#
Did you know that Parsis in Mumbai, instead of being left at the Tower of Silence after
#
they die, are now cremated?
#
Because a cow fell sick in the early 1990s.
#
Did you know that the smog in Delhi is caused by something that farmers in Punjab do, and
#
that there's no way to stop them?
#
Did you know that there wasn't one gas tragedy in Bhopal, but three?
#
One of them was seen, but two were unseen.
#
Did you know that many well-intentioned government policies hurt the people they're supposed
#
Why was demonetization a bad idea?
#
How should GST have been implemented?
#
Why are all our politicians so corrupt when not all of them are bad people?
#
I'm Amit Verma, and in my weekly podcast, The Seen and the Unseen, I take a shot at
#
answering all these questions and many more.
#
I aim to go beyond the seen and show you the unseen effects of public policy and private
#
I speak to experts on economics, political philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and constitutional
#
law so that their insights can blow not only my mind, but also yours.
#
The Seen and the Unseen releases every Monday.
#
So do check out the archives and follow the show at seenunseen.in.
#
You can also subscribe to The Seen and the Unseen on whatever podcast app you happen
#
And now let's move on to the show.
#
Are you a different person when you are in a crowd than when you are alone?
#
Sometimes you adjust your behavior to fit the social norms expected in a given situation.
#
Sometimes you're anxious either to fit in or to impress.
#
You have a performative self, perhaps even different performative selves for different
#
But maybe being in a crowd doesn't change you as much as it amplifies some part of your
#
In a cricket stadium, you cheer louder for your favorite team and feel deeper emotion.
#
And maybe when you're part of an angry crowd, baying for the blood of someone who is not
#
from these parts or who is not part of your community, your baser instincts get aroused
#
and you do things you would never do if you were alone.
#
You hit somebody, you hurt somebody, maybe you kill somebody.
#
Are you a different person when you are in a crowd than when you are alone?
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Borma.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
Last week, the Supreme Court asked the Indian parliament to enact a new law against lynching.
#
I wrote a post in the group blog I edit, Pragati Express at express.thinkpragati.com, arguing
#
that this was just virtue signaling by the court.
#
There were already laws against beating people, against killing people.
#
There are even laws that can be used to prosecute people who spread fake news on WhatsApp.
#
A new law would not cover anything that isn't already covered.
#
Our problem is not that we don't have enough laws, but that we don't have the rule of
#
Sometimes the state doesn't have the will to prosecute certain crimes.
#
And even when it does, often when it does, there is not enough state capacity to prosecute
#
Creating a new law is not going to solve these problems.
#
Anyway, the topic for today's show is crowd violence in India.
#
And my guests today are Madhav Chandavarkar and Alok Prasanna Kumar.
#
Madhav is a legal expert at the Takshashila Institution and Alok runs a Bangalore branch
#
of Vidhi, a legal think tank.
#
They're working on a project together that involves lynching and crowd violence.
#
And I'm delighted that they agreed to chat with me about it.
#
But before I cut to the conversation that we had, a small commercial break.
#
If this happens to be the only podcast you listen to, well, you need to listen to some
#
Check out the ones from IVM Podcasts who co-produced the show with me.
#
Go to ivmpodcasts.com or download the IVM app and you'll find a host of great Indian
#
podcasts that cover every subject you could think of.
#
From the magazine I edit, Pragati, I think, pragati.com, there is the Pragati podcast
#
hosted by Hamsani Hariharan and Pawan Srinath.
#
There is a brilliant Hindi podcast, Puliya Baazi, hosted by Pranay Kota Srinoy and Saurabh
#
Chandra, and apart from these policy podcasts, IVM has shows that cover music, films, finance,
#
sports, sci-fi, tech, and the LGBT community, all under one roof, or rather all in one app.
#
So download the IVM Podcasts app today.
#
Alok Madhav, welcome to the show.
#
So the Supreme Court just came out with this suggestion today to the parliament that it
#
enact a law to stop lynching, to deal with lynching, and like I wrote a comment on Pragati
#
Express about how that's just virtue signaling because, you know, laws already exist that
#
deal with beatings, with killings, with spreading fake news if it comes to that.
#
And Alok, I know you have a slightly deeper take on what the Supreme Court fundamentally
#
gets wrong even in understanding this problem of crowd violence.
#
Can you elaborate on that a bit?
#
And I think you said it best, that virtue signaling.
#
But if you see the judgment itself, they don't seem to have any idea of what they're talking
#
about because this petition, and then we'll go to go back to when this petition was filed
#
in 2016, was filed in a particular context.
#
You've had these instances of Muslims, of Dalits being attacked and being killed over
#
rumors that they were handling beef or possessing beef or transporting cows or some such kind
#
And more often than not, the attackers were largely upper-caste Hindus or dominant communities
#
Nowhere in the judgment of the Supreme Court go into this at all.
#
It does not discuss even one incident of what it means by lynching, right?
#
It is talking about this issue in a totally a contextual way, that is, you know, just
#
some accidental thing that happens without any basis for, without any historical or sociological
#
But we know lynching is not something that happens just like that or just something that
#
happens because the police aren't doing their job properly or the police aren't, you know,
#
haven't done their duties properly.
#
It happens in a particular historical and sociological concept.
#
Even the term lynching academically and sociologically is used in a particular historical context.
#
Now, if we go back to the late 19th century and early 20th century, the incidents happened
#
largely in the southern part of the U.S., in the former slaveholding states, where after
#
the Civil War, when the North stops imposing the reconstruction, so to speak, where they
#
try to ensure that African-Americans are treated more equally and the laws aren't unequal
#
towards them, the white community tries to reimpose some level of dominance over the
#
African-American community there.
#
And therefore, you find that largely African-American men are victims of lynching.
#
These are all public events.
#
Nobody is suddenly picking up someone and trying to kill them.
#
There are even postcards made of these events.
#
Postcards are made and people circulate them freely to say, look what we did, right?
#
Nobody is doing this secretly or in private.
#
Yes, of course, you have the Klu Klux Klan and all of those.
#
But the instances of lynching take place in a very public manner.
