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thecavavoice · 1 year

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Women and Witch Hunts: How Far Have We Progressed?

by Christina A.

A maine coon cat looks up at the camera wearing a patterned purple witch hat and matching bowtie. Upland, California, 31 October 2021 (Cade Spencer/The CAVA Voice)

"The term witch is used as a suitable opportunity to hide behind and put women down in order for men to flourish, meaning they spotlight the inferiority and dangers of womanhood because their strengths and excellence would hinder manhood."

A Witch is more than just a cunning woman with magical powers; it’s an emblem of a repressive past. Several centuries ago, in colonial Massachusetts, more than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft and 19 were executed, establishing what is now infamously known as the Salem Witch Trials. However, the primary suspects during this brutal era were powerless women. The accused women had no means to defend or protect themselves as the accusations were built off of fallacy and misogyny. Today, whenever the term ‘witch’ is used against a woman, it is society’s way of retrograding and obscuring the legitimacy of a situation. In many countries, society's current behavior towards women contains elements of its hapless history, as demonstrated through both despotism and systematic oppression.

The desire for power works as a driving force behind oppression. A researcher by the name of Seema Yasmin who studied journalism at Stanford University investigated the abuse and superstition of men in India. Yasmin expounds on how witch hunts primarily target women and exploit India’s caste system: “Men who brand women as dakan (witch) capitalize on deeply-rooted superstitions and systems built on misogyny and patriarchy to lay blame on females.” The term witch is used as a suitable opportunity to hide behind and put women down in order for men to flourish, meaning they spotlight the inferiority and dangers of womanhood because their strengths and excellence would hinder manhood.

Yasmin later mentions a quote from Soma Chaudhuri, a sociologist at Michigan State University who studies gender violence in India: “The accusations of sorcery are used to oust women from valuable land that men covet, in a region where flawed development plans have produced agricultural failures.” As a result of the stereotypes of the genders formulated and embedded throughout our history, many men feel they still wear the title of unlimited power simply due to the standards. It’s present in the case of India, where they feel they have the right to expel their female counterparts in order to purloin the land they yearn to have.

An individual with social disadvantages, such as a woman, wears an easily positioned target for the legal system to aim towards. Connie Hassett-Walker, a writer who holds a PhD in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University, explains prejudices and biased behavior that are found within our current criminal justice system: “Today, the criminal justice system continues to punish the vulnerable women in society. Most women who end up under supervision of the U.S. correctional system, whether through probation, jail, prison or parole, come from a poor background.” Not only does the disadvantage of prejudice against women come into play, but the disadvantages of poverty and background as well. When it comes to these disadvantages, the correctional systems are less lenient, thus exploiting the defenseless. Half of these female criminals are more likely placed in these vulnerable positions due to the extensive histories of victimization. Hassett-Walker provides an example, “A girl facing physical or sexual abuse at the hands of parents, relatives or family friends may opt to run away, thereby becoming a criminal by leaving her home as a minor.” This unjust punishment can easily connect to a Salem story about a girl named Tibuta. Bridget Marshall, an Associate Professor of English whose interests include colonial American witchcraft trials, summarizes Tibuta’s story. She was an enslaved woman in the household of a Reverend for teaching witchcraft to the local girls and confessed to “signing the devil’s book” in 1692. However, Marshall claims that given Tibuta’s position, both an enslaved person and a woman of color, she was likely coerced. Although witch trials are not occurring today, factors that played a role in the accusation and executions are still present as the legal system targets a subjugated minority.

In short, remnants of the harsh past of Salem exist today as vulnerable women are still being punished due to superstition and power. Although some societies have moved forward, there are still many places in the world that are stuck lingering in the corollary of a tyrannical history. The treatment of women in society has not progressed very far.

#by Christina A.#opinion #Archive

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aronicstores · 2 years

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Who is Shoma Choudhury Age, Biography, Family

Shoma Chaudhury is an Indian journalist, editor, and political commentator. She was managing editor and one of the founders of Tehelka, an investigative public interest newsmagazine. She also co-founded and was director of THiNK, an international conference of ideas, and Algebra, the Arts & Ideas Club, a platform for live conversations with prominent Indians. Shoma Chaudhury is the founder of Lucid Lines Productions, an intellectual properties company.

