Recently, a woman journalist tweeted something fairly innocuous about walking out of a movie — and then reeled under days of vitriolic death and rape threats issued by the fans of the principal star of that movie. She went to the police, and eventually at least one arrest was made. She was then able to sit down with the accused and record a mea culpa, which she posted on social media as a warning to others of his ilk, that speech on the Internet is not consequence-free. This immediately prompted three sets of responses:
The first set of people said she was a terrible journalist and actively pushed harmful tropes in her work and on social media. This has nothing to do with anything. Even terrible people have full recourse to the law and are protected against death and rape threats. This is how civilisation, as I understand it, functions.
Secondly, the women who were following her case sounded a note of celebratory vindication — for once, a woman in India didn’t have to just eat the abuse; she was able to fight back and gain some measure of justice. This was hugely significant for pretty much any woman on social media, especially those with liberal opinions. I say this with the caveat that this woman clearly had access to the kind of recourse that most women would not be able to get.
For instance, she was able to devote considerable time following up with the police, appears to have worked every connection she had, and is a journalist, which means she could train a spotlight on the issue for as long as it took. Would you or I be allowed to film an interview with a person accused of targeting us? No.
But still, it was a day when a woman scored a win.
The third response was that she has effectively ruined the life of the man who was arrested by posting that interview. Keeping my instinctive reaction (“hurrah!”) aside, it’s actually a pretty interesting ethical conundrum in the digital age.
The man is young, clearly hails from a lower middle class background, and says he was egged on by others he trusted on social media. It is obvious that he had no clear understanding of the consequences of his actions and felt he was part of an anonymous mob (which is probably how he got caught; he probably didn’t know how to hide his identity on Twitter). It is also clear that an arrest, for whatever reason and for however long, is going to affect his life for a long time, if not forever, regardless of whether that video was published.
I won’t engage here with the men who felt she was going above and beyond to ruin his life by getting him arrested in the first place. Digital spaces are real spaces in the 21st century, and actions there should have real-world consequences. If you feel this man and others like him are at a disadvantage because they don’t understand that, don’t complain to the woman who was their victim — complain to the government that bangs on about digital India and what not but thinks slinging cheap laptops at the populace will achieve that objective somehow.
However, what about blurring his face as the interview was put out, as some have suggested? Wouldn’t that have still satisfied her need for justice and served as a suitable warning to the rest of the perpetrators and saved the dignity of the accused to some extent? Should a man’s entire future be destroyed because of the one single time he didn’t understand the medium he was on?
In my opinion, yes. Regrettably but inflexibly so. I understand that he is young, he might be the sole breadwinner for his family, and that this is now a part of his life forever in a way that he did not know when he committed the act. But make no mistake, he committed a crime. A man who joins a mob in real life and pelts stones at a bystander who then succumbs to his injuries cannot plead that he didn’t fully comprehend that his actions were wrong and he was carried away by the company he kept. The same way, a man who joins an Internet mob to wish death and rape on a woman for saying she didn’t care for a movie starring his favourite actor is not an innocent; he chose to perform a set of wrong actions for nothing better than his own gratification. It now ends in misery.
That is life in a land of law and order, offline and online. It’s why Justice wears a blindfold, to put it in its proper Indian cinematic context.