Himank Bansal, a first-year student of ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, Hyderabad, was stripped, beaten, bruised, kicked and slapped allegedly for making derogatory remarks about Prophet Mohammad on social media. He was forced to chant slogans like Jai Mata Di, and Allahu Akbar as those assaulting him wanted to fix his ideology as for his intrinsic belief in the North-South divide as he was initially warned at the very instance while eight have already been arrested, two are on the run.
Similarly, 28-year-old Aaftab Poonawala was arrested for killing his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar, 27 and chopping her body into over thirty-five pieces dumped in a nearby forest at Delhi’s Mehrauli attempts to paint both these cases communal is being made to malign and distort a particular community for not being apologetic in committing such a heinous and gruesome act social media is increasingly getting flooded with memes and barbs targeting and mocking them for their faith.
Aren’t we becoming too impulsive, fragile and fanatic as a society for our values, views and opinions, which are but deeply entrenched and far from the truth, as in this case where the jury was all out hunting for the agenda, motive and modus operandi of the accused behind such a cowardly incident? Had they not been Muslims then the matter could have been completely different from what it appears social media has made most and many of us so toxic and vulnerable, getting agitated and alarmed at the mere mention of an identity that can make us wary and jittery in different forms, proportions and sizes for our reactions and responses to it. Panicking and perturbing us for the worst until and unless we don’t consciously realise.