Biography

Chaudhury was born in Darjeeling, and grew up in the tea gardens of Dooars where both her parents were doctors. She studied in St Helen’s Convent in Kurseong; La Martiniere School in Kolkata; and in Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi. She topped Delhi University twice, in both BA and MA English..

Awards

In 2011, Newsweek (USA) picked Shoma Chaudhury as one of "150 power women who shake the world". The other Indian women on the list that year were Sonia Gandhi and Arundhati Roy. She has also been awarded the Sabbiadoro Ernest Hemingway Award for Political Journalism (2013), the Mumbai Press Club award for political journalism (2012), the Ramnath Goenka award and the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediaperson (2009) for "going where angels fear to tread". She was honoured by her alma mater Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi, with the alumni of the year award in 2013. In 2018, she was invited to deliver the Gandhi Oration in Sydney, the first Indian to do so.

Apart from her career in print and digital journalism, Shoma is a virtuoso speaker, both on television and stage, and has been invited to address many forums both in India and abroad, including America, Britain, Edinburgh, Italy, France, Spain, Australia, Morocco, Singapore and Indonesia. She has also interviewed the most cutting edge minds globally on politics, policy, economy, business, science, civil society, cinema, literature, sports and media.

Shoma has also curated and hosted several large conferences at the Royal Society of Arts in London and Asia Society, as well as guest curated conferences for the YPO, EO, and the prestigious India Today group.

Body of work

Chaudhury has reported extensively on issues of justice, social equity, human rights, environment, the media, law, and the fight over resources. She built a reputation for in-depth ground reportage, incisive commentary, portraits and interviews across disciplines. Several of her stories, in defence of human rights workers and others falsely accused by the State, were instrumental in getting people out of jail. Her counter-narrative stories on Dr Binayak Sen, the Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj murder, tribal teacher Soni Sori’s imprisonment and others won many accolades.

#ShomaChoudhury

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squarwell-breakingnews · 2 years

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Arrested Trinamool Minister's Admission To State Hospital Challenged

Arrested Trinamool Minister’s Admission To State Hospital Challenged

The ED suggested that Partha Chatterjee can be treated at an AIIMS Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate moved the Calcutta High Court on Sunday challenging a lower court order of sending arrested West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee to state-run SSKM hospital. Justice Bibek Chaudhuri, after hearing arguments by lawyers representing the ED and Chatterjee, reserved judgement in the matter. The…

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aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman · 3 years

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Justice Chaudhury (1983)

#Justice Chaudhury #Sridevi #Bollywood #film #1980s #gif

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badandbrown · 6 years

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Sridevi // Justice Chaudhury // 1983

#Sridevi #bollywood2 #bollywood #justice chaudhury #1980s #80s #classic bollywood #vintage #baawri #india #beauty #gif

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somerabbitholes · 3 years

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Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato's Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past - Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur's Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai's iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective - Andrew Harris

The Limits of "White Town" in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of "Muddling Through" - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

'Massa Day Done:' Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism's effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe's influence on India's culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

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assyrianjalebi · 5 years

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where does the gif in your header thingy come from love? who is the gorgeous woman?

it’s sridevi from the movie justice chaudhury :)

