POLITICS OF FAKE NEWS AND MOB LYNCHING IN INDIA

Research Proposal Submitted to St Joseph’s College (Autonomous)

By

Mahalakshmi.c

19PLS64026

Submitted To

D.R.Karamala Areesh Kumar

In The

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

St Joseph’s College (Autonomous)

Bangalore-560027

January 2020

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INDEX

Sl.no Content Page number

1. Introduction 3

2. Review of literature 5

3. Research question 10

4. Research objective 10

5. Hypothesis 11

6. Research methodology 11

7. Research gap 11

8. Scope of the study

9. Limitation of the study 12

10. Chapter 1 12
Introduction
11. Chapter 2 12
Theory of hate crime and exclusion attitude

12. Chapter 3 13
Spread of fake news a serious threat to the right to
freedom of speech and expression
13. Chapter 4 13
Comparative study on the various measures taken by
U.S and India to tackle the problem of fake news.
14. Chapter 5 13
conclusion

INTRODUCTION

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Media is considered as the most efficient means of communication. In this era of technology
digital media has gained more popularity. In this technological era a person sitting in one
corner of the world can know what is happening in the other part of the world with just a
click of a button. Media plays an important role in mobilizing people in democracy. Media is
considered to be the 4th pillar of the government beside the legislature, executive and
judiciary. In politics the media is helpful to both the government and citizens. The
governments in all the countries have their official social media accounts to educate people
about their policies and programs. As in India the number of social media users is high. The
citizens utilize this platform to express their views and opinions about government policies as
the means of communication and interaction is very accessible and feasible. The mass media
since time immemorial have been used by the political as well as national leaders to unite the
people under one banner and to mobilize their thoughts for example:D.R B.R Ambedkkars
mooknayak (the voice of voiceless) was to address the issues of the Dalits .But most of the
time the media are under the control of the government machinery and they are biased. Some
of the news channels(for example: Kalainar tv under control of DMK, Jaya t.v under the
control of AIADMK) are controlled by certain political parties .They telecast only certain
preferred news if the news are against them they don’t even go into the debate of it. The
social media is the modern means of communication. Social media is the web based media
which works without any geographical restriction. The social media websites like WhatsApp,
Facebook, twitter, Instagram are prominent among the digital media. The social media gives
each and every person to use the social media account to express their views about the
government. With the coming of social media most of the people depend on social media for
news rather than on traditional source of information.Especially it is creating a class of
youths who are more active and always keep an eye on the current happenings in the country.
They post and share a lot of stuffs related to political matters. Almost all the government
departments and in fact political parties have their official account in social media like twitter
and Facebook who use this platform to get connected with the people regarding the policies
and program of government and to make their party manifesto reach more people. When the
government television channels are biased and do not portray the exact scenario of what is
happening in the country the youths in the country use social media to communicate the exact
scenario. But in the mid of 21st century the social media emerged as the new serial killer
spreading fake news and creating hatred among people. There is much fake news that is being
spread in social media but the fake news on sensitive issues and religious matters like cow
slaughter, child abduction, and caste had taken the lives of many. The spreading of fake news
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is not new in India it has been in presence even before the development of electronic media
but the amount of impact it had was much lesser than the present.

WhatsApp is one of the largest used social media website in India. When compared with
other app this app is easy to use and India being one of the countries with low data charges
and mobiles phones available at affordable price and 4G enabled phones. The new users are
very much excited and enthusiastic and it has become a channel of spreading fake news and
creating hatred among communities. They couldn’t find the falsehood in the information and
they just circulate it. As the accessibility to internet by many Indians is due to the availability
of low date charges. It has been used by peer to peer communication which enables them to
create a common group of maximum 256 members and there is no restriction of the number
of groups a person can have. It serves as a platform for sharing videos, photos, and
conversation.

Vishwas pandhare the superintendent of police in Dhule says “people in India can live
without oxygen but without WhatsApp they will die”.

WhatsApp became a platform for spreading fake news and this fake news mainly targeted the
minorities and Dalits in India. The video of suspicion of child lifting and the suspicion of
beef consumption in the last days have created the incidents of mob lynching across the
country. Initially the Muslims were the targets of mob lynching ,they were mostly targeted by
the so called “gau rakshaks”(cow vigilantes).what is notable is the that most of the incidents
of mob lynching took place in the states where the Bharatiya Janata party came into power.as
the menace of mob lynching began slowly it also started targeting the Dalits .