#
There is what we would now call a performative aspect to say, we are happy we did this and
#
we are sending out a message that this is what we will do if you dare to cross racial
#
There are these fears raised, like how we have beef as a fear.
#
Then the fear was interracial mixing or interracial marriage.
#
Look, black men can't resist themselves and they see white women and so on.
#
So you have these fears raised that we need to somehow control black men and therefore
#
that is the kind of fear that is created and that sort of leads to these kind of instance
#
It is not some totally a contextual set of killings which take place.
#
None of that is informed in the way in which the Supreme Court approaches the issue.
#
They court Mark Twain, they court Benjamin Franklin, but they don't actually court any
#
of the historical studies or the solid data driven work which has gone into understanding
#
Even in India, there's tons and tons of work which has gone into understanding and examining
#
each of these events, going in depth into why these happened and what has happened.
#
And that also results in some of the directions of the Supreme Court passes.
#
The way they say, oh, you know, if the police just take care and do this and they appoint
#
a nodal officer and make sure you file the FIR and fast track court, everything will
#
The silly thing is exactly all of this, in fact, happened in Jharkhand in Jharkhand over
#
the killing of one cattle trader, Ali Muddin Ansari, who was actually killed by the upper
#
caste Hindus in that area for quote unquote transporting beef.
#
The state government did quickly file their FIR, did arrest 11 people.
#
There was a fast track trial in one year.
#
They were all convicted, except the High Court gave bail to eight of them almost soon after
#
because the trial was so shoddily conducted because the evidence was not presented properly
#
because the rules of procedure were not followed at all.
#
So it's all very well to say all of this, but you're just only ensuring that even justice
#
And to compound matters, you have a Jain sinner who goes there and garlands these eight people
#
saying, wow, rule of law one, right?
#
So the Supreme Court is completely mistaken about what it is talking about at all.
#
It has so completely failed to even understand the underlying sociological phenomenon, which
#
leads to things like lynching, that when it gives these directions, when it gives these
#
kinds of guidelines or whatever you want to call it, it has no clue how they will be effective
#
and making a new law will have no impact at all.
#
I mean, deterrence theory has been discredited for years and years now, and that it's kind
#
of ridiculous that judges still think that if you have a new law which deals exclusively
#
with this, it will be sufficiently harsh.
#
I mean, why should I blame judges?
#
Even some of the well-meaning people seem to think that if you have a new law exclusively
#
dealing with lynching, that will handle the issue.
#
I mean, I'm not going to blame the judges alone in this.
#
So which is why I don't think people really understand what the phenomenon going on here.
#
So I have a couple of clarificatory questions here.
#
The first is to do with the terminology that where did lynching come from and the judges
#
So let's say we've seen two kinds of organized violence in recent times which have been loosely
#
the term lynching has been used for them.
#
One is, of course, for communal purposes, like people transporting beef and all that.
#
You know, generally it'll be a Hindu mob getting together and beating up or killing a Muslim
#
And as you pointed out, with the post-civil war lynchings, the 19th century lynchings,
#
there's a certain amount of pride in the people carrying them out.
#
The other kind is when these fake rumors are spread through WhatsApp that strangers abducting
#
children and for that random strangers who just don't happen to be from the area are
#
lynched and there's not necessarily a communal angle to it, nor is it necessarily a matter
#
of communal pride, community pride.
#
So would you then say that the second kind of mob violence is not really lynching?
#
It's not really lynching at all and I think we're making a huge mistake, in fact, by calling
#
I actually prefer to use the biggest term, which is killings.
#
The reason why I say this is so India spend has this extraordinarily detailed spreadsheet
#
that they keep updating on a daily basis.
#
And if you actually go through it, there are about 68 events they've kept track of starting
#
from February of this year.
#
That's the earliest event, if I'm not mistaken, that they have catalog.
#
They could be earlier dating back to and they're focused specifically on child lifter rumors
#
being spread on WhatsApp and so on.
#
These instances are everywhere from Gujarat to, you know, Tamil Nadu to, you know, in
#
Northeast as well, in Assam, if I'm not mistaken.
#
So they're spread across the country.
#
Interestingly, there is a mix of urban and rural areas.
#
You have events in instances in Ahmedabad, there are instances in Bangalore, you have
#
instances in tribal hamlets, you have instances in Malega, you have instances across the country.
#
The common factor, as you can see, is that one, as you pointed out, it's just a stranger.
#
The only thing common is they don't know who that person is, right?
#
They can't identify who that person is.
#
So you've had Muslim mobs attacking Hindus, you have had Hindu mobs attacking Muslims,
#
you have had upper caste mobs attacking lower caste, you had lower caste mobs attacking
#
upper castes, you have had tribals attacking non-tribals, you have had, you know, people
#
of not well-off attacking equally non-well-off people.
#
For instance, in Bangalore, it was actually a Tamil majority area, which is not one of
#
the well-off areas in Bangalore.
#
The man who was attacked was a Rajasthani speaker, right?
#
So somebody who didn't speak, forget about Kannada, didn't speak Tamil, right?
#
So which is why you can't even use that whole thing about some level of social control or
#
some level of context there.
#
It's just that this was somebody that just caused a mild level of panic simply by being
#
So you can't find any common pattern to describe lynching as we would understand it commonly.
#
The second thing is that the communities themselves where this is happening seem to be underprivileged
#
communities by and large.
#
You're not talking about say dominant caste, even say for instance, dominant caste in terms
#
of rural areas, those who enjoy some privilege in terms of hierarchy and so on.
#
There are communities who don't seem to have that level of access to state resources.
#
Nobody here in this community can, for instance, or for instance, actually thought of calling
#
their local corporator or police officer and saying, hey, I heard these rumors, are they
#
true or can you do something about it or do you think you can ask the cops to increase
#
You can imagine if this is a community which had good connections, if the local corporator
#
was from them or if the local police was somebody that they knew, they'd be able to get something
#
done about it, right, or at least visibly done something.
#
So what you're referring to where the killers aren't from a dominant community, you're talking
#
about the second kind of killings as it was.
#
Yes, second kind of killings.