#anon #asks

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bollywoodirect · 5 years

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Birthday Greetings to Moushumi Chatterjee, one of the biggest stars of the 1970s, who turned 71 years today. The versatile actress Moushumi Chatterjee earned love and admiration of all filmgoers by her excellent character presentation in several films. Moushumi Chatterjee is a Bengali and Hindi film actress who has had a long career in films starting from her debut in the Bengali film Balika Badhu(1967) with Tarun Majumdar. Her latest film was the super hit Piku (2015) which won her rave reviews. Moushumi has done more than a hundred films which have been box-office hits and critically appreciated as well. Born into a family with an army background, Moushumi was married early in life to producer Jayant Mukherjee, the son of the famous music composer and singer Hemant Kumar. She started acting after her marriage and made her debut in Hindi cinema with Shakti Samanta’s Anuraag (1972) opposite Vinod Mehra. Her role as a blind girl was much liked by the audience and the critics. Following the success of Anuraag (1972), Chatterjee went onto become one of the top leading ladies of the Indian film industry. Films like Anindita (1972), Ghulam Begum Badshah (1973), Naina (1973) and Kuchhe Dhaage (1973) followed. Roti Kapda Aur Makaan (1974) with Manoj Kumar was another high point in Chatterjee’s career where she plays the role of a rape victim. For this film and for Anuraag (1972), she was nominated for Filmfare Awards for the Best Actress and the Best Supporting Actress. Benaam (1974) and Manzil (1979) co-starring Amitabh Bachchan, Sabsa Bada Rupaiya (1976) co-starring Vinod Mehra and Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan (1978) were other notable films that Moushumi Chatterjee acted in. Towards the 1980s she started taking up character roles often playing the elder sister, mother or sister- in-law in films. Some of the films from this period include Justice Chaudhury (1983), Aag Hi Aag (1987), Waqt Ki Awaz and Aa Ab Laut Chalen (1999). She continued to work in the 2000s, some of her films of this time include Deepa Mehta’s Bollywood/ Hollywood (2002), Tanuja Chandra’s Zindaggi Rocks (2006) and Aparna Sen’s The Japanese Wife (2010), all of which got her critical appreciation.

#moushmi chatterjee #bollywood #bollywoodirect

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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THE INTERCEPT

On a warm sunday evening in Queens, New York, Joe Crowley stood before a group of about two dozen Democratic activists and made his case for why he should be returned to Congress for a 10th term. In his view, it was “destiny.”

“I was born for this role,” Crowley said at the May 20 meet-and-greet. Like President Donald Trump, he was born in Queens, though in entirely different circumstances. Trump came from great wealth and privilege, Crowley observed, while the congressperson was born to a family of Irish immigrants — the son of a police officer. Crowley is routinely floated as next in line to be the leader of the House Democrats if Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California steps aside or is ousted. “He was trying to say that me being a guy from the same place [Trump] is from, I’m the guy to take him on,” said Andy Aujla, who hosted the event at his home.

To meet with that destiny, however, he has an obstacle to overcome: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a Bronx-born millennial whose scrappy challenge from the left has generated excitement nationally and around the district, which encompasses parts of Queens and the Bronx.

If Crowley positions himself as a photo negative of the president, Ocasio-Cortez is a different medium altogether. A 28-year-old woman and daughter to a Puerto Rican mother and Bronx father, Ocasio-Cortez’s most notable novelty is arguably not her demographic profile, but her policy profile. She calls for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, a federal jobs guarantee, and criminal justice reform “now.” “It doesn’t take 100 years to do this,” she intones in a viral campaign video. “It takes political courage.”

Crowley, though, when he talked about the campaign, shared his frustration over what he perceives to be an inordinate focus on ethnicity.

His opponent, he said, was trying to make the campaign “about race” — a strategy he called “unnecessarily divisive” at a time when the party needed to be “fighting Republicans, not other Democrats,” according to two people at the gathering.

“I can’t help that I was born white,” Crowley said. One of those who heard Crowley’s speech, Nick Haby, a Democratic activist who attended the meet-and-greet, agreed to speak on the record, while the second asked for anonymity given Crowley’s power in the Queens political machine.

Vijay Chaudhuri, a spokesperson for the Crowley campaign who was at the event, said Crowley’s remarks had been inaccurately relayed in a manner intended to “tear down Joe and boost his primary opponent.”

The Crowley campaign connected The Intercept with the host of the event, Aujla, to refute the claims being made, but Aujla said that while he didn’t hear Crowley opine on the political implications of his whiteness that evening, he had heard him make a version of that remark before. “I don’t remember him saying that directly, but I have heard him say at other places, ‘I can’t help the color of my skin or anything like that, but I am very diverse, I support very diverse people,’ or something to that extent,” said Aujla, adding that he was not offended by anything Crowley said that evening.