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SOURCE: EDELMAN TRUST BAROMETER, ANNUAL SURVEY (2018)

The above diagram depicts the annual survey conducted by the Edelman trust barometer on
the topic of media least trust globally. It clearly shows that India stands in the third place for
trusting the messages circulated in the social media. It reason for it because most of the
messages are being forwarded by their family, trusted people and dear ones and they consider
the message sent by them to be true.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

1.[ CITATION sam19 \l 1033 ] This book have mainly highlighted how Large numbers of
Indians - over an estimated 300 million citizens with internet-enabled mobile phones at
present - have been receiving unprecedented amounts of fake, false, half-true, hateful,
inflammatory (or incendiary) information in the recent past and are going to receive more
such information during the general elections, the results of which will be known on 23 May
2019.The so-called WhatsApp army of the right-wing ruling regime has been 'weaponized' to
influence political outcomes. Facebook and its sister social media platform, WhatsApp, are
not really neutral and agnostic as they claim they are. They have been complicit in promoting
the interests of Narendra Modi and his supporters in the Bharatiya Janata Party and the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for some time now, well before Modi became Prime Minister
of India in May 2014.Even as the world's largest social media organization of its kind is
increasingly being questioned in different countries, this book mainly has taken a critical look
at the working of Facebook and WhatsApp in India.

2.[ CITATION Sid19 \l 1033 ] this book mainly focuses on the propaganda of misinformation and
hoaxes disseminated through print, graphics, and how the social media have altered the social

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landscape of this country. It also highlights how it has it led to multiple cases of lynching,
mob violence, defamation, and riots, fake news also poses a serious threat to Indian
democracy and its electoral policies. This book is a collection of essays that expose the
machinery behind the circulation of fake news.

3.[ CITATION Shu19 \l 1033 ] in this book the authors highlight how the, social media has
become increasingly popular for news consumption due to its easy access, fast dissemination,
and low cost. However, social media also enables the wide propagation of "fake news," i.e.,
news with intentionally false information. Fake news on social media can have significant
negative societal effects. Therefore, fake news detection on social media has recently become
an emerging research area that is attracting tremendous attention. This book is from a data
mining perspective, introduces the basic concepts and characteristics of fake news across
disciplines, reviews representative fake news detection methods in a principled way, and
illustrates challenging issues of fake news detection on social media. In particular, it
discussed the value of news content and social context, and important extensions to handle
early detection, weakly-supervised detection, and explainable detection. The concepts,
algorithms, and methods described in this lecture can help harness the power of social media
to build effective and intelligent fake news detection systems.

4.[ CITATION Sal19 \l 1033 ] this book by ziya salam is a collection of tragic stories of the
people who are at the receiving end of mob violence .The book mainly highlights how people
are being lynched in the name of cow protection. He also points out how the communal riots
are replaced by lynching. He also points out how the targets of the cow vigilantes have
shifted from one community to another. He also raises a serious question of whether cow, a
sacred or a political animal? It focuses on the changing dynamics of socio-cultural-political
landscape amidst the politics of exclusion in India. In the recent years the cases of mob
lynching are alarming .In a way lynching’s can be considered as an integral part of genocidal
project by BJP .The emergence of mobocracy from the roots of Hindutva and gau rakshaks
has put India’s secularity and democratic constitution to test. The book also looks deep inside
the minds of the lynchers who consider their acts to be just. The book also discusses the
judgement of the Supreme Court against lynching and tries to restore faith in the courts
capacity to curb this violence.

5. [ CITATION Raj17 \l 1033 ][ CITATION web19 \l 1033 ]The protection of lynching bill of 2017
was to provide for effective protection of the Constitutional rights of vulnerable persons, to

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punish acts of lynching, to provide for Special Courts for the expeditious trial of such
offences, for rehabilitation of victims of lynching and their families and for matters connected
therewith or incidental thereto. This act clearly defined the meaning of “lynching”, “mob”,
“and “victim”, “offensive material”. It also defined the duties of the police officers and
district magistrate. It empowered the police to suppress and prevent lynching’s.

6.[ CITATION Uik18 \l 1033 ]this paper mainly focused with the role of what’s app forwarded
messages as a technological tool for spreading fake news and cause mob lynching in the
country. The authors also tried to give few cases of mob lynching ranging from the year
2006-2017.It also highlights the loop hole of the Indian penal code where there was no
defined punishment for lynching. This article very clearly brings out the reason for mob
lynching which is depicted with a help of a table as follows:

Table 1: reasons for mob lynching

Cattle Child Love-jihad Rape

slaughter kidnapping
Very 7.3 8.2 3.6 9.1
less
Less 14.5 17.3 10.9 10.9
Can’t 13.6 9.1 15.5 16.4
say
Muc 33.6 38.2 35.5 24.5
h
very 30.9 27.3 34.5 39.1
much
This study also suggested imposing strict rules and regulation against the serious problem of
mob lynching rising within India. There major findings were that the incidents of mob
lynching are not happening in Urban and Elite class group, the rural and labor class of the
society contain this problem, so it also gave suggestion that these class of society should
indulge in technology learning and how they can safely use it.

