – where the majority of time is spent on a single perspective (“CM must resign”) with blatantly partisan anchors who prevent alternative viewpoints from even being articulated – are bound to turn into echo chambers that move to the extremes.

Also read: For the Media to Regain Credibility, the Business of News Needs to Change

Individuals also engage in ‘motivated reasoning’ – a way of interpreting evidence such that their identities are not disturbed. Motivated reasoning is common irrespective of their position on the left-right spectrum of political affiliations. Furthermore, the source of corrections to worldviews also matters. Corrections made by sources that are seen as affiliated to antagonistic groups fail to make an impact on core supporters of a group.

TV debates are fabricated to fuel combativeness and antagonism between spokespersons and in turn to push the viewers, who are already divided into insular groups, further apart. Claims that such debates can ‘expose’ the lies of other political groups and transform public opinion are misplaced. Rather than strengthen democracy, these kinds of television debates widen social cleavages and serve anti-democratic political agendas.

All deliberations need not be detrimental of course. Discussions amongst participants who are sufficiently diverse and agree to debate with mutual respect and tether their argument to reason and evidence are even essential for democracy. Debates should become venues where citizens learn to oppose political adversaries without hating or fearing their existence. Social polarisation can be bridged if participants consciously choose to ‘argue to learn’ from each other, rather than ‘argue to win’. However, such standards are anathema to contemporary TV debates, which are designed to keep participants and viewers outraged and polarised.

Jackals and goats

There is an insightful story in the Panchatantra where a jackal eagerly licks up the blood that splattered from a fight between two goats. This proverbial jackal was not, however, guilty of making the goats fight each other. The same cannot be said of contemporary editors and anchors of commercial television news channels who script debate topics and then egg on confrontations between political spokespersons to ensure a steady flow of TRP-driven advertising revenue.

The contempt, hatred, and disdain for facts displayed by spokespersons in a debate is spilling over to societies and widening divisions within families, among friends, colleagues and neighbourhood associations. In effect, in their eagerness to ensure profits, these channels are creating television spectacles that pre-empt any form for solidarity needed to address the pressing issues of our time.

Also read: Frenzied Media Trials Are All About Audience Numbers

In this context, the CPI(M)’s decision to boycott is a reminder that gladiatorial television debates merely masquerade as public service and are not necessary – and indeed are inimical – for democracy. Other political parties, particularly those whose agendas are not premised on divisiveness and misinformation, should also consider avoiding such debates. Boycotting the format into oblivion can create space for reinstating democratic solidarity among citizens.

To be sure, political parties should be subjected to intense public scrutiny in a democracy. One-on-one unscripted conversations with incisive journalists, panel discussions and old-fashioned press meets can serve democracy without the spectacle of individuals in responsible positions going for each other’s jugular night after night.

Greedy jackals and head-butting goats cannot build a democracy.

Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil is a faculty member at the Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

COVID-19 Tracing: How the Kerala Media Missed the Chance to Properly Debate Privacy

Allegations of corruption took centre stage as TV anchors took up the opposition’s charges on the government contract given to Sprinklr, leaving fundamental questions on privacy in the time of pandemics unasked.

Primetime television debates in Kerala often tackle progressive issues much before other regions in the country. Already in early April, the privacy of citizens’ health data and mode of engagement with private aggregators rocked the public sphere. Nowhere else in the country had this issue – privacy – moderated a government’s efforts to control the pandemic.

The trigger was the Left-front led government’s decision to engage Sprinklr – a New York-based company – for analyzing health data and contact tracing. The use of aggregated contact and mobility metrics using private firms has become an unavoidable, even central feature of the coronavirus response across the world. The opposition, however, objected to the engagement with a private firm, that too an American one, and alleged impropriety in the contract. The allegations were eagerly and uncritically absorbed by the trio of major Malayalam news channels Asianet, Mathrubhumi and Malayala Manorama.

The media frenzy culminated in petitions in the high court. For a few days, the government stood to lose the public recognition it had received, even if grudgingly, for its response to the pandemic. It was let off only after the high court accepted the government’s argument that the decision to engage Sprinklr was taken with the intention of preventing the spread of the virus and the assurance that safeguards to protect personal data are in place.