New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris, whom the Crowley campaign also recommended to The Intercept, was at the event as well. He said he did not hear Crowley’s comments about race, though he did hear his riff about being born in the same place as Trump.

City councilman Costa Constantinides said that he’s heard Crowley contrast himself with Trump at so many events he could recite that portion of the stump speech verbatim. “He feels like he was born for this moment; there couldn’t be two guys from Queens who are more different,” Constantinides, who has endorsed Crowley and was at the gathering, recounted.

He said he didn’t recall Crowley making any comments about his own race being a hinderance in the campaign. Constantinides explained that he wasn’t paying close attention to Crowley’s talk, that he was mostly chatting with constituents and eating baklava during the remarks. “I remember him saying he’s not running against Alexandria, but he’s running against a president that is wrong,” he said.

Haby said he came to the event with an open mind about Crowley, but he left leaning against him, even though he aligns with the Hillary Clinton wing of the party, whose agenda is most closely mirrored by Crowley’s. (Ocasio-Cortez is a former organizer for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign and has been endorsed by Sanders-affiliated groups Our Revolution and People for Bernie Sanders, as well as the Democratic Socialists of America.)

Most of those at the event were white or white-presenting, Haby said, and he found Crowley’s defense that he couldn’t “help” being born white, coupled with his claims of being “destined” for leadership, odd and off-putting.

The source who originally tipped The Intercept off to Crowley’s alleged remarks in the days following the event was similarly troubled by Crowley’s comments on race. “It just felt really weird and not appropriate,” he explained.

If Crowley’s comments seem odd, it may be because Crowley is relatively inexperienced at campaigning.

Crowley graduated from Queens College in 1985 while his uncle, Walter Crowley, was serving as a city councilor — a seat he had inherited from then-Queens party boss Tom Manton. Walter Crowley died in 1985, and according to subsequent New York Times reporting, Joe Crowley “set his eyes” on the seat, but was thwarted. “[W]hen Assemblyman Ralph Goldstein died in 1986, Mr. Crowley decided to run in the Democratic primary to succeed him. It was a crowded race with seven candidates. Mr. Crowley, then 24, won that race decisively,” the Times reported.

Crowley fended off a primary challenger in 1988, winning comfortably.

In 1999, when Manton, by then a member of Congress, retired, Crowley got a phone call from him. “On the last legal day to find a replacement, Mr. Manton convened a small meeting and telephoned Joseph Crowley, then an Assemblyman, to tell him he would be on the ballot in November [2000] as a congressional candidate,” the New York Sun reported.

He was effectively appointed to Congress by the party boss. Crowley also inherited Manton’s role as the new “king of Queens,” and has run the district machine since then. He had to defend his seat against primary challengers in 2002 and 2004 and each time won comfortably.

Despite having been in elected office for more than 30 years, Crowley has faced just four primary contests, and won them all comfortably. He has not faced a challenger since 2004.

His seat is now being challenged by Ocasio-Cortez, who’s running with a grassroots army, national attention, and a popular campaign ad that celebrates her independence from the Queens machine — her freedom to mount a direct challenge to the throne.

(Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez walks at her neighborhood in Bronx, New York, on April 21, 2018.)

The irony that Crowley laments how he “can’t help” being white, while ignoring the political advantages he inherited, is not lost on Ocasio-Cortez. “The congressman could have helped that he accepted inheritance of his seat from a multigenerational political dynasty without a true primary — a process by which people of color are historically locked out of representation. The congressman could help that he voted to establish ICE. The congressman can help the fact that he accepts money from developers that are displacing our communities and the folks criminalizing our backyards,” she told The Intercept.

“Additionally, why is it that the congressman can proudly discuss his Irish heritage on the campaign trail, but I am somehow barred from mentioning my Puerto Rican family?”

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #joe crowley #alexandria ocasio cortez #Justice Democrats #progressive #progressive movement #new york #new york primary #the intercept

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sillydreamfishpony · 4 years

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HC bats for freedom of press, gives journo relief

KOLKATA: The Calcutta high court docket has acknowledged it is miles the most main factual of a reporter to publish data of “any illegal” job “in an right plan”, and “factual reporting” can abet the administration act against the offenders. Adivision bench comprising Justices Bibek Chaudhuri and Soumen Sen made this commentary while granting anticipatory bail to a journalist from the Birb…

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loyallogic · 4 years

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Media: Judge, Jury and Executioner

This article is written by Rohan Aditya.

