Social issues in India

Misinformation and fake news in India:-

• In India – Fake news, rumours, morphed images, click-baits, motivated stories, hate speech etc. spread virally through platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter etc among 35 crore internet users in India. They target not only political figures, but also religious minorities and dissenting individuals, with propaganda rooted in domestic divisions and prejudices.

Consequences of fake news in India:-

• The consequences of such targeted misinformation range from riots, death threats to actual murders. In the past year, more than two dozen people have been lynched by mobs spurred by nothing more than rumours sent over WhatsApp. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, closed messaging services were used to spread inaccurate information.
• Fake news spread through social media in the country has become a serious problem, with the potential of it resulting in mob violence, as was the case where at least 20 people were killed in 2018 as a result of misinformation circulated on social media.

Use of Deep fake:- 

• The introduction and evolution of AI technology that is now capable of creating “deep fake” video content, using bots to micro-target populations with ads, and participate in human-like conversations, presents imminent future dangers of exponentially multiplying the current threats. Threats to democratic institutions and security landscape.
• Unregulated social media has empowered state and non-state actors with the means and know how to co-opt the media landscape in pursuance of illegal and terrorist activities, such as – radicalization, child pornography, human trafficking, selling narcotics etc. It has also allowed foreign and domestic actors to interfere in democratic functioning of nations through unidentified use of political advertisements during elections, spreading disinformation about government bodies etc.

Self-Regulation by the platforms: A self regulatory framework can help social media platforms fulfil their obligation to the public to limit spread of misinformation, extremism, hate speech, etc. and build trust with community members. Some steps that can be taken in this direction are- Following a set of Human Rights Principles for Content Moderation based on international human rights law: legality, necessity and proportionality, legitimacy, equality and non discrimination.

• Implementing measures that limit the virality of misleading content through limitations of some functionalities; opt-in features to receive group messages etc.
• Give users the alternative option, in an easy and intelligible manner, to decide on such issues as what information they want to see, and how they are targeted.
• Ensuring that automated tools, such as algorithmic ranking, do not intentionally, or unintentionally, unduly hinder access to election-related content and the availability of a diversity of viewpoints to users.
• Expanding the number of moderators and investing to improve quality of content review, particularly in at-risk countries, through development of sophisticated tools and technologies. For instance, YouTube, which along with the usage of AI , employs 10,000 people globally for monitoring and removal of objectionable content, took down 8 million videos in 2018 during a three-month period, 81% of which were removed automatically, and three-quarters of those clips never received a single view.
• Redefining the role of the Government: Governments should strive to protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens and mitigate the social costs of the social media by providing a strong democratic oversight.

Introduction to: Communalism, Regionalism and Secularism | UPSC – IAS

Since Independence, the central leadership has confronted several major challenges to the unity of the country. These have included the integration of some 562 semiautonomous princely states into the Indian Union in the years immediately after Independence.

• Despite numerous successes, therefore, in resolving some of the major problems threatening the unity of the Indian state since Independence, some of the problems are so severe that the central government finds it difficult to maintain the unity of the country.

Moreover, the remaining problems cannot be considered to be merely the unresolved remnants of old conflicts but reflect a fundamental structural tension in the Indian political system between forces seeking to strengthen further and centralize more decisively the Indian state and regional and other forces demanding further decentralization, and interdependence between the center and the states. Most scholarly observers of contemporary Indian politics agree that since Independence there has been a considerable decay in the functioning of political institutions and in their public legitimacy.

• Form a comparative perspective, however, india’s political institutions appear quite differently. The performance of India’s political institutions compares favorably in many respects with those of her neighbors or with most other post-colonial societies. Indeed, the Indian political regime is one of the most democratic in the world by most conventional measures of political participation, electoral and party competition, and persistence of parliamentary institutions.
• It is also among the least repressive regimes in the world. With admittedly major exceptions such as the annihilation of Naxalites, terrorists, and those suspected or wrongly accused of being in those two categories. The repressive and brutal measures taken against presumed militant, insurrectionary, and secessionist groups in Punjab, Kashmir, and the northeast, opposition politicians and students and others who engage in public demonstrations against the regime or the dominant party are not normally harassed or imprisoned without cause and are certainly not tortured.
• There is a free press and ordinary people are free to speak their minds in public and private. It is in this background that the concept of secularism, communalism and regionalism assumes importance.

Concept of Secularism in India | UPSC – IAS

The word “Secular” has many meanings in the Indian context. To begin with, secular connotes ‘antireligious‘. To be secular is to be anti-religious, an atheist or agnostic.

