There was a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir (what is the new name after dividing the state into three parts?). I can see some of you who don't otherwise post “political” opinions about it. Honestly, I'm happy to see all of you sticking your neck out. I'm not suggesting I know better but do you know what terrorism or terrorists mean? Forget dictionary meaning or legal definition. In your head, what does it mean? Is it terrorism when a section of people in Manipur are mercilessly killed, their houses are burnt, women approach police and police hand them to a mob from the majority community and later videos of them being paraded go viral; Is that terrorism? There's murder, burning, rapes and still, it doesn't sound like terrorism. Why is it? Is it because the media is not calling it so? Or because so many of you are not posting “I condemn terrorists rampaging havoc in Manipur”?

Okay. Okay. Manipur is too much stressful. Probably it'll harm your mental health if you start knowing about Manipur. Forget it then.

How about that man in uniform on the train taking his service gun and shooting Muslims while chanting religious and political slogans, is that terrorism? Why do we still not refer to him as a terrorist? We went so far as to call him mental! Not terrorist. He killed people, and chanted religious and political slogans but somehow for you and so many others, his wasn't an act of terror. We know terrorism is bad and terrorists are bad guys. But what exactly is terrorism? And who are terrorists? Should people have to topple a bus to be named terrorists? Should the violence happen in Jammu and Kashmir for it to be termed as terrorism? Like Jats in Haryana or Rajasthan can remove railway tracks while demanding reservations but we don't refer to them as terrorists but a Kashmiri pelting a pebble at an Indian army gunman is definitely termed a terrorist. Perhaps where violence takes place has to do with the definition in your head. If so… Have you heard of Kunan Poshspora where Indian armed forces carried out mass rapes? Have you heard of that girl in the northeast who had gun wounds in her private regions and traces of semen? Oh, wait! We don't refer to men in uniform as terrorists. They have the legal right to kill and maybe rapes are also allowed under AFSPA. I don't know but I have never heard an armyman tried for it. So who is a terrorist then? My head hurts trying to think about the answer. It appears you all have some clarity on the subject. Unlike me, you don't post regularly. Perhaps your lives are important, you all have life and you all are busy. Once in a while something happens and it shakes you so much that you leave out your “I'm not political” rule and post political opinion. Maybe Palestine is too far for you to bother about but Jammu and Kashmir is a piece of land that belongs to you. I'm still trying to think about how your brain works. What motivates it and why.

On a separate note, I'll not force myself to post any such things. Terrorists will do what they do and are known to do, rapists will rape, thieves will steal, robbers will rob and scammers will scam. It's what they do. It's the job of the media to inform us when so and so happens. And it is the job of the government, and administration to first, stop such things from happening and second, if in case they happen then to investigate, catch and punish the perpetrators. I believe ordinary citizens and people in positions of influence must speak out when people in power aka govt do not do their job. For example, Kashmir is the world's most militarised region. What does that mean? It has the highest ratio of citizens to gunmen. Kashmir is also directly ruled by the Modi govt. Modi hasn't conducted elections there since he divided the state into three regions. Only recently a vehicle full of ammunition was rammed into an army base causing huge damage and embarrassment. How did such a vehicle with such large quantities of arms go past multiple army checkposts? Were army men involved with terrorists to aid them in committing such a heinous crime? We didn't bother to ask Modi these questions and he didn't bother to inform us anyway. We don't know what happened. Then recently some fraud from Gujarat claimed he was close to Modi and was visiting all sensitive army regions. In fact, he was taken around by Indian army officials. What kind of security does the Indian army have? What sort of verification procedures. No one asked, and no one answered. Modi demonetised and created havoc with the Indian economy but told us it broke the backbone of terrorism in Kashmir. There was the abrogation of article 370 defended on the same lines. So how's it still happening? Who is letting it happen? Is the Indian army incompetent? Or is Modi not letting them function? Do you want Modi to answer these questions or do you want to forget and wait until it repeats?

Here's a bit of truth. The reason why you post this is because it aligns with your politics. You're political. No one's apolitical. Your endgame is demonising a community. You're not bothered about lives lost. If you did, you would have spoken about Manipur, or about multiple Muslims murdered on Indian streets and video-graphed. A cabinet minister nonetheless went and garlanded convicts of lynching cases. Don't forget. Or when the rapists of Bilkis Bano were released by the Modi govt just before the Gujarat elections. Hindu organisations welcomed them with garlands and honoured them on a stage. Nice photographs. See. You're not bothered about rapes and deaths of people. You don't care who was killed in Jammu and Kashmir. You have a carefully curated politics in your head. You know it's awful. That's why you want to pretend apolitical about other matters where posting about it does not align with your politics. But here, you have to post. You don't want to lose the chance to dehumanise a community. Subtle huh?