Introduction

Jaideep Ahlawat as Hathi Ram Chaudhury in the critically acclaimed series Paataal Lok rambles on to his subordinate in the opening scene “The world is divided into three realms- the Swarg Lok (Heaven) where the rich and powerful live, the Dharti Lok (Earth) where normal people like him live and the Paataal Lok (Underworld) where the evil and corrupted and vile people live, and come out from time to time to wreak havoc in the lives of the people of the Dharti Lok.” While we can consider this as a meaningless rambling of a disgruntled police officer who feels that his life and job are a punishment, the lines that follow are a mocking of India’s reality. He says “Waise toh yeh shastron mein likhe tha, meine Whatsapp pe padha (although these are written in the Holy Scriptures, I studied this in Whatsapp)”.

With the advance of technology, everything has boomed and advanced along with it. Ten years ago we only saw the news on the TV, five years ago it was in PC’s and laptops and now it is in Whatsapp forwards on our phones (not that I receive any as a twenty year old). This advancement has been weaponized in recent times and used to devastating effect by many interested parties and we can safely say that a war is being fought for who can spread the most fake and hate mongering news. Sadly, there’s only one side in this war and there is only one winner.

So, with the advent of the spread of fake news, isn’t there going to be any consequences for the news that is being read and the legal ramifications that come hand in hand for this act? We can say that there are consequences from reading these news and there are legal ramifications for spreading fake news, but the events that follow after reading such fake news are far more disastrous than the legal consequences.

I can be sitting in Chennai and spread a fake news article about some community in some village in Uttar Pradesh through a Whatsapp forward and with that I can incite some communal incident. Therefore I can be judge, jury and executioner in this case. I can cause tremendous outrage and use that hatred and create a pogrom. No one can trace me down, no one can stop me. If you catch one person, tens of people spring forward in their place. They are like weeds, they cause unlimited destruction, but are hard to battle against.

Welcome to the advent of social media, where anyone can deliver biased justice according to their whims. So the next time when your English professor asks you if social media is a boon or a bane, you should definitely write that social media is neither a boon or a bane, it is an invisible weapon that only spells doom to the person who’s on the front side of the barrel.

In this edition of believe it or not, you don’t have a choice, but to believe

So all of us must have heard about the Snapchat chat screenshot from the Bois Locker Room by now. You must have heard about the mommy elephant that died when a pineapple she ate consisted of a bomb and exploded inside her stomach, killing her and the child in her womb. You must have heard about the boy who went missing and was found dead in a well, with the well being on the property of a Muslim.

All of them have nothing in common, apart from these incidents having been taken up by social media users, dissecting these news and a verdict given. The Snapchat chat screenshot was a conversation between a girl impersonating as a male and ‘conspiring’ with other guys to rape her. Apparently she had done this to test the integrity of one of those guys (there are really better ways to do this, other than this). This chat, which normally shouldn’t have been joined with the Bois Locker Room chat, (which was more hideous by the way). However it found its way into that issue and there was a manhunt for a guy who had that name which the girl had chosen for her impersonation.

The mommy elephant that died after eating a pineapple with a bomb in it was a really tragic matter and it will definitely bring tears into the most hardened souls. As tragic and pathetic it was, there was a side news article that said that it was Muslims who had killed that elephant. This conclusion was came to because Malappuram was a Muslim-majority area. HOWEVER, the elephant died in Palakkad and not in Malappuram and therefore, a seemingly strange incident was given a communal angle and twisted enough to create hatred unnecessarily. Similar to the boy who was found dead in a well, news spread that Muslims from that area had kidnapped him and killed him as a human sacrifice. To prevent bloodshed from happening, the DGP of Bihar had to step in and issue a notice that Muslims hadn’t kidnapped him and killed him.

