| 'i hate gandhi' Facebook group
To what extent can Freedom of expression be extended and misused from what is happening these days on Internet. One of the most serious cases that has come to my knowledge recently is about a group on Facebook named "i hate gandhi". From the records of the page, it seems to have been started sometime in March-April 2010. As on date (03/01/2010, 12.25 AM), there are 2484 people who like it. Even four of my friends on the Facebook like this group.
The Information page of the group says nothing about composition and details. The perusal of the comments there on the page seem to say that these people have a fascination for other great patriots like Sardar Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Chandra Shekhar Azad, Subhash Chandra Bose and so on. At the same time they seem to singularly and immensely hate Mahatma Gandhi for many reasons which they provide as being mishandling Khilafat movement, mishandling Mopla riot, forcibly removing Subhash Bose from his post as Congress President, assisting Nehru instead of Patel for the leadership, mishandling the Bhagat Singh case, mishandling 1946 Noakhali riots, being responsible for partition, granting 55 crores to Pakistan and so on. These people also claim that Gandhi called Chatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj, Maharana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, called Sardar Udham Singh, who shot that General O'Dwyer, as an insane person, made the Hindus who were come for shelter in Delhi to come out to the streets to let the Muslims enter again, was responsible for current day emphasis on psuedo-secularism and ignored the revolutionaries and militants, who according to these people were the true patriots.
While there can be views and counterviews on all the above issues, where people would be having differing views, as per their personal inclination, understanding of history, their cultural ethos etc., but what is very serious about this group is the way many of its members are openly using foul, intemperate and abusive language and words here. All kinds of offensive and insulting words have been openly used here. Most of these people seem to be young people. This being a group where all the members proclaim to be Gandhi haters, almost all the comments are adverse to Mahatma Gandhi. But there are a few names like Abhijeet Singh from IMS Indore, Bipin Goyal from University of Pune, Devendar Sharma from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, Gadadhar Ghosal from Bokaro at Jharkhand who studied from WBUT, Gaurab Banerjee from Palan College of Management and Technology, Harjinder Singh Saini from University of Mumbai, Harshil Bhandari, Jay Bhatt working in software industry in Ahmedabad, Kamal Dhawan from Chandigarh, Nikhil Murali from BIT Manglore, Pratyush Jana from Kolkata, Rohan Shinde from Pune, Shikshit Kumar from Hindu College, Moradabad, Sunny from Khalsa College, Chandigarh, Umesh Motwani from University of Mumbai, Vignesh NV from Sivakashi who have gone beyond all limits in using intemperate and abusive language, which shall never be tolerated in any civilized country.
I have saved the shots of all these comments from the Facebook page as a future evidence and while this act of these people prima-facie constitute a criminal act, yet since they all seem to be young people with a future ahead for them, hence I have sent emails to all of them individually to apologize for their act and to disassociate from this such criminal activities. Having views and expressing them within the bounds of law is one thing and becoming abusive, that too about the Father of the Nation and one of the greatest Indians of modern India is a completely different one. They need to understand that all these people they love like Sardar Patel, Bhagat Singh, Maharana Pratap, Shivaji etc,. and the people they hate like Gandfhi and Nehru are all great men in their own way. They can be criticized and critically evaluated in all ways but no one cannot openly use abusive and dirty language for these people. I have also written to the Facebook to immediately disband this group.
If appropriate actions are not taken within a period of 15 days, I shall proceed as per law, both against these people and the Facebook. Hope, the people of this group agree with me.
Amitabh Thakur,
IPS,
Currently at IIM Lucknow
# 94155-34526 |
No comments:
Post a Comment