#
You're not the first kind where they are definitely the dominant community.
#
Because if you see all the lynchings, the lynchings proper, you will find that the police
#
either have a blaze attitude towards the whole thing.
#
You would have seen the recent pictures from Uttar Pradesh where the police are generally
#
tagging along as they drag the body of the victim.
#
You will find in many cases, the police hand over the person that they catch or they come
#
fairly late onto the scene and take and file FIRs against the victim, right?
#
So there is some sort of a tacit or even active support to the killers from the police machinery.
#
Whereas in terms of the child lifter killings, we find the police themselves being attacked
#
When the police reach to, you know, rescues the people being beaten up, they get attacked
#
because the crowd is in a total state of panic.
#
They don't know if the police are, you know, in disguise or actually the police, they don't
#
And they have such a level of mistrust with the police that they are sometimes end up
#
So even the police can't control them.
#
So there is that one very key difference that is very noticeable if you just examine the
#
I mean, there still needs to be more studies done as to how the people reacted when the
#
And when you read the FIRs, you'll get more details.
#
But clearly it is not as if the police knew what was happening or the police knew whom
#
to speak to and control the situation repeatedly.
#
One very detailed instance comes from Malega, for instance, where the police in charge try
#
to speak to the elders to say, please calm the mob down.
#
And they say, we don't have any control.
#
People have just gone crazy about the situation.
#
They think these five people whom they don't know have are child lifters, which is crazy
#
because the five people in question are everything from a child of five years old to somebody
#
So which is why there is a certain level of irrationality which has gripped the mob.
#
It is not a calculated effort to do something to show that we are asserting control or any
#
So which is why this phenomenon needs to be tackled very differently.
#
Some police agencies are getting this.
#
They are understanding that, OK, this is a failure on our part.
#
We haven't reached out to these communities.
#
So which is why the first response is to say, let's reach out.
#
I mean, it's apart from just saying, don't believe in rumors, going out to the communities
#
They've been proactively trying to say that these are our numbers.
#
In some cases, this has messed up very badly.
#
For instance, in Tripura, instead of the police going out, the state government, in a very
#
stupid move, sent somebody from the Agartala to a village to say, please tell everybody
#
to not to panic, except that poor fellow who got killed.
#
They thought he was a child lifter because he wasn't wearing a uniform.
#
He was somebody from the state government.
#
And the state tried to deal with it as a pure PR exercise.
#
The police didn't accompany him.
#
There was no official stamp about him.
#
So he got killed in the process.
#
So there is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this.
#
There's a right way to do this.
#
It's treated as a, look, there is a failure of the police machinery here.
#
There's a breakdown of trust between communities and the police.
#
But there is one deeper question to go to.
#
Why are people believing these rumors?
#
It's not just WhatsApp which is causing it.
#
We had, you know, 20 years ago, people believing rumors about Ganesha's drinking milk, pre-WhatsApp,
#
We found instances of similar killings in rural West Bengal about 30 or 40 years ago.
#
So rumors do spread, right?
#
Rumors are there all around us all the time.
#
Why is it that they suddenly get acted upon at certain points of time?
#
This is an open question.
#
And I think this is really the issue which needs to be looked at and researched.
#
And I don't say I have an immediate answer for this.
#
One potential answer is that these are communities which feel some level of anxiety about them.
#
That they feel they're under threat in some way.
#
That could be an economic threat.
#
Could be that they feel that they're being going to be displaced or could be that they
#
genuinely feel that there have been instances of child lifting.
#
But maybe they feel that there is a genuine breakdown of relationship between the police
#
So there needs to be more deeper questions asked.
#
And we should not stop at just calling it lynching.
#
We should not just stop at saying it's WhatsApp fault.
#
And we shouldn't just stop at saying it's the police's fault.
#
So that's sort of why I want to make this conceptual difference.
#
So Madhav, I want to turn to you.
#
I mean, there are really two interesting questions here.
#
I mean, one is what Alok just raised about why do people believe such rumors?
#
And not just why do people believe such rumors, but rumors are pretty ubiquitous and why at
#
certain times do certain rumors gain currencies, which is a large open question.
#
But the other open question, which I know you spent a lot of time thinking about, is
#
why do crowds get roused to violence?
#
When very often crowds are composed of individuals who by themselves would not have that proclivity
#
But when a crowd comes together, it seems to behave entirely like a beast of its own.
#
So are these two kinds of crowd violence related?
#
Is there a common theory that kind of explains them?
#
There's a long history in terms of the pathology of crowd violence.
#
On the first question, I think whatever theories we have in terms of cognitive biases and why
#
people would believe easily disprovable information.
#
I think there's a fair amount of research that I think has been discussed in this podcast
#
So I won't go too much into that.
#
But the history of crowd pathology is quite bizarre because for I think most people have
#
a very poor understanding of how crowd violence works.
#
They seem to think that when someone is in a crowd, it's sort of the so-called mob mentality
#
takes over and you sort of reduce to a primal sort of feral violent sort of personality.
#
But that's not actually true.
#
And that theory actually comes from this French polymath called Gustave Le Bon.
#
I think he published his paper in 1895 in the specific context of the Third French Revolution.
#
And if you look at the actual sort of empirical evidence that we have now, the violence that
#
was happening in Paris at the time was the opposite of a mindless mob.
#
It was very structured.
#
They had very clear goals and motivations.
#
And that theory of Le Bon is sort of proven to be very sticky to the extent that even
#
when it has been disproved, it has set the parameters of the discussion.
#
So I think in late 1920s, an American FH Alport came and basically argued the opposite that
#
instead of crowds making someone revert to some primal self, the people who commit violence
#
in crowds are just bad eggs.
#
So they're just bad people.
#
So they bring in their baggage with them and that's why the violence happens.
#
And that is also empirically unsound.
#
And what has happened since is that a lot of people have sort of merged these two theories
#
They sort of argue that the Le Bon majority of the crowd is this hapless, mindless, very
#
easily influenced sort of section and they get turned over or hijacked or flipped.
#
There are a lot of police terminology sort of used to describe by an Alportian minority.
