 "Tarun Tejpal dumped: Moral victory or vigilante dominion?")
Ordinary folk on Twitter have managed to do what even Bollywood's reigning queen Deepika Padukone couldn't - browbeat the monolithic Times of India into reluctant submission. The country's premier news organization had to rescind its invite to Tehelka founder and rape accused Tarun Tejpal after a rumpus on the micro blogging website over his participation in the publication's literary carnival. Tejpal was scheduled to take part in a panel discussion titled "The Tyranny of Power" before he was dumped for the "extraneous noise" his involvement had managed to create.
The clamor to have him ousted traversed isms, beliefs and personal equations. 'Pseudo sickular commies' joined 'saffron Hindu communalists', friends joined their foes and according to reports, a high profile TV anchor from within the group his equally high profile columnist counterparts at the newspaper, to pressure the Lit Fest organizers to have Tejpal's name removed from the list of invitees. For once the ideologically fissured cyberspace on Twitter found substantive reason to converge.
There are several distinct learnings from this episode. First, it reiterates, and emphatically so, that the social media and the space it has provided for the democratization of opinion has everlastingly changed the traditional dynamic between the newspaper & the reader. This relationship can no longer be a one way street where the former supplies the news (or in this case, the literary event) for the latter to consume. It has got to be a much more collaborative alliance. Newspapers can ill afford to disregard their readers' convictions, fallacious as they might be, let alone heap conceit upon them like the lit fest organizer's reaction to the outrage seemed to. For that pedestal is gently being snatched away from under the media's feet. This is great, but also terrible in many ways.
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Second, the watchdog (the press) is being watched like never before. There is paparazzi like scrutiny on journalists' whereabouts, and very little scope for the media to falter on a basic code of ethics and integrity. Journalists who once held politicians and business to exacting standards of character, can no longer escape the same degree of inspection on their own conduct. Who they invite on panels, who they visit and which drunken soirée they attend, is all carefully documented. This change has been palpable for a while, with the venom spewing on Twitter not a recent phenomenon. But the environment is only getting more combative by the day.
Many would urge that this kind of riotous moral policing, was just the dose India's ethically compromised media needed. But there is a flip-side too. This shrill online mob, with its unwieldy notions of justice and morality, poses imminent dangers.
Twitter's collective crusade against Tejpal, honorable as it might be in intent, brazenly seeks to trample over a fundamental principle of criminal jurisprudence which is that an individual on trial is innocent until proven guilty by the court of law, NOT expressly culpable, and fit for banishment from society and lit fests until declared innocent by an online swarm in the court of Twitter. Much as we are appalled by Tarun Tejpal's suspected sexual crimes, and understandably have difficulty in digesting this established notion, this is how modern democracies dole out justice.
Alas, this kind of reasoning wouldn't sell with the online militia. The appetite for vigilante justice is in a sense a clear indication of this country's growing impatience with a tardy, slow-moving judiciary. Also it isn't exclusively a Twitter phenomenon. In times when the internet didn't exist other tactics of ostracisation have been used by society.
Which brings us to the question - was there a degree of hypocrisy ultimately in the stand taken by the Times of India or eminent voices like Swapan Dasgupta? Would they have acted similarly had a tainted politician been invited to the event (which is 2/3rds of the Indian cabinet)? Tweeple are schizophrenic. Their witch hunts are selective and very often loaded with ideological predilections. They may express revulsion at a rape accused (not proven guilty) being invited on a literary panel, but delight in the appointment of a crime accused (not proven guilty) at the country's political centre stage. The voice of reason here, is often drowned by the voice of propaganda. There's palpable, justified anger, but severe short supply of integrity.
Should big media really allow its editorial decisions to be dictated by the moral values of the Twitterati?