Chronology Samajhiye: How Social Media Communalised Palghar Mob Lynching

The Palghar mob lynching, in which 3 people, including two Sadhus (Godmen), were beaten to death, has been the most talked-about issue in the media for the past few days. Many narratives surrounding this heinous incident has tried to give it a communal colour.

Even though the Maharashtra government has made it clear that there’s is no communal angle to the lynching, the debate around it continues to carry a religious bias. To understand how the case was turned into an Islamophobic campaign, we need to look at how the media reported it.

Suresh Chavhanke, the editor-in-chief of the Hindi television channel Sudarshan News, also claimed that he is able to hear the word “Shoaib” in the video.

I read about the Palghar lynching incident on April 17 in a COVID-19 live-update article. It was just a 2-line alert about the incident, without any mention of the victims’ religion. Then, I tried to find a news report on Google, and no Hindi/English news report came up. No news outlet covered the news prominently at that time.

Only after the incident started trending on social media did the news agencies start reporting heavily on it. Now that the news went viral on social media, it still had no mention of the particulars of the incident nor of the perpetrators.

It simply said “two sadhus were lynched by a merciless mob,” and the ‘brains’ which have been exposed with the Hinds vs Muslim debate for last 7-8 years were sure that since a Hindu has been lynched, it must be the Muslims who did it, and their thoughts were the continuation of Muslims attacking doctors.

Richa Pandey Mishra of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Delhi media cell tweeted the video with the text, “Hit Shoaib Hit, Kill them.”

This is how news is being manufactured and turned into propaganda these days. I really feel that news outlets decide their prime slots based on what is doing rounds on social media so that they manage to get more likes, clicks, views, and shares. And, social media is overrun by the organised army of the IT cells, who are selective and have a vicious agenda.

It’s no more about reporting injustice or demanding justice. It just about fulfiling the ‘targets’. For the media, it’s about page views and TRPs, and for the IT cell, it’s their ability to build and sustain a trend. This cycle of news is something we should get used to.