#
And this is the prevalent sort of understanding of mob violence, the so-called agent provocateur.
#
So basically the bad eggs make the sheep do terrible things.
#
And the biggest problem with this understanding of crowd pathology is that nowhere is the
#
role of the police factored in.
#
So in the sort of late 70s and early 80s there was this guy called Stephen Ryker who basically
#
came up and he comes at the end of a lot of intellectual thought.
#
So he has an excellent paper that I would recommend reading called The Psychology of
#
And basically he argues for what he calls the elaborated social identity model where
#
the basic argument is that everyone has a very unique individual sense of identity.
#
But what happens when you get thrown into crowds and by crowds Ryker is not just talking
#
about you know mobs in the streets, he's talking about any collectivization.
#
What happens is that you shift from that individual identity to the collective identity and you
#
sort of almost you start because of social pressure and a lot of other factors start
#
subscribing to the norms and behaviors of that group.
#
And it is I think in that context that the fake news and the WhatsApp and the Twitter
#
sort of come into play.
#
In fact to me Twitter is more dangerous than WhatsApp news because Twitter is the kindling
#
and WhatsApp news is simply the spark and a spark without kindling is harmless.
#
And it's the discussions on Twitter as well as maybe some of the actions or rather non-actions
#
of sort of influence setters like political leaders or actors or whoever it may be that
#
sort of influence these norms and change the accepted modes of behavior.
#
So a lot of what Alok was talking about in terms of upper caste Hindu men violently securing
#
a social order of some kind is witnessed every day by all of us on Twitter.
#
And I think that is the more sort of it's also the more difficult nut to crack.
#
How do you change social norms WhatsApp news is fake news it's becomes this it's still
#
a very nebulous idea but at least in people's conceptions there's a very easy solution.
#
You stop it as opposed to changing norms how do you even begin to go about such a task.
#
So just to paraphrase you and correct me if I did it wrong what you're essentially saying
#
is that there is an inherent tribalism in us which is amplified by Twitter and then
#
what happens on WhatsApp subsequently is just an expression of that.
#
No I wouldn't say there's an inherent tribalism.
#
You don't feel the tribalism is inherent.
#
Perhaps I'm little uncomfortable with the connotations of the word tribalism.
#
I think there is some there's some connotations of reverting to a primitive but in the sense
#
I'd say that all of us are hardwired to think in terms of in groups and the other and culture
#
is at the end the whole enlightenment project is essentially about fighting our hardwiring
#
in many of these primitive ways.
#
Yeah so that's actually the whole concept of the in-group and the other something that
#
features very much into the ESIM model of crowd policing.
#
Because what they say is that if you have a peaceful protest and which the police think
#
that okay it's a bunch of peaceful protesters but you know it's the Laborn majority which
#
So the police treat them as a homogeneous danger even if they understand that the crowd
#
in front of them is a heterogeneous and what that encourages is escalated policing.
#
So your lati charges water cannons rubber bullets whatever it may be and what that does
#
is that it one it takes a majority of the crowds which Raikha calls moderates and the
#
moderates basically go I am doing some legitimate activity like enjoying a football game or
#
politically protesting.
#
I am being prevented from this legitimate activity by this extremely violent police
#
which then cast the police as illegitimate and what it automatically does is because
#
the police is treating that entire crowd homogeneously they start to identify with the slightly more
#
radical elements that may be there in the crowd saying that yeah you know these guys
#
are the enemy see what they're doing and then that sort of that interplay between the various
#
identities and beliefs and the reactions to the actions of each of those collective groupings
#
is then what drives that crowd towards violence.
#
So essentially you're saying the crowd is probably not radical to start with but because
#
the police preemptively treats it as radical because of the Laborn theory that a few small
#
eggs will make them all go bad so treat them all the same actually radicalizes them and
#
drives them towards violence.
#
Yeah which is my number one problem with the Supreme Court's judgment because they're basically
#
saying more of the same and not with any nuance.
#
So if it's not more of the same for example like I figured out what you mean by the same
#
which is the whole Laborn model of crowd violence and therefore don't so what would you do differently
#
like how should the police.
#
So what the yes I am a lot of people within that sort of theory say is exactly what I
#
look was saying which is about community management community participation.
#
It's I think a drowning voice in the Black Lives Matter movement that what you need to
#
do is actually have more interactions to build back the trust because what is there right
#
now is a fundamental distrust of the police and so that will only happen through not only
#
whatever the thousand police reforms that need to be done in the country but even if
#
those happen that the trust will only be brought back by continuous engagement.
#
But isn't this a sort of dual problem there at number one we don't have state capacity
#
in the sense that we simply don't have enough police and they're trained very badly and
#
this is too much of a ask and beyond the state capacities is also the problem of the will
#
like Alok correctly pointed out in many of the communal kind of communal lynchings which
#
is appropriate to call them lynchings.
#
The police are actually on the side of the mob in a sense.
#
So which is what makes us inherently skeptical of any solution that says more police.
#
So by policing I mean specifically the police going out on streets with the lathis the guns
#
or whatever violent forms but or even arrests or detentions but I am happy with sort of
#
nonviolent more sort of communicative participatory forms of policing like Alok was talking about.
#
I don't see as much of danger over there.
#
So just to build on that a little bit again each problem requires its own set of solutions
#
and while we're talking about how to manage these kinds of WhatsApp rumor based killings
#
what this requires is for the police to go back build its trust of the communities I
#
mean of course the killings need to be handled as through the criminal justice system you
#
have to bring the perpetrators to violence to the justice all of that has to happen but
#
the police need to go back to the communities they can't just militarize shut down the places
#
increase police presence and think that the problem will go away that will only cause
#
more panic that will make people believe that you know we are now being punished for what
#
we think we were trying to defend our community kind of stuff.
#
So as part of the problem in this kind of for example rumor fueled killings that the
#
people at large especially the kind of marginalized people you say are usually the perpetrators
#
don't have faith in the rule of law to begin with so when they hear about child abductions
#
in the area they think that damn we got to take this into our own hands.