7.[ CITATION Ash18 \l 1033 ]this article focused mostly on the legal provisions regarding mob
violence, the problem with these provisions and the need for special laws dealing with such
violence. This article has also made a study on the violence in other countries and also has
studied the various methods adopted to curb such hate crime.

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8.[CITATION web19 \t \l 1033 ] this article reflects on the speech given by Dilip Ghosh the West
Bengal BJP chief in Burdwan district on the topic of cow protection. He was addressing a
gathering organized by the Ghosh and Gavi Kalyan Samite.He makes a statement that desi
cows have a gold mixed in their milk and cows imported from abroad are beasts and not Gau
Mata (holy cow).He also made a controversial statement that intellectuals who eat meat of
cow should also eat the meat of other animals like dog. He considers killing cows and
consuming their meat as a crime and they should be punished.

9.[ CITATION Kat19 \l 1033 ]in this article justice katju gives more scientific reasoning like just
by imposing ban on cow slaughter the communal haters cannot be reduced. He says
communalism in India is vested in the interest of getting vote irrespective of the issue of cow
slaughter. He has also answered the question raised by the right wing party that why 2
Muslim representatives in the constituent assembly agreed for banning the beef? He gives a
rational meaning behind it like before 1950 the mode of agriculture was traditional where it
required animals for tilling the land with the introduction of modern technology machines
replaced thee animals. He considers cow to be just like any other animal.

10.[ CITATION Bha18 \l 1033 ]this article throws light on the lynching of 2 brothers in Haryana
on the occasion of ‘Eid the reason for them being lynched is the suspicion of beef eating.
Lynching of Muslims in the name of Gau Rakshaks got the condemnation by the citizens of
the India. The protest was hosted as not in my name and it began through social media. The
violence and murderous hatred unleashed by the so called cow-vigilantes has to be matched
with a a much greater yet a non-violent response. The citizens protested because they thought
if we think that they are killing 2-10 citizens gradually it would lead to a sense of accepting
the collective psycho. This article also throws light on the Indian media how it is bend and
acting according to the needs and wants of the right wing politics.an actor Girish Karnad has
stated that “ we have a constitution, law and order and what is happening is terrible and we
know what is happening is happening for political purpose”.

11.[CITATION Mob18 \l 1033 ]this article focuses on the cases of lynching in the states of U.P
and Jharkhand. It shows how the targets have slowly moved from community to the other.it
highlights the conditions of the victims after suffering wounds and pains they don’t get
justice instead cases have been filed against them. The rising incidents of mob lynching on
mere suspicion of child lifting shows that the malaise is becoming deep rooted with complete
disregard for the law of the land. It also provides us some data on mob lynching and most of

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the cases reported are on the basis of mere suspicion .The Supreme Court(2018) bench
headed by chief justice Dipak Mishra called incidents of mob lynching in the country as
“horrendous “ acts of mobocracy.

12.[ CITATION Raj171 \l 1033 ]she brings out a point where in she says that there might have
been a personal enmity behind the lynching incidents and that anti-social elements are using
cow protection as an excuse for violence. The National Crime Records Bureau does not
maintain a separate category of crime listed under mob lynching.

13.[ CITATION Ind18 \l 1033 ]this article mainly reflects on how a video circulated in the
messaging app have become detrimental to the lives of 2 people which has shattered their
dreams. The source also said that the video was not of Indian. It was an awareness video of
some other country. The last part of the video was cut and posted. The media channels have
also telecasted it without even looking into the credibility of the video.

14.[ CITATION Pur18 \l 1033 ] the jest of this interview is how the media is used as a platform
for constructing the political debate and forming opinions. They also brought a point how
people are not asked for their consent before being added to what’s app group and how the
government snoops into the personal things of the social media users. How the personal life
things have been used for commercial business activity. During the elections like most of the
journalist, intellectuals, politician’s phones information were traced and used for
misinterpretation.

15.[ CITATION Tha18 \l 1033 ] This article mainly reports and examines the allegations related
to the complicity of Facebook and what’s app in disseminating disinformation, hate speech
and incendiary information.

