"Mohammad Shaqib, a nineteen-year-old tailor from Haryana jailed for sharing a morphed photo of PM Modi...”
This was one of the news captions to hit the national dailies a while back, one of many which lead to the arrest of ordinary citizens over social media posts against politicians.
The article went on to elucidate Shaqib’s brief stint with education. Yes, he was a third-grade drop-out. Further on, it shed light on his parents who happened to be day laborers, with a growing family of four offsprings; Shaqib being one of them. The family was so dirt poor that it was coerced into taking a loan of Rs. 7,000 in order to fulfill their son’s wish of owning a touch-phone.
One can’t help but wonder how such details were relevant to the story, and why were they there at all. How, by knowing the full background of the offender, mitigates or enhances the crime, is beyond a rational mind’s sphere of comprehension. Yet, sometimes, the details are put there purposefully to influence the reader’s mind according to the demographics he or she might belong to.
Some Hindu rightists, armed with their wanton disgust for the minorities, would slam the Musulmans and their godforsaken poverty coupled with their desire to procreate endlessly. "At this rate, by 2040, this will no longer be a Hindu country, but a conglomerate of Islamic caliphates” they would exclaim, reciting their usual mantra.
To the Musulman, the import attached to the story would sound disproportional to this very innocent
indulgence of a young, ignorant lad. His blood will boil over the injustice bailed out to the boy, and his heart will reach out to the Qoran for an answer. Some radical Islamist's toxic speeches might suddenly sound logical, with a sense of being a victim as a minority group in a largely Hindu country setting in.
With such an assault on our constitutional rights, the hooligan-style leftists would throng the streets, block the traffic, shout slogans, break a few public transport windows, and disrupt the daily life of common man, demanding one’s right to free speech. On the other hand, the educated leftists, who pride themselves in being the elitists, belonging to the upper echelon of society, would sit in the mahogany
furniture of their fine drawing rooms, clinking glasses with their like-minded comrades, and pine over the constant assault on the individual’s sovereignty and self-determination, along with dwindling secularism, dying multi-culturism and increasing intolerance in the country. Letters to the Editor,
highlighting Shaqib’s’s right to freedom of expression would be scribbled and dispatched with a gratuitous urgency.
An economist would look at the whole thing rather differently. Taking a debt for buying a touch-phone is to him an unproductive debt. It is no wonder, that the country runs on borrowed money, he would opine, citing figures and statistics. For according to the latest IMF figures, India has a total debt of 125 percent of its GDP, higher than several Asian economies.
And so on, and so forth…
But, whatever happened to Mohammad Shaqib in the meanwhile? Did a sabbatical in the jail make him respect the PM more? Did he turn more patriotic? Did he join the army? Or, did he go back to school to finish his primary education, and, in the process, learnt to answer the roll-
call with Jai Hind?
Jai Hind.
This was one of the news captions to hit the national dailies a while back, one of many which lead to the arrest of ordinary citizens over social media posts against politicians.
The article went on to elucidate Shaqib’s brief stint with education. Yes, he was a third-grade drop-out. Further on, it shed light on his parents who happened to be day laborers, with a growing family of four offsprings; Shaqib being one of them. The family was so dirt poor that it was coerced into taking a loan of Rs. 7,000 in order to fulfill their son’s wish of owning a touch-phone.
One can’t help but wonder how such details were relevant to the story, and why were they there at all. How, by knowing the full background of the offender, mitigates or enhances the crime, is beyond a rational mind’s sphere of comprehension. Yet, sometimes, the details are put there purposefully to influence the reader’s mind according to the demographics he or she might belong to.
Some Hindu rightists, armed with their wanton disgust for the minorities, would slam the Musulmans and their godforsaken poverty coupled with their desire to procreate endlessly. "At this rate, by 2040, this will no longer be a Hindu country, but a conglomerate of Islamic caliphates” they would exclaim, reciting their usual mantra.
To the Musulman, the import attached to the story would sound disproportional to this very innocent
indulgence of a young, ignorant lad. His blood will boil over the injustice bailed out to the boy, and his heart will reach out to the Qoran for an answer. Some radical Islamist's toxic speeches might suddenly sound logical, with a sense of being a victim as a minority group in a largely Hindu country setting in.
With such an assault on our constitutional rights, the hooligan-style leftists would throng the streets, block the traffic, shout slogans, break a few public transport windows, and disrupt the daily life of common man, demanding one’s right to free speech. On the other hand, the educated leftists, who pride themselves in being the elitists, belonging to the upper echelon of society, would sit in the mahogany
furniture of their fine drawing rooms, clinking glasses with their like-minded comrades, and pine over the constant assault on the individual’s sovereignty and self-determination, along with dwindling secularism, dying multi-culturism and increasing intolerance in the country. Letters to the Editor,
highlighting Shaqib’s’s right to freedom of expression would be scribbled and dispatched with a gratuitous urgency.
An economist would look at the whole thing rather differently. Taking a debt for buying a touch-phone is to him an unproductive debt. It is no wonder, that the country runs on borrowed money, he would opine, citing figures and statistics. For according to the latest IMF figures, India has a total debt of 125 percent of its GDP, higher than several Asian economies.
And so on, and so forth…
But, whatever happened to Mohammad Shaqib in the meanwhile? Did a sabbatical in the jail make him respect the PM more? Did he turn more patriotic? Did he join the army? Or, did he go back to school to finish his primary education, and, in the process, learnt to answer the roll-
call with Jai Hind?
Jai Hind.
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