First some background to what happened: Jallikattu is a popular rural sport in Tamil Nadu that involves young men chasing fearsome bulls with sharpened horns through narrow allies and mounting them bare handed. It's an exciting, yet brutal (on the player more than the animal usually) sport for the rural youth. Since the last 10 days or so there has been a growing state wide youth protest fuelled almost entirely by social media, over the recent Supreme court's decision to ban Jallikattu on grounds of animal cruelty. It was popularly seen as an attack on Tamil culture - it is no secret xenophobia, racism and tribal identity gather crowds like nothing else.
Yesterday the protests turned violent and there were several incidents of violence reported that ended in police resorting to firing their guns. It's unclear who started the violence but there are certainly several social media videos of professional political goons and most surprisingly to many, the police in uniform indulging in vandalism and wanton violence. Search #ShameonTNPolice and / or #JallikattuForever on twitter for the videos and reports. There has been a lot of soul searching and confusion over how a protest that won much praise for its democratic and peaceful nature could turn violent so quickly. There's also been some chest thumping on the power of social media - which reminded me of the last time I saw it, during Arab Spring when I was still with Google, when everyone was toasting to a new possibility. We all know how Arab spring turned out. I have never believed in popular revolutions alone bringing change - if the sense of injustice that powers revolutions are like seeds, they can't do much to grow justice without the sunshine, fertile soil and water, i.e. journalism + courts, the political climate and economic climate respectively. None of what I am about to say excuses the actions of the police yesterday, or the inept manner in which the TN government and bureaucracy handled the protests. We can't change human nature, or the greed of politicians and opportunists, or the natural human tendency of many to turn angry and violent when there's injustice. A seasoned government would have taken this into account and stepped in on day one and dispersed the agitators, amid accusations of being undemocratic, and at the same time followed up with Delhi and delivered results that pleased the crowd. Instead, the incumbent government allowed a fringe problem (jallikattu is a sport most haven't witnessed, including a huge majority of those protesting) to grow into a mass movement. Like a dumpster fire people began throwing everything that burned - every problem, grouse and injustice was attached to it. In India there is no shortage of such complaints. As a result the crowd had become emotionally invested over disparate reasons not even remotely connected to the conduct of jalllikattu like ending corruption, poverty, and crime, and a visceral hatred of politicians, MNCs and distrust of every power centre and ruling clas, including hidden hands. Consequently most of the crowd wouldn't disperse even when a political and legal solution to lift the ban on jallikattu had been reached. The end of the ban wasn't good enough for the vast majority who still saw injustice everywhere. Regardless of the undeniable possibility of incitement of violence by opposition goons, and police, sadly, the rest that followed is pretty predictable. Present day Indian police are trained in the same Orwellian manner that the British Raj used to train its police. During riots police are trained to cause property damage even before controlling the crowds, in order to show proof that they were justified in resorting to violence. The courts won't grant firing permission, or allow lathi charges unless the police can prove the situation had got out of hand and turned into a life threatening situation. Further, anyone they jail can be punished or intimidated severely only if the property damage is in the lakhs and crores. It is no secret that we have a poor democracy in India that borders on fascism, and this is for the same reason that we still sell cars in this country without airbags - it'd be unaffordably expensive otherwise. Safety and security isn't cheap. Justice, courts and police aren't free. In a poor country there are always more problems than solutions. When unfairness is plentiful and fairness rare, maintaining law and order is achieved almost always through questionable tactics, because the police, courts and the system will have no answer to a majority of legitimate demands raised in the letter and spirit of the law. A takeway from Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" is its examination of how punishment in Europe evolved from physical torture like drawing and quatering, where the victim is pulled by his 4 limbs in 4 directions by 4-8 horses to "civilized" mental torture like incarceration only when the European rulers had the wealth to afford large prisons and prison guards. It didn't come about merely because society was more compassionate - but because they could afford the price of compassion. Democracy and justice isn't free, so Indian politicians have mastered the art of remaining a democracy on the surface while being fascists in private. This economic reality can't change just because of a popular uprising, or because a new government is voted into power. The twist in the tale today is the advent of the smartphone camera and contributory factors like a new Indian telco (Jio) offering free data to anyone for six months that allowed almost any poor citizen to become a reporter and livestream instantly. Reporting facts that are seldom reported is good, but ultimately of no use if the ground reality is unchangeable. All the MRIs and CT scans in the world are useless if we don't have the money to get treated for the disease. This comes to my larger point of trying to grow justice and democracy through sunlight alone. Social media revolutions cannot succeed merely because the documentation of abuse is exactingly thorough, or because the feeling of injustice and desire for change has gone "viral". Communism's idea of equality for all was plainly unrealistic even then, yet it held a powerful sway on the world for the better part of a century, resulting in the largest example of a cruel and awful crushing of the human spirit in the last century. The crowds don't always know when unfairness and injustice is chronic and has no cure, instead they will gather behind any snake oil salesman politician who promises to make them great again. Which makes me also reflect on the parallels with Trump and the American election. Clearly the old manual labor jobs are lost, to globalisation, robots and AI, yet this isn't news that is palatable to most of the victims. So too, climate change is a very real thing, multi-cultural communities are here to stay, and the world can't afford the old American dream anymore. Yet, as long as a politician is unethical enough to promise a miracle cure, he will have takers. We are stepping into an era of greater unfairness than we are used to. With the advancement of climate change water and food will grow scarcer and more unfairly distributed. Jobs will vanish with fearsome rapidity, before we are ready for it. Wealth will accrue in fewer hands that made the right bets that guarantee their thumb on the scale. All in all, a sense of injustice will dominate the zeitgeist. There will be twisted politicians in every country waiting to capitalize on this resentment. Unless the wisdom to bear one's misfotunes stoically and with maturity and acceptance is exhibited by a majority, I fear social media will only hasten the next wave of despots and tyrannical rulers.