Likewise, a secular state must be actively hostile to religion, discourage religious practices, prevent the growth of religious institutions. The secular state in this sense has never existed in India. A small minority of atheists do, but this is nothing new. There is a long and venerable tradition of atheism in Indian culture; it follows that such secular persons have existed even in the past.

• Secondly, the word “secular” means not anti-religious but non-religious. On this view, the secular state is non-religious but permits religious practices outside its sphere. It neither encourages nor discourages religion. It keeps off all kinds of religious and quasi-religious activities. Although Nehru may not have always lived up to this ideal, this may well be the nehruvian conception of secularism.
• Third, the word “secular” has also been identified with multi-religious. Its defenders argue that in India, a land that has given birth to and nourished some of the major religions of the world, a state policy of indifference to religion is neither justified nor workable.

Since most People in India are religious, the state cannot keep away from religious matters or adopt a stance of mere neutrality between the religious and nonreligious. Rather, it should actively promote religion.

The state should play a positive and dynamic role in the pursuit of a religious life. But in a land of many religions, the state cannot discriminate in favour of any one religion. It should grant equal preference to all. So the word “secular” here clearly means an equal preference to the religious and the non-religious and within religions equal respect for all religions. It does not take long to guess that this is the Gandhian conception of secularism.

• Fourth the word “secular“has come to mean multi-communal. This degeneration has been characteristic of the Indian polity over the last 35 years or so. To be secular is to grant equal preference to the fanatical fringe of all religious communities.

Here, the more desirable, universalisable aspects of all religions are overlooked or deliberately neglected and their closed, aggressive and communal dimension is over emphasised.

The BJP has systematically undermined each of the four connotations of the word “secular” and has infused it with a meaning consistent with the rest of its ideology. It attacks the first conception for being anti-religious, the second for being indifferent to religion, and the third and the fourth for granting equal preference to all religious and communal practices. Each of these, for the BJP, is pseudo-secular. For the BJP, secularism in the Indian context must mean granting special favours to a particular brand of freshly manufactured, aggressive Hinduism.

To be secular is to favour a particular communal group. The argument behind it is simple minded but dangerous.  India is a uniquely religious land; religion has a special place in the life of every Indian. No state in India can afford to ignore this fact and therefore it should actively promote religious life. But it must not favour all religions equally. Hinduism is the religion of the majority and therefore the state must favour the Hindu over other religious groups. To even conceive this within traditional forms of Hinduism is impossible, So a new aggressive Hinduism is necessary to articulate this demand.

• The word “secular” must accommodate this brute fact; either it goes or it must be clipped to mean “pro-aggressive Hinduism”. This is positive secularism because it is positive towards this brand of Hinduism. Needless to add that a such a position is highly contentious because it has neither been endorsed by the state nor has it been found reasonable.

Read more in Detail: Secularism in India its Features, Impact and Problems

Concept of Communalism in India | UPSC – IAS

Communalism operates at different levels ranging from individual relations and interests to the local, institutional and national politics and to communal riots. There is a whole range of social relations and politics over which communalism pervades today and this spread of communalism involves two interrelated central issues.

• First is the state of consciousness in society.
• The second is communalism as an instrument of power, not purely for capturing state power, but for operating in political/social and economic domains and at almost all levels of social organization.

Religion is an integral factor in the existing state ot social consciousness in our society. It provides an identity of being part of a community to all those who believe in the same religion.  It is perceived and believed that those who belong to the same religion have a certain common identity. It is this belief in commonality which is used for communal mobilization. That is communalism.

• Communal mobilisation are based (or a possibility of creating a perception) that there are identities which ,are based on religious belonging. Such an identity, in fact, can be manipulated for purposes of power at various levels. The increasing efforts at communalisation are a part of this process, that is, manipulation of religious consciousness to serve the interests of certain political parties. The mobilisation of sections of society on the basis of religious beliefs for the purpose of power is central to the intensification of communalism today.

The process of communalisation draws upon communal solidarity which is both a contemporary – construction and an outcome of objective historical development during the colonial period. For constructing communal solidarity a selective appropriation of the past is being attempted, by equating Hindu with Indian. The contemporary communal mobilisation derives sustenance from a Hindu interpretation of the past. Needless to say, it is a backward projection of the needs of the present day communalism.

