“The mob” and the notion that individuals, when in a crowd, have a tendency to lose all sense of reason and become prone to engaging in extreme, violent acts is a longstanding trope. Records of mobs wreaking havoc are far too common in history books. It is also one which has been frequently invoked lately over television debates, newspaper articles, and social media – be in to disrupt law and order or to harass film stars and celebrities and infringe upon citizens’ personal life and civil liberties, or to silence voices who hold opposite views or are dissident—crowds seem to have once again become a central force in our politics.
The advancements in science and technology have today opened up the world to a paradigm shift in the way it functions and the way the newer generations of the public have taken to the newer forms of behaviour that one may freely view and exhibit in the virtual world of the internet. It has created a new ecosystem and in these interwoven dimensions of the internet, just as it is easy to access any digital profile, passing judgements about them has also become all too easy. The liability of the judge and jury in such a case becomes unquantifiable in the real world and also devoid of any liability and accountability, much like an angry mob of marauders. This has made society a more hostile, uncompromising, and censorious place.
The Public has always been the latent energy that awakens from time to time for bringing about change whenever it has been forced to wake up, and the circumstances that lead up to the awakening of the Public more often than not, in the hands of its leaders, who materialize out of the churning that happens within society—The peaceful and loving Bhakti Movement of Lord Gauranga Mahaprabhu for instance.
It is the Nature of a leader that resonates with the public that she/he is leading and vice versa. Noting down his fears through his writings, satirist Harishankar Parsai felt much the same way when he penned the essay The Dangers of a Restless Mob (“Awaara bheed ke khatre”) which he claims to be “prone to becoming part of any organisation that whips up fundamentalism and discord. Then this crowd can be made to indulge in all kinds of destructive acts.”
We have seen this “Public” being prodded on to cause the 1928 Ganapati Galabhe. The horrific 1969 Gujarat riots, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the Bhagalpur riots of 1989– the cascading domino effect of which was felt in Kashmir the same year and manifested as the frenzied mob that demolished the Babri mosque in 1992, marking a new milestone to the age-old conflict between the two communities of Hindus and Muslims– whose aftershocks can be felt even today in the recent Delhi Riots of 2020.
In recent years the fourth estate has been barking up the wrong tree and whipping up dormant basal instincts of the citizens to a frenzy, all over the world. What we have been witnessing here in the Indian subcontinent over the last few decades of lighting up dark unknown spaces, the disintegration of old cultural ethics, and the infusion of exotic ideas into our society had created a new breed of Public who are all too quick in spurring itself to action over digital media and in a physical form giving rise to a new “cancel culture”, which if not channelised by the philosopher kings will lead to an immense churning that this timeless broth of evolution seems to have reached and is about to boil over.
