Till long after WhatsApp became a raging phenomenon, I was living under a rock with only a feature phone. One day I landed up for my M. Phil. class at IIPA only to find that I was the lone one there. The course director apologised for not informing me but mentioned that she’d sent a WhatsApp message in the group so she thought everyone was informed about the cancellation of the classes that day. I realised that (A) There was a phenomenon called WhatsApp and (B) It was an existential crisis not to buy into it.
When I bought a Smartphone and got on to WhatsApp, it was an exciting world revealed. So many jokes, real time tete-a-tete, continuous engagement with family and friends and so on. The group I liked most interacting with was my IIM group.
Although IIM, Bangalore was already 10 years old then, ours was the first batch in the breathtakingly beautiful new campus. Even as it’s now almost in the middle of the city, back in 1982, it was in the middle of nowhere with miles of jungles and nothingness all around. Excursions to the city were an adventure. Perforce, the 100 or so of us were cooped up with each other under very stressful academic rigour and developed very strong bonds.
So, out of all the groups I soon became part of, the IIMB batch group was the one I held dear. It was a nice and warm feeling to open the WhatsApp every morning and look at the quality of jokes and discussion coursing through that group. At first slowly, then rapidly, the group became toxic.
My rude awakening came when I saw a message stating what a great man OSL (Our Supreme Leader) was, a reincarnation, in fact. I was surprised – we IIMB types were as irreverent as they came – so responded, subah subah kya bunkus maar raha hai! I thought it was all in good fun. I wasn’t prepared for the vituperative and extremely personal backlash. I was immediately branded a Rahul Gandhi acolyte. I wondered, was it not possible not to revere OSL and not to revere Rahul Baba at the same time?
Slowly, I found a group within that IIM group intermittently posting things which were blatantly false or misleading on the face of it. I was intrigued that such intelligent people were taken in by such things. There was backlash for such posts and things started getting very ugly and uncouth. One of the posts was so filthy that I quit in disgust even though I was not involved in any of the exchanges.
When I was out of the group, I did miss the better parts of it. Somehow, all the other groups didn’t match up to the wit and joie de vivre of the IIM group. Quite a few months later, I rejoined. Things continued well for quite a while. Again, the toxicity resurfaced.
What usually happens is, some guy posts something in obeisance to OSL or against him. Then there is a backlash. Pretty rapidly, things degenerate into an ugly slanging match. Then all parties say sorry, sorry, won’t happen again. Peace prevails for a while. Again, after a few weeks, the cycle resumes.
While both sides are guilty, I found that peace was usually broken by the pro-OSL group. Two reasons, probably. They’re all the time trying to find an excuse for bursting into paeans to OSL. Thus, when Neeraj Chopra won an Olympic gold, they immediately went on an overdrive to project as though OSL himself did the throwing; Neeraj just happened to be there for the photo-ops. When it was pointed out that OSL had slashed the sports budget in the Olympic year not only in real terms but also in nominal terms, the reaction was unparliamentary. Second possible reason is, these guys have bought into the extremely toxic IT cell. They are bombarded with its prodigious output, part-fact-part-fiction, day in and day out. Samples of the output: Fact would be a saying by Chanakya, fiction would be OSL’s photo at the end of the quote. Fact would be a Shivaji statue inaugurated by OSL, fiction would be magnetic and magical properties of the statue. Fact would be Sardar Patel statue, fiction would be cameras inside its eyes checking out Pakistani troop movement. Fact would be a horrible-colour 2000 rupee note, fiction would be a microchip inside it to uncover black money even if buried 10 feet underground.
Starting with a predilection to believe, at some point all these stories do get seriously believed. The inundation by the IT cell is so much that these guys just can’t contain themselves and have to vomit it out in the WhatsApp groups for the benefit of the ignoramuses who, unlike them and OSL himself, do not believe that he is a reincarnation of the Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent. This dwindling minority is still clinging on to going by evidence rather than mere claims, at the cost of being branded “sickular,” “woke,” and so on.
I spent 33 long years in the government. I saw hundreds of these men of straw straddling the nation’s destiny. They cut across parties, creeds, instincts but had one thing in common – up close, they were all hollow caricatures. I found the IIM batchmates, ensconced in their ivory towers surrounded by an obscene amount of money and the good life, completely out of touch with the ethical bankruptcy of the political class, pontificating at length. So I asked myself should I put up with these inane rantings of a mesmerised lot or quit. The other possibility was to either fall silent or try to reason. The first would be cowardice and, in essence, collusion with the bullies; the second, infructuous.
Almost every morning, I used to wake up to a WhatsApp post of an IT cell production of increasingly vicious toxicity. The tipping point came when a batchmate posted a video of a female purportedly the mother of Kulwinder Kaur, CISF lady constable who was alleged to have slapped Kangana Ranaut at Chandigarh airport. What had happened was, they’d picked up a video of a woman wishing death to OSL and portrayed her as the mother of the lady constable. This had been around on the net for a while and had been thoroughly debunked as vicious blending of fact and fiction. When this was pointed out (while not absolving the serious misconduct of the lady constable), the “non-sickular” and “non-woke” brigade went on an overdrive and, in their effort to defend the indefensible, started getting increasingly personal.
That was when I decided that being silent and being a part of this group was just not an option any more. That would be guilt by association. A statement needed to be made, and I quit. I believe, at least one other person quit the group in disgust after this incident.
The problem is, all WhatsApp groups have been reduced to this. Quitting them all is looking like a good idea.
Soon, I’ll no longer be a Homo WhatsAppian and
return to being a Homo Sapien. I’m looking forward to it. Someone put out the
statistic that there are 532 million WhatsApp users in India. I guess, it’ll
now be 532 million minus one.