• Two good examples of this are the attempts to establish Hinduism as a homogeneous religion from ancient times and, secondly, the notion of the existence of Hindu community from early times. The very stimulating work done by Romila Thapar on the ancient history of India considers in detail the social and ideological dimensions of Hinduism as well- as its historical evolution.
• The Hindu community, as Romila Thapar has very rightly remarked, is an “imagined community”. It is not a community which really existed. In the past, the communities were based on location, on occupation, on caste and sometime on sects. Even in contemporary society, secular communities are more in operation than religious communities. An individual in society spends more time in secular pursuits than in religious matters.

Today communalism is primarily an instrument for acquiring power. And power is, to begin with, acquired at the grass-root level and, therefore, it has got to be contested at that level. These local associations or communities-, the grass root communities, are a way of positing an alternative to communalism.

Read more in Detail – Communalism in India Characteristics, Causes and Problems

Concept of  Regionalism | UPSC – IAS

States reorganization has been a dominant problem of federalism. The problem of regionalisms has acquired importance in political circles. The situation of Punjab, Kashmir and Assam and the north east has been of crucial significance despite its special status and its particular form of regional autonomy, the central government and political leaders have intervened as much or more in Kashmir since independence than in any other state of the Union. Consequently, the history of its politics from Independence until the outbreak of the recent internal war cannot be understood without knowledge of center-state political relations and alliances.

There are three prevailing explanations for the rise of an insurrectionary movement amongst Kashmiri Muslims against the Indian state in Kashmir.

One is an argument which always presents itself in movements such as these, that in reflects the primordial desires of the Kashmiri Muslims. In fact, however, the course of modem kashmiri history demonstrates the opposite: the absence of any clear universally accepted ultimate goal for kashmiri Muslims, let alone the rest of the non-Muslim population of the state.

• The second explanation is that the Indian state has taken a “too soft and permissive attitude” with political forces who have set out to exploit the special status of Kashmir and to manipulate religious and separatist sentiments for their own political advantage.
• A third explanation, the point of view adopted here, is rather that the central government has been not “soft and permissive,” but manipulative and interventionist and that it has not kept its promise to respect in practice the limited autonomy granted to Jammu & Kashmir under the terms of accession.

Many alternative explanations for the resurgence of regional and communal conflicts in the past twenty years have been offered, including the persistence of immutable primordial cleavages in Indian society, their underlying bases in economic or class differences, and specific policies and political tactics pursued by the central and state governments. The analysis here has given primacy to the latter.

However, it is also true that the problems in the Punjab, in the northeastern region, and in Kashmir have been complicated by the presence of other factors which were not present in the linguistic reorganisation of states which took place during the Nehru period.

In the Punjab case, the most important difference is the fact that the Sikhs are a separate religious as well as linguistic group. In the northeast, the issues have been tangled by the presence there of several tribal minorities, whose demands have been secessionist, by the migration of large numbers of people from other provinces of India, particularly West Bengal, to the northeastern states states of Assam and Tripura especially, by illegal migrations from Bangladesh as well, and by the presence of large numbers of both Hindus and Muslims among the migrant and local populations. In Kashmir, the issues have been complicated by the internationalization of the dispute, the special status which Kashmir has had since its integration into the Indian Union, and its perceived. integral connection with the opposed founding ideologies of the two principal successor states to the British Raj.

Nevertheless, the argument here is that the policies pursued by the government of India after Nehru’s death have played a major role in the intensification of conflicts in these regions and have in the process highlighted a major structural problem in the Indian political system. That problem arises from the tensions created by the centralizing drives of the Indian state in a society where the predominant long-terms social, economic, and political tendencies are toward pluralism, regionalism, and decentralization. Although the same tensions existed in the Nehru years, central  government policies then favored pluralist solutions, non-intervention in state politics except in a conciliatory role or as a last resort, and preservation of a separation between central and state politics, allowing considerable autonomy for the latter.

Communalism in India Characteristics, Causes and Problems | UPSC – IAS

Indian society is pluralistic from religious point of view. Here, we have the followers of all the great religious systems. Hindus constitute the bulk of the population and they inhabit in all parts of the country. Muslims constitute the largest religious minority. But the adjustment between the Hindus and Muslims has been a failure several times, resulting in violent communal riots.

• Communal riots during the period of independence. Communalism was responsible for the division of the country into India and Pakistan. The partition was expected to resolve the riddle, but it failed.

Meaning of Communalism | UPSC – IAS

• Abdul Ahmed says, “Communalism is a social phenomenon characterized by the religion of two communities, often leading to acrimony, tension and even rioting between them”.
• Prabha Dixit writes,Communalism is a political doctrine which makes use of religious and cultural differences to achieve political ends.
• It may be perceived as a total commitment to a set of beliefs and is far from rationality.

