How Twitter is turning into a communal battle ground

Two incidents framed the charged atmosphere around inter-community relations this past week, and I don't mean the Yakub Memon hanging. One was an old tweet by an Indian-American professor at Rutgers, Deepa Kumar, which referred to the number of deaths caused by US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan to claim that the US is more brutal than IS. It was trending last week. Another was a tweet by Prasar Bharati on Sunday that wished its followers a Happy Friendship Day by putting up a picture of Krishna and Sudama.

Yes ISIS is brutal, but US is more so, 1.3 million killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan #NoToWar @democracynow http://t.co/fjaszeKTYD

— Deepa Kumar (@ProfessorKumar) March 26, 2015

"A real friend is one who walks in for you when the rest of the world walks out." #HappyFriendshipDay..!! pic.twitter.com/2V5Ge5OwHz

— Prasar Bharati (@prasarbharati) August 2, 2015

For a right-thinking person (right meaning correct, not the opposite of left), framing a response to such incidents can be difficult in today's times. We live in a country where the majoritarian impulse, we are told, is creeping in on us slowly but surely. Look at how the RSS, through a pliable HRD ministry, has stacked sundry institutions with its own men. Look at how, only last week, Rajnath Singh made a statement in Parliament that one of UPA's ministers, Sushil Kumar Shinde, vitiated talk of terrorism by referring to "Hindu" terror.

Surely, we are told, there is something called "Hindu" terror and for the home minister of the day to refuse to make that distinction does not bode well.

The truth is both these issues are worth debating. Yes, the RSS has made its intention of saffronising government institutions clear - a claim that is bolstered most by its backing of Gajendra Chauhan - and for the home minister to invoke past statements by Congress ministers on "Hindu" terror in the week that Gurdaspur happened was indeed problematic.

However, what this sort of environment - a constant thrust at defending one's ideological viewpoint - has done for our public discourse is what I am interested in. When issues get framed in this us-versus-them way, as they often do nowadays, it is impossible to take sides without coming across as communal. Every time a debate comes up, we risk burning the entire edifice of our social and legal system by drawing attention to explosive patterns of thought. We see this happen repeatedly; the past week, for example, these issues got distilled through Memon's hanging. Every argument, whether on Kalam or terror or the death penalty, was refracted through the prism of Memon. Nuance was lost and the respective for-and-against fights were so strident that anyone looking to glean meaning was lost in the thickets of noise.

Worse, we risk exposing our lack of common sense. When Indian-American professor Deepa Kumar said what she did in her tweet, she harked to an old canard about US violence that, while true by itself, does not leave us any wiser about the world we operate in.

There is a deep irony in her claim of US brutality since her life choices such as emigration to the US and position in that country's academia give her the voice and the safety to proclaim what she wishes. To then abuse that freedom and make a statement that shows the women-, gay-, and fundamental rights-hating IS in good light smacks of doublespeak.

This happened with the Prasar Bharati tweet as well. We understand trolls to mean bhakts but this time the trolling was from the other end of the ideological spectrum. One person I know tweeted: "My goodness! Even Friendship Day has a religious connotation in the BJP/RSS vision. Friendship = Krishna-Sudama. Period?"

I was at a deep loss in making sense of the tweet. First, the Krishna-Sudama friendship is an integral part of our myths, and in my view makes a perfect example of what friendship ought to be. That a king omits to consider his station and serves his childhood friend with vigour and humility is a lesson worth imparting to the young. Why give this simple and inspiring story a communal angle?

Second, to make a correlation between a Prasar Bharati tweet and the RSS hand is to jump the gun, even for a government that derives its sustenance from the Nagpur organisation. Anyone who has any idea about bureaucracy should know that a tweet is not even a minor cog in the workings of the government and it is highly unlikely that the RSS had anything to do with it.

My fear is that when we articulate our views on such issues by either excoriating this government in the bloodiest way, or alternatively, praising it to the skies, we lose perspective and risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater. At a time when India continues to face serious threats from across the border, a vicious climate at home jeopardies not merely internal peace but national security.

Make no mistake, everyone is complicit in this state of affairs. The government certainly, as it has been unwilling to respond to even genuine criticism of some of its actions. The media too is complicit in that its different elements have become more set in their respective ideologies so that they now look like US-style echo chambers. And finally, we as a society are to blame for coming to a point where we now look at faith, of any colour, through the prism of politics and have lost the art of appreciating its inherent beauty.