This episode exposed a troubling feature of mainstream television news channels in Kerala – an unwillingness or incapacity to handle a technically and philosophically freighted issue like data privacy, requiring specialised knowledge and patience to disentangle. Devoid of both, and inclined towards sensationalism, the lines of inquiry adopted by these channels were particularly harebrained and untenable.

In doing, so they wasted an opportunity to confront serious and nuanced questions being asked across the world: How can privacy be preserved when responding to COVID-19 involves contact tracing? How to prevent the inescapable encroachment on privacy from turning into a permanent erosion?

Sprinklr signed a deal with the Kerala government.

The “issue”

By early March, projections for the spread of COVID-19 in Kerala painted a dire situation: soon, 8 million cases could be recorded, with 0.8 million possibly requiring hospitalization, estimates suggested. Though Kerala’s robust public health and local government bodies – not to mention the unique social solidarity and strong political leadership – helped in limiting the spread, collection and processing of information was a struggle. Data on international passengers from different airlines and the Bureau of Immigration, location data for contact tracing and surveillance of patients in isolation, information from hospitals on the availability of beds and ventilators were in multiple formats. Aggregating them into actionable information manually was taking days and risked duplication of the data.

It was at this point that the decision to engage Sprinklr was taken. The state had no capacity to develop the required software, at least not with such short notice. Sprinklr was already in talks with the government to start a venture in the state. Its offer to provide its propriety software free of cost was swiftly agreed to and the purchase concluded in a couple of days.

Also Read: How Can COVID-19 Contact Tracing Techniques be Formulated Without Violating Privacy?

On April 10, the opposition parties held a press conference alleging privacy breach and corruption in the contract with Sprinklr. The targets were obvious – the popularity of the government and of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who holds the electronics and information technology portfolio. Fancying an opportunity, they opted for overkill by alleging that the personal information of 8 million ration cardholders had already been transferred to Sprinklr, and that the chief minister’s daughter, an IT professional, played a key role in the ‘deal’.

Ever since the pandemic gripped the state, the usually volatile prime time shows were refreshingly sober discussions featuring doctors and public health officials and administrators informing viewers of medical aspects of the virus, latest research findings and the government’s responses. Daily briefings involving  matter-of-fact answers – initially by health minister K.K. Shailaja and later by Pinarayi himself – had replaced the talk shows in popularity.

Once Sprinklr entered the public domain, the briefings turned combative. Journalists were hell-bent on extracting a response from the CM on corruption allegations, particularly those raised against his daughter. He dismissed, literally laughed off, the questions and requested the journalists to ask for or find evidence on their own. News anchors of prime-time debates  – Newshour on Asianet,  Super Prime Time on Mathrubhumi, and Counter-Point on Malayala Manorama – assumed an air of indignation. One could almost hear the collective sigh of relief that things had returned to normal.

Shockingly, none of these journalists or anchors ever bothered to ascertain the veracity, or at least the plausibility, of the claims against the government. Indeed, the corruption and nepotism allegations, including the transfer of ration card data, turned out to be baseless (for now) and were not included in court petitions. Only the allegations of administrative lapses in engaging Sprinklr and risks of a privacy breach were seriously pursued.

The electronics and information technology department, entrusted with answering these technical matters, published the contract documents online and gave extensive live interviews with the three main news channels. The lines of scrutiny deployed fell mostly flat. Senior journalists kept arguing that standard procedures were not followed when engaging Sprinklr, seeming or feigning ignorance of the powers granted to Central and state governments under emergencies. Their claims that the data was being gathered without consent was also proved wrong – the usual procedures for consent in online forms were followed. The lazy conjecture that Sprinklr, an American company, would store its data in the US also turned out to be false – following national localisation guidelines, data was stored in servers in India.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In short, the government asserted that its decisions were legally sound and made under “extraordinary circumstances”. Like the lockdown restrictions on assembly and mobility (both fundamental rights), the state argued, somewhat controversially, that privacy too had to, and can be, curtailed under pandemics.