#
Yeah I think that is that is I think at the core of this right I think at the core of
#
it it is that they just don't feel we can reach out to the police that we don't think
#
action will be taken that even if we go there right nobody's going to listen to us I mean
#
just a slight digression one of the things that keep coming up when you sort of read
#
people's assessment of a government especially across North Indian in rural a lot of rural
#
belt says I'm already soon why right like they would think that if a government listens
#
to us is good enough they don't even if outcomes may be good or bad they judge the government
#
on how well they listen and the fact that you can't expect even if you can't even
#
expect a hearing from this police or you can't even expect to go be heard by this police
#
suggest that such a total level of breakdown there and in inevitably innumerable innumerable
#
number of cases you will keep finding that you can't even expect the police to take down
#
a complaint if you don't go with your local MLA or a local corporate or a local panchayat
#
officer and that is for the people who have access to these level of you know government
#
functionaries if you are a community or if you are a group of people who have no access
#
to these functionaries then you feel even more cut off from the rule of law seems like
#
nothing I mean it's just a conception that doesn't has no meaning at all for you right
#
so which is why you have to first start by enforcing that yes we will respond we will
#
listen to you we are here to respond to you and we are here to understand what you don't
#
take the law into your own hands that is where that can have a sort of meaningful response
#
in at least preventing future outbreaks and preventing more people from taking the law
#
into their own hands in that sense yeah and there are in terms of the impact of like the
#
fundamental breakdown of rule of law that we currently have in our country it's I think
#
dual fold one is the sense that the the social orders that we currently live by are no longer
#
legitimate so the people feel that they are no longer need to be bound by them and that
#
is more a question of a normative position of whether they should engage in a certain
#
behavior or not and the other is just a simple metric of power they feel they can get away
#
with it right so let me let me try to sort of summarize what I've learned from you guys
#
about these two different kinds of violence which is very clear to me now that you explained
#
it that the lynchings that happen over say eating beef and so on are fundamentally just
#
in every possible way different from the kind of killings which happen over whatsapp rumors
#
let me try and summarize it and tell me if you have something to add to that what's happening
#
in the case of the whatsapp rumors is that they are let's leave aside the question of
#
why people have a proclivity to believe these kinds of rumors because we are a species that
#
after all feeds on narrative we we make sense of the world through stories so you know what
#
the precise mechanism of these rumors working is a different matter but these are generally
#
committed by marginalized groups who recognize that there is no rule of law in this country
#
which is something I've always said the rule of law if it exists exists only for the very
#
rich it simply does not exist for most of the people and in fact I'd you know Madhav
#
I disagree with your terming it a breakdown of the rule of law I don't think the rule
#
of law has actually existed in India at all all through our independence and these are
#
marginalized groups who because they realize a lack of the existence of the rule of law
#
do not trust the police at all and therefore when they believe these narratives these
#
paranoid narratives of child abductors or whatever the case may be take matters into
#
their own hand and even when the police actually come and they try to intervene they'll beat
#
up the police as we've seen in recent cases they just don't care so that's one aspect
#
of the problem and you would say that merely trying to apply the danda will make these
#
guys more angry and will make matters worse and therefore one way of doing it is through
#
police outreach to them and making them trust the law again which seems to require massive
#
structural changes and it almost sounds impossible the other kind of violence which is the lynchings
#
per se are very different in the sense that they are normally carried out by the dominant
#
community which like you said mostly in the cases that we've been seeing our upper caste
#
Hindus who are beating up or killing Dalits or Muslims they are against the other they
#
often have the tacit support of the police if the rule of law exists it exists in a perverse
#
way that the legal machinery is on their side and it is again it is against the other but
#
it's driven it seems to me largely by tribalism which I would argue is inherent in humans
#
but amplified by social media so a do you are these characterizations accurate and B
#
what are the different kinds of ways in which as policy people you would set out to deal
#
I would sort of maybe dispute a little bit with the characterization of the second kind
#
I'd say the sort of defining characteristic I think Alok alluded to it earlier is one
#
that is inherently political I think that is a question of some political purpose or
#
political structure that is sought to be achieved or protected in some way and that is sort
#
of I think one of the defining characteristics of the lynching kinds of violence and like
#
for example like what kind of political can you illustrate that like is it that the dominant
#
groups want more state patronage and they want to cut off the consider this you know
#
like for instance go back to the 2014 campaign we were all hearing a cheden but there was
#
a threat to the campaign that we in the TV didn't hear it but if you heard more these
#
speeches there was a whole oh look at what the UPA government did with the pink revolution
#
which was a clearly targeted at the fact that India's meat exports had increased right and
#
that was coded message saying that look these guys have benefited at your expense these
#
guys being the Muslim communities benefited these butcher communities have benefited at
#
your expense right which is clearly to pit one community against the other it picked
#
them at a very socio-economic status to say that they are benefiting and you're not how
#
unfair is that right it may not have anything to do directly at the ground level right you
#
may measure the GDP and say no actually Muslims are still not as well off as equivalent in
#
the communities but that message struck right that message struck and that was used later
#
on to push that narrative of you know and of course you pass the laws the key element
#
here is something that the Supreme Court totally misses out is the fact that you have passed
#
the laws legitimizing the notion that even possessing beef is somehow illegal and unfair
#
so all those laws Supreme Court has made no mention of Supreme Court has again not even
#
acknowledged its own role in weakening the atrocities act which makes it more difficult
#
to prosecute people who attacked the Dalits for being Dalits so you have all of these
#
things which sort of aggravate existing social inequalities disparities to specifically say
#
the government is on the side of this community the government is going to support you against
#
the rest of the people and that is to sort of give you the impression that when you take
#
things in your own hands we are there to take have your backs we are there to protect you
#
so it makes a difference that when say an FIR is filed saying that this person was killed
#
a counter FIR is filed which says actually no this person was carrying beef right right
#
and it's almost as if the second one is a greater crime one is a greater crime because
#
why there's a legal framework which sort of was passed by the people in power to protect
#
you in case you do something like this so there is that there is a political gain which
#
is to be made by sort of pitting that one community against the other.
