DNA Edit: Lynchings are the result of systemic lacunae

Taking a stern view on the spate of lynchings perpetrated by cow vigilantes across the country, the Supreme Court has put the onus on the central government to take effective measures against what it calls a “law-and-order” problem. Though the mobs have mostly targeted Muslims, the apex court played a sensible role in putting things in perspective. If a bunch of people beat a person to death, they have taken law into their own hands and deserve severe punishment under Indian Penal Code. Religious persuasion shouldn’t come into the picture because no faith teaches people to attack the unarmed and the defenceless. 

A communal twist in such delicate matters obfuscates the understanding of the issue at hand and fans polarisation. Though law-and-order falls within the purview of the states, the SC urged the Centre to “frame a scheme under Article 257 — Control of the Union over States in certain cases — to take pre-emptive action. Regardless of what Additional Solicitor General PS Narasimha said in court regarding the redundancy of a new statute since there are ‘existing provisions’, the incontrovertible fact is the central and state governments have been unsuccessful in curbing a growing phenomenon of vigilante ‘justice’. States like Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh face the prospect of contempt-of-court charges for neglecting the directives of the SC last year that asked the governments to take stringent measures, including appointing senior police officers to monitor the situation in every district within a week of its September 6 order. 

Apart from the barbarity over bovine safety, lynchings over rumours of child-lifting, too, have been a cause of alarm. With lies spreading like wildfire on social media platforms, the central government has asked WhatsApp to act, without realising that Facebook, the messaging-service provider, is restricted by privacy laws. Divulging the identity of a person when messages are bound by end-to-end encryption to prevent any attempts at surveillance or third-party tampering, will undermine the last vestiges of credibility that FB clings to after it admitted to data harvesting. In today’s day and age, when communication systems have become extremely sophisticated and complex, tracking down the source of a rumour is near-impossible. Once WhatsApp delivers a message to the recipient/recipients, it deletes it from the server. In case of online messages, they are stored for a maximum of 30 days. The government can always meet the representatives of social media, but it’s unlikely to yield anything substantial. 

Its only hope lies in metadata, which NSA in the US reportedly collects. One way, perhaps too extreme, could be to ban WhatsApp for a while, which several countries have done in the past. India is the biggest market for the service provider with over 200 million active users. Can the government withstand the backlash from such a huge number of people? The most potent way would be to launch a massive countrywide campaign to sensitise people, concerning the risks of falling prey to rumour-mongering. Concurrently, the courts should deliver swift justice to the families of the victims. Let’s accept it: Lynching has thrived because of systemic lacunae.