The interviewers and hyperventilating anchors had no coherent response to this position. Questions that should have been pursued, but were not, included whether the assumptions underlying the projections used to justify the decision were sound, whether the prevailing process of informed consent is adequate, whether data can be considered secure just because the servers are located in India and what is to be done with the data after the pandemic. Moreover, they simply lacked the wherewithal or interest to direct public debates towards discussions on the contours of proportionality which might have helped them raise a more robust challenge on the privacy front.

Setting limits of extraordinariness.

Though even privacy advocates acknowledge the need to enable contact tracing and data analysis, usually involving private firms, for containing the pandemic, they are alert to the huge risk that once compromised, privacy might never be recovered. As a recent statement by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) clearly notes, data protection need not be sacrificed under the shadow of a pandemic. They recommend data management systems that will not be “misused or extended far beyond their initial purpose and lifetime of the crisis” and suggest their  “graceful dismantling” after the pandemic.

A consortium of epidemiologists from the Harvard School of Public Health and private firms have placed concerns around privacy at the forefront of contact tracing procedures. Private firms collecting data spike it to prevent even researchers from identifying personal information. They have created thoughtful restrictions on public access to aggregate level and not to the individual. Individual level information can lead to, among other things, profiling of poorer neighbourhoods that are typically unable to maintain social distancing.

Also Read: How Reliable and Effective Are the Mobile Apps Being Used to Fight COVID-19?

There is a real risk that these tech companies can become even more entrenched and powerful in the process. Apple, Facebook and Google are developing software ostensibly to facilitate the use of their data on customers for contract tracing. Public policies on engaging with these companies vary from rejection in the case of the UK, to partnerships in the case of Germany. Sensitive personal data collected by the Indian government is stored in Amazon’s servers. Privacy advocates are demanding legal frameworks that impose strict penalties for mishandling pandemic data.

Centralised data pooling would inevitably lead to surveillance creep – the possibility that data collected for the pandemic may be used in future for law enforcement by authoritarian governments to further violate civil liberties. It’s a misconception, often deliberately propagated, that anonymising data ensures foolproof protection – the unprotected data is still being held by someone. Lack of protocols preventing the state from requisitioning data from these firms and the use of services from shadowy firms involved in military surveillance and spyware make this concern grimmer.

To preempt a permanent erosion of privacy, experts have argued for decentralised models wherein data is stored in the individual’s devices and uploaded, with consent, when needed (for instance, only when a person is infected). No data is stored in a permanent server for later misuse. Tracing using Bluetooth technology is compatible with decentralised models and less intrusive as it only shares information on proximity between other phones, i.e. not the location data.

Experts have argued for decentralised models wherein data is stored in the individual’s devices and uploaded, with consent, when needed. Photo: Reuters

Both centralised and decentralised systems have their limits, however. Bluetooth systems can be hacked into through devices in the proximity, while centralised databases give more powers of surveillance to the state. The question really boils down to whether we trust each other or the state. In a society where, on the one hand, solidarities are frayed and, on the other, authoritarian states are using the pandemic to further trample on civil liberties, this dilemma is worth resolving or, at least, confronting.

In stark contrast to how debates unfolded in Kerala, politicians and firms around the world are not being allowed to get away with the argument that the “context is extraordinary”. Reputed news organisations are forcing sophisticated public debates on the adequate safeguards to limit the inescapable encroachments into privacy to what is absolutely required to respond to the pandemic. Not an inch more.

Also Read: Aarogya Setu: Six Questions for the Centre on the COVID-19 Contact Tracing App

A wasted chance

An opposition’s use of dubious strategies to tarnish a government’s success can be attributed to electoral ambitions. Troublingly, mainstream news channels in Kerala were cheerfully complicit spreaders of misinformation and clung onto a formulaic sensationalism. They missed an opportunity to raise the quality of public debate on privacy to the highest levels possible.

Understanding these issues and goading the public and the governments to confront the limits of extraordinariness would require intellectual effort not just from journalists but viewers too. The Sprinklr debate erupted at a time when, against the odds, Kerala had temporarily flattened the pandemic curve. A literate and apprehensive public under lockdown might have appreciated in-depth discussions on developing a privacy framework that takes into account the local specificities of the state.