#
Something I'm fond of quoting is something the late Andrew Breitbart once said politics
#
is downstream of culture and I would hold it before you had this communal Hindu versus
#
Muslim politics you had that animosity actually embedded in the culture that you know this
#
is not something new you'll see this that from the time the Jansung was formed as a
#
political formulation for example they've consistently over the years got that 15 16
#
percent of the vote or whatever it is and these ideas these thoughts this tribalism
#
was in the culture and it's only been amplified now and of course one theory is that it's
#
social media has helped to amplify it because you know you have what is called preference
#
cascades people sort of discover there are so many others like them what I call invisible
#
bigots and they all come out of the cupboard and then that's a consolidation there.
#
So I'm not quite sure about the formulation that this is you know it's purely political
#
but leave that aside I mean that's that's it's no I wouldn't say this purely political
#
I just meant that it's one of its defining characteristics is that there is some political
#
purpose that is sort of at the root of the violence right so whether it is preventing
#
intercast marriages or sort of the whole beef sort of issue and everything that has happened
#
around that it's there is some political motive behind it and also not just political there
#
is some level of calculation this may not necessarily be premeditated though that is
#
often the case but certainly afterwards statements and the actions made by whether it's people
#
in power or just the leaders of that organization are calculated to continue the legitimacy
#
of those actions with the second kind of violence I'm not saying it's completely apolitical
#
that's that's not I'm saying but it's more the outcome of political negligence.
#
So I would say maybe that I have I frequently like to say sort of treat the disease not
#
the symptom which the Supreme Court judgment just does not do it only treats the symptoms.
#
So I'd say with the the first example of the lynchings the disease itself is political
#
in nature and as well as the symptoms but with the second it's just the disease the
#
symptoms itself in terms of the actual outbreak of violence that is not really political it's
#
just about because that community for a long period of time I don't know how clear this
#
distinction has come out but because that community for a very long time has been politically
#
neglected in some way that they are sort of driven to this edge right so it is their absence
#
within the political system it is a marginalization from the political system which is causing
#
and this is something that is again I sound like I'm being paid by some ESIM psychologists
#
but this is something that is born out in empirical evidence of say riots and also they've
#
gone through some of the previous studies that proved slightly more Alportian or LeBond
#
sort of theories of crowd psychology and run them through their models and have come out
#
with results that prove their model and show that the other ones are empirically unsound
#
and basically show that say I think with the Tottenham riots in London it was about the
#
persecution of Mark Duggan I forget his name but there was one individual who died during
#
an arrest and the community viewed that effectively like an assassination and that was because
#
of a long history of marginalization and just being persecuted if not prosecuted so it does
#
stem from a long history of demarcation. So let me throw this question to you I mean we
#
started by discussing the Supreme Court judgment and you guys explained how it's so fundamentally
#
flawed and we've also sort of spoken about how these two kinds of violence are fundamentally
#
different and need to be dealt with differently. Let's say that you are the Supreme Court,
#
the two of you are the Supreme Court bench and you have to come up with a judgment that
#
obviously won't make these mistakes. What would be the broad contours of that judgment
#
then? What would you say? See one thing would be to identify that firstly there is a legal
#
framework which is sort of encouraging and promoting these kind of activities. I think
#
that has to be attacked first. What is that framework and these are two active what are
#
we referring to? So we are talking about all these beef ban laws. We're talking about laws
#
which sort of essentially say that my sentiments are more important than actual livelihoods
#
that you have state level laws which sort of say that sale, I mean there are the least
#
harmful, the least harmful ones of these are the ones that say sale of meat is banned for
#
8 or 9 days all the way to the Maharashtra law and the Uttar Pradesh law which sort of
#
say that even possession of beef can land you in jail for 8 or 10 years. Are these unconstitutional
#
laws? I would say these are totally unconstitutional. Possession has been overturned. Yeah but that
#
is only by the Bombay High Court for the Maharashtra laws. The appeals for them are pending in
#
the Supreme Court. They've been pending since 2016. They haven't been heard yet. They should
#
have been heard by now. They should have been heard and decided by now because the Supreme
#
Court in the Puttuswami case very clearly said there's a right to eat what you want.
#
There's a right to all of that but as quickly as it listed and heard say I mean the hearings
#
are going on right now the section 377 case I think this was just as important. The court
#
should have taken this up and said okay we can't separate these two issues right. We
#
understand that somebody has filed a PIL for lynching but I think we can't separate the
#
issues. I think administratively and also judicially the two issues should have been
#
heard together. To have said that it's not as if these people are suddenly gathering
#
together and you know killing Muslims or whatever for fun. They're doing this because there's
#
a certain legal regime which sort of tells them that you know beef is a problem. So the
#
first part of your judgment of the Supreme Court which the bench of Alok and Madhav would
#
come up with is change the legal framework by declaring all these laws unconstitutional.
#
Yes absolutely. It would sort of make the rest thing to of course our constitution as
#
provisions relating to you know you should try and reduce cow slaughter and say okay
#
fine we'll give it a de minimus thing to say yes you can promote you know safe animal husbandry
#
by reducing the need for cow slaughter but we will not criminalize possession. We will
#
allow say slaughter of buffaloes and old cattle and so on and so forth. So we will take it
#
back to the old fifties position which which had a sense which drew a sensible balance
#
between the these two considerations. That would be the start. The second would be to
#
hold the state government responsible to say the state government is going to be responsible
#
for the killings not just the police and that would be in terms of saying if you make a
#
statement you will be treated as an accused. If it is a post facto statement expressing
#
support for the accused you can be added as an accused. The state government has to come
#
forth and sort of basically say that yes we will not be saying a word in favor of the
#
accused that you know you can it doesn't matter if it's the chief minister it has to either
#
you shut up and say nothing or you say we will let the criminal justice system take
#
its course forward. Let the case continue forward. Don't try to do something as silly
#
as what happened in Jharkhand where there was so oh no we have to show everyone how
#
amazing our judicial system is. We will carry out a botched trial. Right. You can't you
#
can't repair the judicial system just for this one category of cases. Let it happen
#
as it is intended to happen too. I mean you also have to take into account that maybe
#
it is not possible for these trials to take place in that state. The Supreme Court has
#
to then say that if any party comes to us saying that the police is prejudiced against
#
us we will immediately transfer out of that state preferably to a state where that that
#
particular party is not the ruling party. But then who will conduct the prosecution
#
because the police is part of that right. Yeah so which is which is why so for instance
#
I'll give you the most recent example for instance in the Kathua rape case where they
#
transfer it out of Jammu and Kashmir to Chandigarh. I mean the investigation was complete. They
#
said the prosecution will now be conducted by the government authorities in Chandigarh.
