Sides.

Are you confused? Are you living with the guilt of misplaced opinions compared to masses? Are you finding it difficult to make sense of conflicting truths you’re presented upon?

If you’re feeling any of the above, toh zinda ho tum!

While activism has reached the last man due to the platform provided by social media, it has also opened gates for misinformation, rumors, fear mongering and propaganda. This very dark effect of social media is why you must be careful before getting influenced by news feed and before you act stupid and strain real relationships with people over difference of opinion.

One must remember that all the content you absorb daily is a result of an algorithm that make you read similar stories of the impression you left on the internet with your surfing, activities, subscriptions and sometimes conversations. The other important aspect is that political parties at either end of the political spectrum will try to create a crises in order to spring back into the power or retain itself at that position as suites the best to their interests.

And hence, it becomes increasingly important for one to indulge in dialogue and prevent acting all egoistic, jingoistic and hyperventilating to every question challenging your morals and social understanding of the issues in the media. To tackle this, you just need to follow few basic guidelines —

#1 You are entitled to change your stand. Irrespective of how you started, with more information and clarity or understanding on the issue, you definitely can have a different stand and it doesn’t matter if someone calls you out for it. Agitation shouldn’t be watertight that it weighs you down to follow only one principle blindly. If you happen to do that, you are playing into the hands of the powerful who are trying to achieve their ends through your means.

#2 Read both sides of the opinions to understand the reaction better. You may not have had enough experiences in life to be sensitive to a certain aspect that someone else understands much better and with greater clarity. You must also remember that a lot of times, people are fighting fears of different time, era and source. For e.g. Someone is fighting to prevent the country from repeating third reich whereas someone is fighting to protect the country from the lense of direct action day. In this age of name-calling and coloring individuals from their opinion, the dialogue has been done away with and everything that people cling on to is giving labels, threats and marking the next person as ‘the other’

#3 Indulge in dialogue. Agree to disagree over certain matters but refrain from getting personal over matters that are discussed in media. You don’t need have the same opinions at your family dinner table, does it mean you abandon your family?

#4 Lastly, be constructive in your dissent. Do not play into violence that some groups try to ignite over every protest. If you happen to do that, the real reasons are lost and all that is concentrated on is violence. Distraction is an essential tool to divert attention onto things of no importance so one can move swiftly in implementing the other. Be alert, be aware and be woke, but by careful reading of for and against opinions and not letting yourself stumble into blind following. Be careful before your choose your Sides.

Correction

Why do we always end up believing that a strong law and order is enough deterrence for a person to commit crime. While I am not downplaying the need for stringent punishment and robust mechanism to trial of an accused, the serious question lies in how do you stop a person from committing a crime when the act according to him is nothing but a corrective treatment met to his version of wrong done by the Victim, when his act is nothing less than a call from the divine, that his act is to clean the society he is living in of all the western evils or that his act is to teach someone an essential lesson.

In the aftermath of Hyderabad rape, the entire social media was filled with “Hang the rapist”, “Chemically castrate them” and so on. Most of the people around me felt that the increasing sexual crime is a result of an inadequate or absence of appropriate legal machinery in place which tends to be giving the perpetrators a free hand and fearless pursuit in committing the heinous act. Even if the legal infrastructure is present, it is slow to the extent that one would feel there isn’t any. The entire national uproar met a sudden slumber once the accused were encountered while trying to escape from police custody, acknowledging it as justice is met.

I think one of the most ignorant fact here is not trying to plug the source, understand and deal with it at its inception. Post the Hyderabad incident (well, actually after every incident that gets highlighted in the media), we often find some independent news agencies going around asking the common men in different parts of the country across the age group or even the lawmakers in the parliament and the village heads at panchayats as to what exactly they feel causes rape and the answers would briefly come down to the following excuses for rising sexual crimes:

• It is the western influence, the movies and the shows, dressing style and use of mobile phone and internet
• Going out alone with group of boys or going for parties
• She asked for it by her conduct, stepping out of the house in late night
• The worst one being – Eating chowmein and a former chief minister of India’s largest state casually stating that Boys make mistakes with a “big deal” shrug

AND THAT’S WHERE WE ARE COMMITTING A BIG ERROR.

Ignoring to identify the potential rapist mentality among all the people who give such reasons or present such arguments that the victim could have avoided a crime or that victim asked for it, we are forgetting to address the upbringing, the social structure, unquestioned family / customary practices and the lack of awareness which gets a culprit to think that whatever he is doing is right for the society, that he is punishing the person who is adopting western culture over his version of culture, is teaching a lesson to someone going against the boundaries set by the family or community or that he thought the women is asking for it basis her exercising the freedom of movement and clothing. Why would these culprits who think they’re on a divine duty, that they’re playing the role to uphold their beliefs of being righteous ever fear the law, irrespective of how deterrent it would be.

While we need to address the issue of slow trials, police harassment of victims and also make certain laws too stringent to create fear as creating an effective infrastructure, it is time, we start addressing the issue of lack of moral education, absence of sex education, silence on marital rape, silence on child abuse (there are researches to prove that children with unresolved sexual trauma are likely to be abusers when they grow up or indulge in violence), awareness through religious and cultural centers the importance of consent and the crime, call out the casual sexism at home that are too easy to be ignored while growing up, call out casual sexism even in the ads or movies that seek to glorify it and to summarize it, ‘don’t teach your daughter on how to be careful, teach your son to behave’.

Till the time people continue to blame the victim in their first instinct, our society will never be able to effectively tackle the rising sexual crimes. We need some correction in finding the root cause and maybe, we could start by dealing with such mentality around us whenever faced with it.