Commercial and ideological interests of for-profit media have been blamed for the deteriorating standards of television journalism. But that is not the complete picture. The unwillingness of journalists to take the effort to focus, grasp, explain and re-imagine philosophically and technically freighted issues, particularly when the easy option to fuel conspiracies and trigger political slugfests are within reach, is also to blame.

Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil is a faculty member at the Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

What ‘Hate Speech’ Really Means, and How the Term Is Being Misused

The Sangh parivar and its acolytes have dislodged hate speech from its accepted uses in contemporary discourses, and deployed it in reverse.

Once again, supporters of social justice are bewildered and flailing for a response. For a fleeting moment after the pogrom in Delhi, it seemed as though the Sangh parivar – with unassailable access to resources and muscle power – would have to reckon with the legal and moral consequences of openly inciting and unleashing brutality on groups resolutely resisting the National Population Register-National Register of Citizens-Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The victims were wretchedly underprivileged and using their meagre resources to defend a fundamental human need — a status as equal citizens.

Briefly trapped by the norms of decency and forced to respect the rule of law, the regime has slithered out by unleashing propaganda, accusing the victims and rights activists of being equally responsible for both hate speech and violence: an audacious move that has caught everyone off guard.

Manufactured paralysis

Hate speech has stable uses in legal and moral discourses. Widely accepted meanings are “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination” or “insulting nouns for racial groups, degrading caricatures, threats of violence” and portrayals of groups as “animal-like and requiring extermination”.  And hate is just one of its triggers – hate speech can also be driven by contempt and by the intention to shock and to build group solidarity.  Political philosopher Bhikhu Parekh wrote recently that hate speech is objectionable because “it views members of the target group as an enemy within, refuses to accept them as legitimate and equal members of society, lowers their social standing, and in these and other ways subverts the very basis of a shared life”.

Notwithstanding this stability in language, hate speech is a controversial idea, particularly when juxtaposed with free speech. Libertarians have worried that its indiscriminate evocation can curtail free speech. Religious groups have objected to progressive uses of hate speech as an unfair and too-frequent ploy to restrict their genuine concerns from being raised. But even these critics did not challenge the meaning of the term – as texts and speeches emanating from dominant sections that target vulnerable groups (based on race, caste, religion, nationality, gender, sexuality).

Also read: In Backing Kapil Mishra, RSS Shows Riot Hand

In contrast, the Sangh and its acolytes have dislodged hate speech from its accepted uses in contemporary discourses, and deployed it in reverse. In their worldview, those who resist their ideology, such as vulnerable groups, beleaguered academics and activists fighting for social justice with shoe-string budgets are equally responsible for propagating hate speech and are anti-democratic.

This rhetorical move serves two purposes.

First, it creates a false equivalence between a slogan like “goli maro saalon ko” and the recitation of poetry, “Hum dekhenge” and calls for “aazadi”. The former is an incitement to violence by well-funded groups with the backing of the state machinery. The latter are expressions of helplessness under a totalitarian regime and urge for compassion and freedom from oppression. Given the equivalence, any legal action against the former should entail actions against the latter.

Through this cynically manufactured confusion, public outrage is dissipated, and the police and compliant judges are released from the pressure to do their duty. Agencies key to ensuring justice can feign paralysis, pointing to false moral dilemmas while indulgently winking at the unpunished instigators of violence who are emboldened to ratchet their hate speeches to an ever-higher pitch.

The second is a classic strategy used to trigger and rationalise genocidal violence. Research on the genocide in Rwanda uncovered a strategy called “accusations in a mirror” wherein the instigators of mob violence impute the intentions of violence to the victims – “the party which is using terror will accuse the enemy of using terror”. The genocides and pogroms are packaged as a necessary, pre-emptive strike to remove the threat to the survival of the dominant groups. “If we don’t, they will”.  This sort of mirroring also preceded and triggered the violence unleashed by the mobs in the violence that gutted Delhi and is echoed in its later justifications.

