Free thinking under social media siege

There is a new affliction around now and it is called WhatsApp. Many of us initially downloaded it because it was a safe and inexpensive way of calling and texting but never realised how it would dig its tentacles deep into our lives to take it over. Like other tools of social media — Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat —, it has now become an addiction that is taking over independent thinking and common sense from its addicted users.

Everyone has met those vacuous youngsters who are permanently wired to their mobiles, but a recent encounter with a cab driver frightened me. As soon as we started, his mobile rang and he quickly plugged in his earphone to receive the call while his hands remained free. I could hardly object to his receiving a call that may well be from his next customer. However, for the next half an hour that I was in the cab, he remained glued to his phone and was obviously chatting with a girlfriend or wife, exchanging such vital information as what he had for lunch and how much he loved her. With this level of emotional intensity, I wondered if he was fully concentrating on the mad traffic all around us. I asked him to disconnect his phone once and he turned to me: ‘Tension mat lo, auntie’ and assured me: ‘Aapko safe pahuncha doonga.’ So, I suffered his love-chat and my growing tension in silence. 

However, I must confess that I spend too much time in reading and forwarding useless trivia to friends and others connected to me. I also seldom bother to check whether what has been sent is fake news or even worth sending on. Tasteless jokes, funny clips of idiotic behaviour, useless good morning GIFs – do we really need this in our lives? Look at the effect that it has had on news reportage: information is freely and mindlessly jumbled with entertainment and sly bits of fake news are slipped in without our even being aware. When our very faith in news is shaken, where is the space for an honest debate? This outsourcing of thinking is what I regard as the most pernicious aspect of social media because we are no longer reasoning or forming our own opinions: our friends and family do it for us.

Occasionally, however, one has sent a message that is worth passing on. Each person who is cremated uses up the equivalent of a tree as logs to make up a pyre. Is it not worthwhile then to plant at least one sapling every year to replenish what we will destroy one day? Remember that of the 10 saplings we may plant perhaps only five will remain, so be good and plant a few extra ones for those who will not. Now that was a WhatsApp message worth sharing and I hope some of you will heed it.

In the years that I have lived, I have not encountered such a huge volume of kanwariyas on our roads as I see nowadays. Even national highways are now declared closed while this ‘pilgrimage’ is on. At every few blocks in most cities on this circuit, there are resting points for them where mattresses and food are available to the accompaniment of loud bhajans and disco jagran beats. Schools are shut, garbage left behind and unruly behaviour condoned because this is a ‘holy’ occasion. Just imagine what would happen if other religious communities started a counter-pilgrimage and demanded equal treatment. In a multi-religious land such as ours, we would be permanently in a pilgrimage mode. Are we losing all sense of proportion? God forbid, if anyone raises an objection to the public nuisance such events have become. To those who object to Haj subsidies and preferential treatment to minority communities, I would ask what they have to say about disturbing peaceful traffic or delaying office-goers and ambulances in the name of their religion. And let us not get started on what is happening in the name of the holy cow. Pilgrimages were once undertaken to cleanse our souls, today they have become brazen declarations of brute power. 

I hope that a reformation will once again take place to cleanse this brand of Hinduism of its social bullying and machismo. Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, the Bhakti movement, the Arya Samaj and the Brahmo Samaj broke away from it precisely because it had fallen into the hands of the worst charlatans and peddlers of cant and ritual. If only we could incorporate their teachings instead of mindlessly promoting what is hateful in ours — caste, untouchability and patriarchy. What a glorious achievement it would be if we could learn to share our kitchens and hearts, do away with priests and middlemen and discourage individual religious groups from harming the beliefs of others. I hope think tanks and research groups of the ruling party can take time off from strategising on how to win the next poll to reflect on the responsibility that they have towards making Indians part of a national abhiyan to cleanse religious malpractices. I assure them they would win every election in the future if they did so.