When truth hurts on Twitter, they resort to abuse
Last weekend I tweeted about Kashmir and criticised Indian Twitter’s middle-class for its “mental and moral bankruptcy”. It’s quite simple. I’ve been reporting from Kashmir since the early 1990s. I’ve read books; I’ve talked to people from a variety of walks of life; and I’ve written more than one book on Kashmir. Hence, when I read hundreds of comments that reflect not just ignorance of the subject and situation, but an adherence to an agenda that has no need for facts, I speak my mind. It’s easier to speak your mind on social media than in a newspaper since in India, the media is craven towards the government of the day. Some journalists in India use the government’s pressure as a cloak for their personal predilections. (It’s easiest to speak your mind if no one on the internet follows you, but a long writing career means I have more than a few followers.)
This tweet got for me 238 comments, 919 retweets, and over 3,600 “likes”. This did not mean it was particularly popular: most comments were nasty. It was a repetition of the previous week when my column in a Mumbai-based newspaper came into social media. I rarely tweet my columns. After several years I find it serves no purpose other than personal glory; and I justify it by saying that if a newspaper pays me for a column then it should be exclusive to that newspaper’s readers. But this particular column, just after the Pulwama attack, was retweeted with a screenshot of the newspaper by a former Miss Universe, who on Twitter has 5.7 million followers: she called it a “must-read”.
It was a pleasant surprise. For many years, I was an admirer of her poise and beauty. Also, I didn’t expect her to have a strong opinion on a polarising political issue. The entertainment industry either avoids political controversy like the plague, or some of its members go gung-ho in attacking the opposition. In any case, her endorsement meant that a section of her huge following read my column, with many again attacking me (and some even un-following her) for not cheering the government on.
For that column, and this weekend’s tweet, all the abuse and negativity has been ad hominem. This is not new in the age of right-wing trolling and cheerful disregard of facts. They freely use “paid journalist” though your only paymasters are the newspapers you write for. They call you elitist even if you do not socialise or conspire with members of the political class, the bureaucracy, or the industrial class, other than on purely professional terms.
One gentleman said I read an “excess of books”. This is stunning. Since childhood I have been raised to value books and to cherish the historical dialogue of ideas through the medium of the written word. A book is a most interesting human experience: you get to listen in on the thoughts of another being, and if you’re lucky they’ll be deep thoughts. I had heard a similarly jarring comment around two decades ago, while standing in a south Delhi bookshop. A young man told his friends: “Why do you waste your time reading books?” India’s largest English newspaper has propagated this negative idea not just by doing away with a “books” page, but also by occasionally printing articles on how books are a pernicious waste of time. It is akin to May 10, 1933, when student groups in Germany began mass burning of books.
The funniest comments were: “What class are you?” This is irrelevant, and basically falls in the category of
Tera baap kaun hai? (who are you) that aggressive youngsters mouth when nothing else comes to mind. It is a redundant question given that I am on Twitter — the ruling elite has no use for social media engagement, and the impoverished have no time for it.
The irony of personal attacks is that they often throw caution, facts and even common sense to the wind. The constant refrain about the “Lutyens’ gang” opposed to the current government disregards the fact that the geographic Lutyens’ Delhi has in five years become a right-wing ecosystem. For instance, I was last week invited to a discussion on Kashmir at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at Teen Murti Bhawan, the residence of India’s first prime minister, which is now staffed by the government’s nominees and whose mission has been expanded to being a memorial to all PMs. I can inform you that far from being a Left-Liberal bastion that the rightwing’s supporters decry Lutyens’ Delhi to be, it had become a right-wing petri dish. The discussion dwelt little on what Kashmiris wanted.
Personally, it is depressing that three decades of ground-level experience counts for little today. What people “feel” about the ahistorical or imagined past seems to matter more than what could scientifically chart a path for the future. As Gemma Correll said in a 2016 cartoon, the fountain of knowledge has been replaced by the internet’s geyser of crap. God save us all.
The funniest comments were: “What class are you?” It is redundant given that I am on twitter — the ruling elite has no use for social media engagement, and the impoverished have no time for it