Perks of anti-intellectualism

Such disregard for linguistic and scholarly conventions for political gains is possible only for a social movement that is anti-intellectual at its core. Anti-intellectualism allows for the rejection of academic norms, particularly when the settled consensus disagrees with ideological foundations necessary for mobilisation. Unmoored from and ignorant of the demands of scholarship, the Sangh’s ideologues can use concepts and terms in ways that would be unacceptable in even an undergraduate class submission.

An example is the appropriation of descriptions by Eric Hobsbawm (no less) of strategies of demagogic dictators, dislodged from Marxist scholarship, to claim legitimacy for similar tactics used by the Hindutva politicians. Prominent spokespersons embedded in a firmament that relies on the use of social media to weaponise disinformation complain now that “social media platforms killed both truth and authenticity” and sagely observe that “half-baked information can be dangerous”. For them, the anti-NPR-NRC-CAA protesters, not the divisive law, are the real threats to multiculturalism! Senior globally respected scholars, negotiating with gritted teeth the ignominy of interacting with arrogant administrators with dubious or non-existent credentials, are “powerful elites”.

Also read: Impunity From Institutions of the State: The New ‘Niti’ for ‘Nyaya’

Hate speech and such distortions to the language of justice, as well as its propagation through social media platforms, are projected to increase globally. Meaningful regulations are unlikely when powerful interests – social media platforms and the government – benefit from emotion-fuelled sharing of hate propaganda. The massive disparity in resources for the sectarian agenda and guaranteed electoral returns will only make political communication in India increasingly venomous.

Making things worse, key institutions of justice – including the police and the courts – can no longer be expected to consistently ensure the rule of law. Instead of accepting their failure and complicity in the Delhi pogrom, these agencies are displaying more eagerness to offer security to the instigators, harass activists fighting to restore justice for the victims, and shut down news outlets that challenge the regime’s propaganda. The injustice aside, such acts are also a part of the repertoire to reverse the roles of oppressor and victim.

How do we, particularly students of politics, respond?

Take notes

There are responses for every scenario, even bleak ones. An example is the trigger behind a fascinating study called The Language of the Third Reich by Victor Kemplerer. As a scholar of linguistics and a Jew, Kemplerer observed the steady and systematic marginalisation of Jews as fascism tightened its grip on all facets of German society. Throughout the harrowing experiences of first losing his faculty privileges and then his teaching position, of observing colleagues, friends, and neighbours transform into passive observers and unreflective bigots, Kemplerer took meticulous notes of transformations to the language under the Third Reich.

He saw the “language of a clique becoming the language of the people” and both the beneficiaries and victims adopting the same language. Nazism had “permeated the flesh and blood of people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously”.

He noted with despair: “Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction set in after all….Making language the servant of its dreadful system, it procures it as its most powerful, most public and most surreptitious means of advertising”. He observed that, “the fear of the thinking man and the hatred of the intellect are revealed in a constant stream of new expressions”. Innocuous words like strafexpedition had entered the vocabulary to describe impromptu “punitive expeditions” by common people for recreational heckling of those opposed to the regime (not unlike the gau rakshaks composed mainly of lumpen unemployed youth seeking excitement and validation).

Also read: Tathagata Roy and the Normalisation of Hate Speech by Public Functionaries

Maybe we have arrived at a similar juncture? No amount of denial can hide the threats facing secular scholars and activists in contemporary India. The purge, as threatened, has begun and will only gather steam.

It is time to start recording for posterity the creeping viciousness of everyday language and its (mis)use in the service of fascism. A close scrutiny of everyday language will reveal how oppressors masquerading as victims appropriate the language of justice and how propaganda establishes this as common sense. Practices in the media, which desperately seek to appear neutral by providing space for bigots, should be called out for parroting the false equivalence propagated by fascists.

Taking notes will offer little or no comfort to the victims of hate speech. But when this phase of fascism ends (and it will!), there will be the important work of restoring sanity. After the Second World War, Kemplerer used his notes to identify fascist usages that had become embedded in public discourse. He noted that for the rebuilding of German society: “it isn’t only Nazi actions that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking, and its breeding ground: the language of Nazism”.

A similar future awaits; and for that we must be prepared with a meticulously compiled list of distortions to the language of justice.

Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil is faculty at the Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

The Spectre Haunting Hindutva: An Assertive Dalit Woman

Bindu Ammini has single-handedly braved the entire might of the Sangh, a neutered public, and an opportunistic state. She will never be forgotten.

The assault on Dalit gender equality activist Bindu Ammini, by a fervent Ayyappa devotee, reveals the fragility of the Hindu nationalist male ego and a deals a chink to the Hindutva armour.

Like other nativist and anti-pluralist projects, Hindutva is premised upon the restoration of a primeval order that involves the dominance of man over woman, father over son, savarna over avarna, avarna over Dalit, fair skin over dark, state over subjects, religion over law, priest over devotee, teacher over student.

These hierarchies are deemed a ‘natural state’ of affairs that pesky, allegedly Hindu-hating progressive social reformers have disrupted using ideas perceived non-“Indic,” such as equality and scientific temper.

Thus, denying women their right of worship at Sabarimala is indubitably a ruse to restore most of these hierarchies in one stroke. Borrowing the words of a BJP leader it is a “golden opportunity”.

Ayyappa’s pepper spray

The video of the attack on Bindu and its aftermath are fascinating reflections of the multi-faceted anxieties of/in majoritarianism.

We first see Bindu in all-black, exiting the office of the Kochi police commissioner (what better location to reassert the pre-eminence of the mob over law, but more on that later). A bearded devotee wearing the traditional saffron mundu (both beard and mundu are symbolic of Ayyappa devotees during the mandatory ritual purification for the divine trek) walks up to Bindu casually and suddenly pepper sprays her.

He actually used a pepper spray! I give you a few moments to absorb that.

The same pepper spray designed for single women like Bindu to defend themselves when venturing into desolate spaces. But here, that weapon of defiance against male aggression and entitlement, was deployed by a group of religious men against a single woman in broad daylight, right under the noses of journalists and policemen.

Also read: Sabarimala, in the Fading Light of Constitutional Values

How did Bindu react? If the expectation was fear, then prepare to be disappointed. Obviously rattled, she starts looking for her assailant in the crowd. The media personnel and the police gather around asking her what had happened; they have not yet seen the video of the attack.

By now, an angry crowd of devotees gathers around the equally angry Bindu who keeps repeating how her face became smeared with pepper.

“Drama! Drama!” the devotees scream in a frenzy, presumably expecting the crowd to believe that Bindu had applied harmless material on herself to garner attention. In response, Bindu takes some of the red gooey stuff from her face and applies it gently onto a skeptical devotee’s cheek.

Then she spots her attacker lurking in the area, runs towards him and whacks him on the back. Bewildered by this turn of events, this thick-set man, clearly bigger than her, moves quickly into the safety of the mob of devotees.

Bindu pursues her target and demands that the still unresponsive police arrest him. Her feisty and steady response enrage the mob even further. One of them with his arms around the shaken attacker (who is still holding the pepper spray canister!) shrieks “who are you to demand an arrest?”, using the derogatory “nee” in Malayalam.

The middle-aged devotee with a cheek smeared with pepper can then be seen complaining to the mob and the same hapless police officer that Bindu had slapped him. The devotees now rally to his defence and, bizarrely, accuse Bindu of assault.

“How dare you raise your hands against men? Don’t you dare get into the habit of slapping men!”

It is a funny and exhausting sequence of events. 

Disturbingly, throughout this episode, chants of “Swamiye Ayyappo” by men and women can be heard in the background. What used to be an inspiring rhythmic prayer to help overcome the physical struggle of the tough climb up Sabarimala has now been appropriated and converted into a sinister background score for mob violence.


The non-puranic woman.

The drama inevitably moved to the evening talk shows that even in erudite Kerala often deteriorates into unseemly trading of insults. Bindu was invited to speak along with two members of the Sangh Parivar.

The social theorist Pierre Bourdieu has explained how elites use subtle inflexions of language to identify and ferret out upstart interlopers from within their cultural space. This prompts those who aspire to this elite-ness to try hard to emulate these cultural markers.

Not Bindu, however.

While representatives of the Sangh and their opponents who belong to the same milieu were seen using the chaste Sankritised Malayalam (that is the default now even in Malayalam films), Bindu responded in her raw earthy dialect (often used in films to caricature oppressed classes).

