Of Alka Lamba and Kashmir: How all of us fall victims to lies on the internet

What is truth, said the jesting Pilate and did not wait for an answer. Neither do we. We are increasingly living a lie. It is masquerading as the truth. Satire must be so marked. Strongly. When you are cooking up a story it should be very clear that it is a ‘spoof’ on real people. Three such incidents have occurred recently that underscore what is becoming a problem and could, one day, turn into a legal mountain. As thousands of amateurs get into the act, the line between real news and the ‘kidding’ blurs totally. This week, a graphic photograph of dead people in uniform was dispatched on the Net and marked as ‘our brave jawans who laid down their lives in Kashmir.’ Hundreds of people responded with grief. I wrote two words, ‘True grit’ and left it at that. But it didn’t sit well, something was wrong and I went back to check on its antecedents and discovered it was not our soldiers but the terrorists our soldiers had killed. What happens when a soldier is actually a casualty? Will we believe it then, will it have the same impact, will our chalice of emotion be emptied by charades so that the sacrifice goes in vain? Unnoticed. I could have taken it off my page but then I decided better to keep it with a rectification rather than remove something seen by thousands and maybe believed by them. From genuine grief to feeling offended in one easy step. A few days ago, I saw a piece about an MLA from Aam Aadmi Party watering a freshly laid plant with a can in pouring rain.

VASAI VIRAR Mayor P Thakur Watering Plants in spite of Heavy Rainfall. Now this is called Real Dedication. pic.twitter.com/JjlOwYYqhm

— bandranews_com (@bandranews_com) July 6, 2016

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It was a joke but the confession of the prank was so indistinct that again, the photograph went viral. Scores of people believed it could be true including yours truly. Our politicians have done sillier things. This morning, I read that Sunita Kejriwal has quit from the Indian Revenue Service. Having been burnt this week, I decided to search for the disclaimer. Sure enough it was stuck there somewhere but the search itself was annoying. And some newspapers I believe have actually carried it as a news item. With legal precedent as weak as a newborn lamb and nothing to stop the trolls and the bloggers who are increasing exponentially by the day from cooking up stories and using the same font and the same space to pass them on where will it end? If someone carries a story that says: ‘Salman shoots second black buck’, how many will fall for it? What if you read, ‘Parrikar drinks full bottle of feni in one go, lights up like a bulb’? Stays in the mind. Or ‘Kejriwal loses control, slaps Jung.’ Hmm… could have happened and now they are covering up. Do editors now have to constantly vet reports while fighting deadlines and the competition where ‘put it out and be damned, we’ll see later’ has become the norm? Let’s get one thing clear. This is not freedom of speech or opinion or any sense of expression protected by the Constitution. This is deceit and supports bigotry, racism and violence. Most folks might think this is a bit of a lark and harmless. Not when it crosses limits. Dead bodies, religious fanatics saying ghastly things (like the current video of some priest calling for unspeakable acts that one cannot even mention) morphed pictures, false sound tracks, tragedies that didn’t occur, dangerous precedents, when all these are poured like liquid gasoline over the unsuspecting reader/viewer and inflammable in themselves, there has to be a speed limit on the information highway. Otherwise get ready for several crashes. And you know what is really frightening? The truth will get missed because the embellished lie is more fun.