Characteristics of Communalism | UPSC – IAS

• Encompasses social, economic and political aspects for its manifestation.
• It causes rivalry, violence and tension among masses.
• It is used by the higher class people and elites as an instrument for division and exploitation of the communal identities of the poorer sections of their co-religionists.
• Communalism is simply engineered by opportunistic political and economic interest.
• It strikes at the roots of democracy, secularism and national integration.

Causes of Communalism in India | UPSC – IAS

• Tendency of the Minorities: The Muslims fail to be intermingled in the national mainstream. Most of them do not participate in the secular nationalistic politics and insist on maintaining separate identity.
• Orthodoxy and Obscurantism: There are strong elements of conservatism and fundamentalism among the Muslims. Such feeling has prevented them from accepting the concept of secularism and religious tolerance.
• Design of the Leaders: Communalism has flourished in India because the communalist leaders of both Hindu and Muslim communities desire to flourish it in the interest of their communities. The demand for separate electorate and the organization of Muslim league were the practical manifestations of this line of thought. The British rule which produced the divide and rule policy, separate electorate on the basis of religion strengthened the basis of communalism in India. Ultimately the partition of the country provided further antagonistic feeling towards each other.
• Weak Economic Status: Due to their educational backwardness, they have not been represented sufficiently in the public service, industry and trade etc. This causes the feeling of relative deprivation and such feelings contain the seeds of communalism.
• Geographical Causes: The territorial settlement of different religious groups especially Hindus Muslims and Christians causes in them wide variation in the mode of life, social standards and belief system. Most of these patterns are contradictory and this may cause communal tension.
• Social Causes: Social institutions, customs and practices of Hindus and Muslims are so divergent that they think themselves to be two distinct communities.
• Psychological Causes: Psychological factors play an important role in the development of communalism. The Hindus think that the Muslims are fanatics and fundamentalists. They also believe that Muslims are unpatriotic. On the contrary, the Muslims feel that they are being treated as second rate citizens in India and their religious beliefs and practices are inferior. These feelings lead to communal ill-feeling.
• Provocation of Enemy Countries: Some foreign countries try to destabilize our country by setting one community against the other through their agents. Pakistan has played a role in fostering communal feeling among the Muslims of our country. Pakistan has been encouraging and promoting communal riots by instigating the militant sections of Indian Muslim community. Kashmir youths are trained by Pakistan to destabilize India’s internal security by spreading communal venom.
• Negative Impact of Mass Media: The messages relating to communal tension or riot in any part of the country spread through the mass media. This results in further tension and riots between two rival religious groups.
• Ineffective Handling of Communal Riots

Suggestions for the Eradication of Communalism in India | UPSC – IAS

Abolition of Communal Parties:

• All the political parties which thrive on religious loyalties should be banned or abolished by the government. Even non-political cultural organizations should always be kept under constant vigil so that they cannot preach communalism.

Transmission of the Past Heritage:

• Feelings of nationalism should be inculcated in the minds of people by reminding them about the glorious moments of history in Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were combined to safeguard the interest of the country.

Public Opinion:

• Efforts should be made through mass media for changing the attitude of people towards other communities. People must be aware of the evils of the communalism.

Inter-religious Marriage:

• Youth organizations and other types of associations should be formed in every locality to give opportunity to people of different communities to come closer and know each other. This may help them to practice inter-religious marriages which will lessen the social distance among the members of different religious groups.

Both the Government and people should make efforts for eradication of communal tension and conflict.

About The NAC Communal Violence Bill:

(Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence 2011)

The National Advisory Committee has recently come out with a Communal Violence Bill. The Bill is intended to prevent acts of violence, or incitement to violence directed at people by virtue of their membership to any “group”.

An existing Bill titled the “Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005” pending in the Rajya Sabha.  The main features of the NAC Bill are explained below:

• The Bill makes illegal acts which result in injury to persons or property, if such acts are directed against persons on the basis of their affiliation to any group, and if such an act destroys the secular fabric of the nation.Such acts include sexual assault, hate propaganda, torture and organized communal violence.
• It makes public servants punishable for failing to discharge their stated duties in an unbiased manner. In addition, public servants have duties such as the duty to provide protection to victims of communal violence and also have to take steps to prevent the outbreak of communal violence.
• The Bill establishes a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice, and Reparation NACHJR to prevent acts of communal violence, incitement to communal violence, containing the spread of communal violence, and monitoring investigations into acts of communal violence. The Authority can also inquire into and investigate acts of communal violence by itself. The Bill also provides for the setting up of State Authorities for Communal Harmony, Justice, and Reparation.
• The central or state government has been given the authority to intercept any messages or transmissions if it feels that it might lead to communal violence. This power is subject to existing procedures which have to be complied with for intercepting messages and transmissions.
• Importantly, if public officers are liable to be prosecuted for offences under the Bill, and prior sanction is required for such prosecution, the state government has to grant or refuse sanction within 30 days. If not, then sanction will be deemed to have been granted.
• The Bill also allows the states to set up one or more Human Rights Defender of Justice and Reparations’ in every district. The Human Rights defender will ensure that those affected by communal and targeted violence are able to access their rights under existing laws.
• Apart from these, the Bill also establishes state and district-level authorities for assessing compensation for victims of communal violence.
• States have numerous obligations towards victims, such as establishment of relief camps, ensuring proper facilities, medical provisions and clothing for those within camps, etc.
• The states government also has the obligation to create conditions which allow the return of victims of communal violence to the place of their ordinary residence.

India divided over communal violence bill | UPSC – IAS

India is on the brink of enacting legislation that will seek justice for minorities of all categories when they become victims of targeted, mass violence. Crafted by the National Advisory Council (NAC), the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, will be introduced in parliament during the upcoming monsoon session.

• The bill aims at creating a framework for preventing pogroms such as the attacks on Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, and the provision of relief for victims of such violence. It has kicked up a storm with some people criticizing it as “draconian” and “anti-Hindu” and others dismissing it as “toothless and meaningless”.
• Communal violence has wracked India for decades. Partition of the subcontinent in 1947 was accompanied by horrific violence between Hindus and Sikhs on the one hand and Muslims on the other, leaving a million dead and over 10 times that number homeless.
• Since independence, there have been countless instances of communal violence. In the 2005-09 period alone, 648 people were killed and 11,278 injured in 4,030 such incidents, according to the PRS Legislative Research website. Communal clashes during this period peaked in 2008 with 943 cases being reported that year.
• Communal violence in India is rarely spontaneous. It is mostly engineered. Most clashes have been between Hindus and Muslims but Hindu-Christian violence too is not uncommon. While people of all religious communities suffer during these riots, it is the minorities – Muslims, Sikhs, and in recent years Christians who have borne the brunt.

“What we need, thus, is not so much a new law defining new crimes (although that would be useful too) but a law to ensure that the police and bureaucrats and their political masters follow the existing law of the land. In other words, we need a law that punishes them for discriminating against citizens who happen to be minorities,” he writes.And this is what the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence bill sets out to do.

Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill | UPSC – IAS

India’s constitution declares the country to be secular. However, institutional bias against religious and linguistic minorities is deeply entrenched, making them vulnerable to violence.The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill seeks to change this in several ways.

• It describes “communal and targeted violence” as that acts that are “knowingly directed against any person by virtue of his or her membership of any group, which destroys the secular fabric of the nation” and then goes on to define “group” as “a religious or linguistic minority or Scheduled Castes [Dalits] and Scheduled Tribes.”

In other words, only violence against a minority community is considered communal violence.

• The law also makes it obligatory that at least four of the seven member posts in the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation belong to a minority community.
• The bill has drawn fire from Hindu nationalists, who see it as evidence of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s appeasement of Muslims. They are asking why violence against the majority community should not be considered communal.
• Social activist Ram Puniyani draws attention to “concrete realities” in Indian society to justify the bill’s focus on minorities. The minorities have after all suffered disproportionately during communal violence. Muslims comprise 90% of victims of violence, he says.
• Besides, the bill speaks of “a religious and linguistic minority in any state” in India. Hindus are an overwhelming majority – 80.46% – nationwide but constitute a minority in seven states, including Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland. They too are thus covered by the bill.

An earlier draft of the bill had irked secular sections as well. It had defined communal violence as that which has destroyed India’s secular fabric. This prompted criticism that the bill raised the bar for violence to be regarded as communal too high rendering it meaningless. After all it is arguable whether any incident of communal violence has actually destroyed India’s secular fabric.

Responding to criticism, the NAC has now made 49 amendments to its earlier draft. In its definition of communal and targeted violence it has dropped the reference to “destruction of the secular fabric”. It has also deleted a clause in the earlier draft that allowed the federal government to unilaterally intervene in communal situations in states as it had raised concern over its implications for the working of the country’s federal structure.

The NAC has, however, ignored the right-wing’s criticism and stuck to its focus on minorities in the bill. This could mean that the bill will come up against fierce opposition in parliament from parties like the BJP.