#
For instance in the Gujarat riots case they transfer it from Gujarat to Maharashtra where
#
the prosecutors from Maharashtra did it. So they can appoint I mean the Supreme Court
#
can say the problem is with the investigation itself. We will appoint we will handpick a
#
set of investigation police officers whom we feel can carry out a set of independent
#
investigations in these kind of cases and all such incidents will be investigated only
#
by these authorities irrespective of the state they are conducted. But some could argue that
#
it's overreach on the part of the court right. It's meddling with what should really be
#
an executive. That is true but I also feel that in a sense when the executive itself
#
is part of the offense right. We are talking about a situation like as with the Gujarat
#
riots as with the whole as with for instance the 1984 riots and the executive itself is
#
seen to be aiding and abetting the offense. That is the part which the court has totally
#
missed in the judgment. It's not as if these are happening despite the best efforts of
#
somebody in the government to stop it or the government just doesn't have the capacity
#
to stop it. There is a level of aid aid and abetment that is happening. I mean you are
#
having as I pointed earlier government ministers going and garlanding people who got this thing
#
you having accused who died who being given the national flag and so on. So these are
#
obvious signals being sent out right saying that we know who I mean this is whose side
#
we are on in this matter. So this is why context matters for a lynching. This is why context
#
matters. These are not entirely a historical. These are not entirely a contextual killings.
#
So which is why the court should have understood that these are usually killings where the
#
government is in favor of one party over the other. So you know say that in such killings
#
we will transfer it out of one state to the other. Give us a list of such cases where
#
you think the government has not done a good job. Okay. Jharkhand they did a bad job of
#
it. They could have done better but where the state is just not moving ahead with the
#
prosecution where the state has filed cases against the victims you know give us a list
#
of those we transferred out of those states from Uttar Pradesh will transfer it to maybe
#
I don't know Delhi which is not ruled by the BJP for instance or transfer it from Gujarat
#
to some other state something like that you know give us a list of this and we'll be happy
#
to do it. The thing is these are all powers the court legitimately enters under the Constitution
#
for precisely this reason the court doesn't have to manually oversee the investigation.
#
They just need to ensure the process takes place in a manner which inspires confidence
#
so the court has a power according to the Constitution that if they feel that a particular
#
party cannot prosecute or decide on a case well I know they can transfer it anywhere
#
and they can even for example say that if the case is in a BJP state they can transfer
#
it to a non-BJP state and take that political consideration into account. I mean they don't
#
expressly say this but they have done this in the past without saying it in so many words
#
they have done this in the past for instance Jalita's case was moved out of Tamil Nadu
#
to Karnataka simply to keep I mean not because shift from AIDMK to DMK but then recognize
#
that because it referred to the supremo of AIDMK there is no chance of fair trial at
#
all in this state that whichever party is there they would interfere with the trial
#
so they moved the whole trial to Karnataka. So which is why they do have this power they
#
should have understood that this is what is actually going on and they have failed to
#
do so. So I think there was a lot of scope for this court to have done.
#
But meaning this is also not surprising because frequently sort of one of the truisms that
#
I keep on returning to as a lawyer sort of interested working in the public policy space
#
is the justice must not only be done but seem to be done and our current chief justice is
#
shown as almost willful disregard of this concept in sort of some of the sort of actions
#
and positions that he has taken. So can you briefly summarize that for those of my listeners
#
who may not have been following legal developments? Well I think the better person to describe
#
that may be Alok because he is one of the participants I think in that.
#
Working backwards apart from this case just in terms of how cases have been heard in the
#
same court where you want to ensure fairness in the procedure where you want cases to be
#
heard by you know judges without any conflict of interest that has not happened even cases
#
relating to himself. Chief Justice Deepak Mishra has heard it himself by considering
#
allegations against him where in terms of judge Loya case where people want to know
#
what happened the judgment not he didn't author it but the bench that he was part of basically
#
said nobody needs to know anything right some people have given statements that's it be
#
happy with it nobody needs to ask any further questions that's the second instance that
#
I can think of the fact is even for instance I can give an current example with the section
#
three seventy seven case there are actually two cases the one case is the petitions filed
#
by Navtej Johar and a few others which was challenging three seventy seven directly in
#
the Supreme Court but the second set of cases are actually a continuation of the old Kaushal
#
cases which sort of questioned the correctness of Justice Singh V's judgment which brought
#
back three seventy seven to the picture those have not been listed those have not been listed
#
because according to the Supreme Court's own rules if those were listed Justice Deepak
#
Mishra would have had to involve the three other senior judges of the Supreme Court of
#
India he did not want to do that he did not want to sit on the same bench as the three
#
other judges who went on a press conference against him so you have this kind of petty
#
politics and you know the highest institution of the land almost which makes you wonder
#
that even if the you know even if the Supreme Court say tries to correct the executive who's
#
going to watch the watchman exactly which creates this kind of situation but yeah I
#
mean the point of course being that at the end of the day the Supreme Court had a chance
#
to ensure that justice was seen to be done here in this case and they've once again
#
Yeah I'd like to add one dissenting opinion to what Alok said it was a minor point we
#
said even if the politicians don't say anything I don't subscribe to that meaning maybe they
#
shouldn't be held liable but I think it has been pointed out sufficiently online at least
#
about the silence of our honorable Prime Minister on some of these issues and as the sort of
#
icon of his party and perhaps this current movement his silence is as damning as any
#
of the inflammatory statements that have been made by maybe slightly more minor players.