The Sangh has by now perfected the art of implausible deniability. Of course, the Sangh Parivar are against attacks on women, they insisted, and attributed the attack to unrelated fringe groups.

This despite the fact that the BJP candidate for the recently concluded by-polls can be seen right in the middle of the mob that harassed Bindu. The gradations taken for granted within the Hindutva echo chambers was made vivid when one of them said – “There are, after all, many women in our puranas”. 

 

As irreverential as ever, Bindu responded with aplomb, “Go to hell” (poyi pani nokke).

She further said, “I don’t need your sympathy”.

Now the Sangh’s minions exulted that Bindu had showed her “level” to the viewers through her crude language. Implying perhaps that Bindu, who clearly does not fit into the puranic mold, is not the type of woman that is worthy of respect.

Why “clearly”? Bindu is a Dalit who has dared to transgress the limits set by the Brahmanical patriarchy. What disturbs her male detractors is that she remains undeterred from asserting herself, in spite of their judgement. She had the sharpness and wit to respond on air to the allegations of crudity in language with “it isn’t the quality of language you use, but your conduct that matters”.

Silent complicity

One would be forgiven for wondering whether Kerala was a Hindutva-ruled state.

Can a woman who is a symbol of progressive thought and an irritant for religious bigots be brazenly attacked under the noses of policemen under any other ideology? There is a difference between the attack on Bindu and the chilling images of lynching in presence of the police, but only in degree and not in content.

What is the threshold of violence a mob must cross for the police and the public to spring into action? The thought is not comforting.

The tepid public response to this brazen mob violence is just another in the series of events that have been regularly piercing the veneer of a progressive society that Malayalis claim to inhabit.

Significant sections, even when opposed to majoritarianism, clearly still hold regressive and prejudicial attitudes against an assertive, Dalit, woman. As many shocked observers noted after last year’s violence at Sabarimala, social reform in Kerala was incomplete and for the past decades, a convenient fiction.

Obscurantism and medieval feudalism that were claimed to have been uprooted were nurtured in the private sphere, clandestinely and resentfully. The growth of religious nationalism started boiling the bottled-up bigotry that had since burst and shattered even the need for pretence. Masquerading as tradition, medieval practices and attitudes (that had taken social reformers a hundred years of painful struggle to partially dismantle in the window offered by the independence struggle) appear to have now become respectable. 

The most egregious dereliction is without doubt, by the government and the Left-front that chose to prioritise “peace in Sabarimala” — a euphemism for placating religious voters, particularly from the elite among the backward caste Ezhavas that form a significant section of their core voters (and that the BJP is eyeing).

Also read: Sabarimala Issue Underscores How the Alt-Right Uses Limits of Liberty to Its Advantage

It is paradoxical that fewer than a hundred years ago, Ezhavas who are now at the forefront of the “defence of tradition” argument were treated just like or worse than Bindu, using the same argument that traditions are sacrosanct. The Devaswom minister while condemning the attack on Bindu seemed more interested in locating a conspiracy to disrupt Sabarimala.

The law minister, himself a Dalit, vociferously denied any association with Bindu’s plan to visit Sabarimala. Upholding lofty ideals like gender equality and rule of law seem to no longer be electorally sensible.

Maybe the criticism is unfair as the government is playing a crafty game to avoid another bout of violence similar to last year by sparking the powder keg that Kerala has become.

The party and the state may be steering the state through waters made unpredictable by the rise of Hindutva and Islamism, and intractable violence between Christian factions. But it is reasonable to ask whether citizens in Kerala can expect protection from a mob if it means hurting religious sentiments.

Rosa Parks of our time

Bindu has risked her life and limb to remind us of some basic truths. Women without obvious insecurities make men uncomfortable. Hegemony requires the consent of the oppressed.

She has shown us the tenacity of patriarchy and has exposed the casteism lurking behind the facade of tradition.

For single-handedly braving the entire might of the Sangh, a neutered public, and an opportunistic state, Bindu Ammini’s name will be etched in the history of progressive struggles against oppression.

Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil is faculty at the Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.