I'm not suggesting you should not post. Please do. But also invest some time into thinking why are you bothering to post about it. Are you trying to inform your followers? Why? Is it because the media is not covering it? It actually is. Media didn't cover Manipur, Brijbhushan, Prajwal Devanna etc., but then you kept quiet. So why are you posting? Are you feeling sad? You are against terrorism and you want to tell it to your followers? What kind of followers do you have that think anyone would be in favour of terrorism? Aren't we all against violence, rape, child marriages, slavery etc? Are you trying to say yes? But read again, it doesn't appear like you are against rape and murder, right? That's what perplexes me.

#terrorism #politics #socialmedia #JammuKashmir

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Reddit have suspended or banned accounts of or related to Donald Trump. You want to believe in it or not, the sad truth is Donald Trump is President of the United States of America. He is the most powerful man on the earth. And God did not make him this powerful nor did he acquire Aladdin's lamp, scratched it and become President. People, a large number of them, voted him into this office. They chose him to be their president. And by these platforms, he was reaching his audience. And that platform has been snatched from him now. And this snatching was not achieved after thorough parliamentary or congress' dialogue or arguments in court, this pulling away of carpet from underneath his motormouth-empire was decided by few men behind the closed-doors of these platforms in total secrecy. Their decisions are beyond the purview of public scrutiny. There is no set of logic that applies to what went behind these decisions. This is, believe it or not, arbitrary. Trump, to all our delight, was banned from these platforms by platform owners out of their own volition. He cannot reach his audience now because few men decided so. The most powerful man on the planet holding public office was blocked, his means of reaching his audience were shut because some men beyond the scrutiny of the public eye decided so. Was he really the most powerful man on the planet to begin with if he can be shut this way? If he is not powerful then who is? Have these platforms grown so powerful, so to say, that they can now blackout President of the United States of America?

Oh, make no mistake, I wanted that buffoon to be blocked from these platforms long ago. This came rather too late. Almost at a time now when he has become powerless. The havoc he was capable of raising has been raised already. These platforms let him set fire to this world and now when those very fires were reaching their doors, they shut him off. They shut him not because he was evil, which he was no doubt, but because the curtain behind which they shared meals and drinks with the clown was about to come down. But anyways, less talked about that the better. The problem isn't how hand-in-glove tech companies were with Mr Trump or politicians like him but how people come to elect them in the first place. These platforms allow vilest of the vile disinformation and propaganda to spread without any checks. It is these platforms that trap like-minded and disillusioned people into a bubble and serve them more and more of the vile gobbledygook; it is they who make them slip down and down the rabbit hole so much so that they see in a clown-like Donald Trump or in a fascist authoritarian tinpot (like Modi or Erdogan) their messiah. It is they who facilitate or prepare the ground for their crowning. The elections work like clockwork once the ground has been prepared for the same. So by blocking Mr President, these platforms have given the propagandists the very real reason or coloured glasses through which they happen to see this world anyways. This will only help legitimize their faulty victimhood. Fascist conspiracy theories thrive on the precise belief that they're the victims in this world, that their existence is at stake in the new world. And by blocking their demigod we have given them the real meat on their big red plate.

Of course these platforms today enjoy unrestricted power over the public conversations we have in private. These platforms dictate what is accepted and what is controversial, it is they who decide what is cool and what is objectionable. Their false objectivity and obscenity called community guidelines have spilt into our drawing rooms. Our understanding of this world and our surroundings is by virtue of the information we acquire from these platforms. But since these platforms control what we can see and what we cannot (facebook for instance decides we might not be interested in a piece of certain information and so blacks out this information which its algorithms have decided we would not like), the final understanding we have is by design faulty. And naturally the decisions we make from this faulty understanding will be faulty too. So the people we hate, the people we vote, people we admire, everything that we do is tinkered. These platforms can make us believe in unbelievable things and also make us disillusioned. They enjoy sweeping powers in this regard and we need to think about this power and the precedent this ban is setting. But on the other hand, we also need to think about the lost opportunity here. However hard we have tried we would not have been able to acquire similar minded people at one place as Trump had. His supporters rallied alongside him and they waited for his tweets, they read his posts and followed them through. Attack on the Capitol proves that loud and clear. These tech giants shouldn't have banned Trump from their platforms instead delayed publishing his updates and in the interim fact-checked his tweets, labelled and explained how right or wrong his updates were. This was a missed opportunity to reach his audience and explain to them with real data that they were being blinded by these men or his kind. We have lost it now.

By blocking Trump we have played into their conspiracy theories, we have legitimized their victimhood. They had written their playbook and sadly, we ran by those dotted lines, just as they wished. This cannot be undone now.

#DonaldTrump #Ban #SocialMedia #Facebook #Twitter #Reddit #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #USA #JoeBiden