#
I absolutely agree and also on the campaign trail he's been incredibly skilled with dog
#
whistles and you know what will simply happen if you do have the Supreme Court saying that
#
his state government should not say anything in their favor is that while ministers themselves
#
may not say anything you'll have random party people saying things and you know freedom
#
of speech of course they can I mean we support the right to do so.
#
So I'd like to sort of you know wind it up by asking you guys a couple of questions that
#
I ask all my guests on whatever subjects they're talking about and we'll start with you Alok
#
two questions each which is what makes you hopeful and what makes you despair about what
#
is happening in this country with regard to mob violence and I mean both these kind of
#
crowd violence the lynchings and the killings.
#
What makes me hopeful is the fact that perversely I mean of all the people to have responded
#
the first and perhaps the most respective response might have been whatsapps even though
#
they may have about a 5 or 10 percent response but not to say they are totally not not responsible
#
for 5 or 10 percent responsibility their response.
#
I think one they try to fix their platform there's an ongoing response to they have called
#
for people to submit proposals to carry out research.
#
I think ideally in an ideal situation should have been the government of India or some
#
executive agency which says we want to commission studies to find out what is going on.
#
Find government move slowly whatsapp moves quicker good for them but I think the fact
#
that people are not sort of keeping quiet at saying okay we will fix these two three
#
things and maybe the problem will go away.
#
I think it's a good thing and I think if some of the good research organization that this
#
country has sort of take up this challenge seriously and I know there are many who will
#
go down to this to the ground and not just research even media organization.
#
I think what this really calls for some of the kind of on the ground reporting that any
#
number of solid reporters in this country can do if we can get 10 good on the ground long
#
form pieces we sort of say this is what happened on that day when this person accidentally
#
found themselves in the middle of a mob which thought they were a child lifter.
#
I think we will get an incredible insight into what is actually going on in this process.
#
So I think understanding what is going on will help us go there that at least makes
#
The fact that there is an interest and there is that capacity to find out what is going
#
I think that gives me hope.
#
What makes me despair of course is that again in terms of the fact that the supreme judicial
#
body with all its level of protections with all its judges is uninterested in saying what
#
You know that that is what despairs me that you had this opportunity to say something
#
even if the directions missed their mark.
#
I'm not saying that this court should have has the opportunity to think through things
#
maybe as deeply as some of us may have.
#
But even if you had said framed the issue in the way it ought to have been framed I
#
think that would have been and even that signaling would have been signaling would have been
#
great to have said we see that people are being killed over carrying beef that is offensive
#
We see that people are being killed for wearing jeans just for being just for being Dalits
#
That's an offensive idea to the notion of India being a republic if they had said that
#
I think that would have itself sent out sufficient signal that they know what is happening.
#
They may be powerless to do something immediately aborted or their measures may have missed
#
the mark a little bit understandable but that they didn't even name it right.
#
They didn't name what is happening.
#
I think that is a cause for hope is really what civil society is doing.
#
And your cause for despair is what the institutions which are set up to protect us are you know
#
how they are mishandling their and the most to just add a little more context to it.
#
Look we're saying if you actually go through the judgment it doesn't read like a judgment.
#
It reads like the kind of lecture a judge would give if he was invited to some event.
#
It's completely devoid of any context and also he like parrots these very slogany kind
#
of phrases like the unity and diversity and which he says at least like 20 times and he
#
doesn't say like Dalits once.
#
So given that the sort of judgment is written in this very sloganeering kind of fashion
#
which to be fair is also Deepak Mishra's writing style the absence of like a clear sort of
#
denial or call to arms against this kind of behavior is even more stark.
#
And would you like share his reasons or like what are your reasons for hope in despair
#
if you have something to add.
#
Well my reasons for hope are I'm going to be a little more selfish in that we are currently
#
working on a project on this hopefully that will have some impact on the discourse.
#
The law is I think being a bit too ambitious and sort of my primary sort of pet peeve with
#
this whole issue which I haven't discussed in detail so far is and I've written an article
#
about this in the in the Hindu is that sort of organizations which are otherwise formally
#
or legally recognized can commit these acts their members may get arrested and get thrown
#
under the bus but the organizations go scot-free.
#
So I think in terms of signaling if you can somehow even find forget bad I don't even
#
want to go into banning organization because that's a problematic proposal constitutionally.
#
Siddharth Patel once did ban the RSS leave that aside.
#
But it's much more liable to abuse exactly I agree with that.
#
So I don't get banning but some kind of accountability to the organization some kind of group liability
#
I think needs I think will go a long way at least with the sort of virtue signaling so
#
that we can then at least go back to a narrative of bad eggs as opposed to these large monolithic
#
institutions that are behind these people's backs.
#
So that is what is one area that sort of I think gives me cause for hope cause for despair
#
is pretty much everything else.
#
You alluded to the current state of our criminal justice system whether it's the courts the
#
prosecution the police it's one of the recommendations that Deepak Mishra gives is the I think the
#
favorite for any criminal issue which is them fast track courts.
#
In my brief one year of practicing I visited the same fast track court six times for the
#
same matter and it was always the same stage because it was an appeal of awaiting records
#
So this is the current state of fast track in our country it is what it is now it does
#
Maybe they should put a jogging track around the fast track court so at least it will have
#
some kind of fast track.
#
I know that's a bad joke but so is our system right.
#
Or maybe take a sort of cue from Silicon Valley and maybe have a standing desk designed to
#
But yeah it everything else pretty much is I think you already said that a lot of the
#
things that you're talking about predicated on having a criminal justice system that we
#
Right and on that note of despair we hope you enjoyed listening to us.
#
Alok and Madhav thanks so much for coming on the show.
#
Thanks for inviting us.
#
If you enjoyed listening to the show you can follow Madhav on Twitter at matchapp88.
#
I think Alok is off Twitter at the moment but you can follow me at Amit Verma A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A
#
and for past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen just head on over to sceneunseen.in.
#
Every week comes a show where three people come together to tell you about stuff they
#
like, a movie, a TV show, a book and other stuff.
#
Tune in every Monday on the IVM podcast app to IVM likes.
#
Batman approves this message.
#
Watch out fortnightly on Wednesdays on the IVM website, app or your favourite podcasting