So do we see a pattern here? Seemingly different incidents taken, a fake puff piece of article is written for it and is published on the Internet where thousands of people can get their hands on it. This is all it takes to destroy people you want to exact vengeance against. No one will suspect you and before they find that this was fake news, the damage is done and the parties are killed. So the next time someone quotes some news article and says that ‘that person did this and this person did that’, take a deep breath, and believe no one. I say this because every article that is written now is written more like an op-ed and not as a facts presenting article.

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Explanation of the process behind the name of this article

The author weeps for the people who still believe in the truth and integrity of the journalism and the news that we read on a daily basis. Unfortunately that isn’t a joke. There is a strong urge to denounce the name ‘News’ and call it as what it is- opinions.

This process is explained in the simplest way for all of us to understand below:

I’m a normal guy who is sitting in a room in a middle-income family’s house in Chennai. I see a picture of a person bleeding from the head in some country. I notice that there is a riot happening in some other state of the country. I download the picture of the bleeding man, write up a puff piece article about how this man was almost beaten to death by a mob from some other community/religion in the state where the riot is happening and send it to some news website and send it as a Whatsapp forward to people who I know will believe this fake news and forward it other people. Right now I’m the petitioner in this court of fake news. My case has been listed for hearing the moment it makes its way into the Internet. Then other people who come across this news article share it in their Whatsapp groups. They start to debate amongst themselves about the community/religion and say how that they are all evil and are enemies to the country’s peace. They act as my representative advocate and further push my agenda of creating communal bloodshed.

Once there is enough din created by the believers and #murderthecommunity/religion trends on Twitter, this fake news article is picked up by news houses that have similar interests in creating communal bloodshed like me. They choose to discuss this article (fake) on primetime news hour and discuss how that community/religion is a bloodthirsty community/religion and want to destroy the lives of the other community/religion. Now hundreds of thousands people watch this news discussion and form opinions. They all come to the conclusion that that community/religion is a bloodthirsty one and they must protect their community/religion from them.

If we notice it now, I’ve acted as the petitioner, my believers act as my advocates and news houses act as judge, jury and executioner to my case. The defendants are not given a chance to actually defend their cases and before fact checkers can prove that the puff piece news article that I wrote was a fake one, the damage is done and it cannot be reversed in any way and there would have been blood spilled.

So this is how I create communal hatred in some obscure village in some state, while I sit in the comfort of my home in some other state.

Legal ramifications for fake news

None so ever. There is absolutely no avenue for accusing someone of spreading fake news and winning a lawsuit and getting adequate compensation. Fake news amounts to defamation and ultimately is a tort and therefore is a civil case and therefore you can only sue for damages and not for punishment. There is a severe disproportion between the act and the consequence.

For there to be legal ramifications, there needs to be a finding of an illegal act. Since fake news is classified under defamation, the major ingredients that are needed to prove it as discrimination are an intention to tarnish a person’s reputation and that I had the knowledge that the facts I were stating was false. Proving such an allegation is very tough in the normal circumstances, and when a news house publishes this same article, their Right to speech and expression is used to show that they can publish their news.

It’ll always be tough to target and delineate fake news because it almost involves infringing on the Right to Speech and Expression. One would suggest that the Government can monitor the content that is being put on the Internet, but then there will be an infringement of the Right to Privacy. This is what the Government and the people who fight against the spread of fake news suffer terribly against. This is one evil that isn’t necessary but still can’t be fought against in straight means.

Therefore this situation gives rise to uncomfortable questions like ‘should fundamental Rights be monitored and restricted’ or ‘should the Government covertly monitor the spread of online content disregarding the privacy of others?’

Another question that needs to be asked is what kind of a punishment can be given for the act of spreading fake news? Should it be classified as a crime like hate speech?

Also should we hold the Government accountable for having private stake in news houses and thus ensuring their propaganda is spread on TV and the Internet?

Thus, I conclude my article by quoting Valery Legosav from the series Chernobyl,

It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we can no longer hear the truth at all. What can we do then?

LawSikho has created a telegram group for exchanging legal knowledge, referrals and various opportunities. You can click on this link and join:

https://t.me/joinchat/J_0YrBa4IBSHdpuTfQO_sA

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