16. (Hindustan times,2018)the supreme court has asked parliament to consider bringing a
new law to deal with offences of mob violence and provide deterrent punishment to offenders
amid rising attacks by self-styled cow vigilantes and crowds in the country. The Supreme
Court stated that “citizens cannot take the law into their hands and cannot become the law
unto them. Horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be allowed to become a new norm and have
to be curbed with iron hands, “the bench headed by chief justice Dipak Mishra said. “In case
of fear and anarchy, the state has to act positively. Violence cannot be allowed”. The Centre
and state governments were also asked to broadcast on radio, television and other media

9
platforms, including the official websites of the home department and police, that lynching
and mob violence of any kind shall invite serious consequence under the law.

RESEARCH QUESTION

1. How social media being an application for communication have turned to be a serial killer
taking the lives of many? How it has impacted the society?

2. Who are the main targets of the mob-lynching?

3 .Is mob lynching connected with only the spread of fake news or it has an underline tag of
the Hindutva politics?

4. How spreading of fake news is violating the freedom of speech and expression of the
individuals?

5. What are the major measures taken by various countries to curtail the spread of fake news?

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

The main objective of this research is to

1. To understand the impact of social media messages upon the society.

2. To find out which community has been the victim of mob lynching.

3. To understand how the media is used to create hatred among communities.

4. To find out how the right to freedom of speech and expression has been sidelined or
restricted or compromised in certain cases due to spread of fake news.

5. To find out the extent to which the government has a control over the social media
accounts of the individual.

HYPOTHESIS

1. Dalits and minorities are the people who have majorly been the victim of mob lynching.

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2. The mob lynching has taken place in large number in the state in which BJP government
was in power.

3. In most of the mob lynching cases the victim has lost his freedom of speech.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This research proposal is analytical in nature and is based on the relevant secondary data
sources from books, articles, journals, and government websites. The research will be further
preceded through the method of both primary data collection (questionnaire, direct interview)
as well as secondary data collection.

RESEARCH GAP

Majority of the research cited earlier mainly focused on the issue of legal provisions,
supreme court verdict, protest by the civil society, addressed few of the mob lynching cases,
opinions of the political representatives on the mob lynching issue. Therefore in this work, I
would like to spread a comprehensive survey as to find how the spread of fake news is posing
an restriction on the degree of use of freedom of speech and expression, causing causalities
against Article 21 .I would also like to have a comparative study on the measures taken by
various countries to curtail the spread of fake news.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

A study on mob lynching and fake news in India is very important in the present scenario
.India being declared as a secular country with various diverse culture have stayed united
since time immemorial but the present day politics with the policy of exclusion and trying to
carve a Hindu nation out of India it Poses a serious threat on the minorities who have lived as
a kith and kin with the Hindus. Committing atrocities in the name of cow vigilantes in a way
also implies a restriction on the food habits of the individuals. When such atrocities are
committed by the state it becomes legitimized. It is in a way trying to create aloofness and
violating the freedom of speech and expression.

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LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The main limitation of this study is that it does not contain any interviews or questionnaire
method.it is entirely based on the secondary data sources like newspapers, articles, journals,
government website.

TENTATIVE CHAPTERS

CHAPTER-1

Introduction

The first chapter of this research is an introductory chapter which briefly gives an background
of the media in the ancient times and also how the media has evolved over the period with the
invention in the techonology.it also traces the origin of communal violence between the
Hindu and Muslims and how it has taken different roots and perpetuating hatred among two
communities. This chapter mostly tries to explain major terms or concepts like lynching, gau
rakshaks, and hate crime. the origin of cow vigilance under the vishwa hindu parishad and
also trace the peak period in which it was perpetuated and what are the extreme levels of
violence. Who are the major victims of the mob lynchings. Can mob lynching be seen as a
raise of Hindutva politics in India? Has mob lynching occurred in those states where BJP had
their strong governmental hold?It also deals with the research question , research objective,
methodology, limitation, scope of the study.

CHAPTER-2

Theory of hate crime and exclusion attitude

The second chapter would mainly focus into the problem of what is hate crime? Why the
notion of exclusion has come into picture .who are the major victims of the mob lynching’s.
Can mob lynching be seen as a raise of Hindutva politics in India? Has mob lynching
occurred in those states where BJP had their strong governmental hold?

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CHAPTER-3

Spread of fake news and threat posed on the right to freedom of speech and expression.

The third chapter looks into the issue of how the fake news is curbing the freedom of speech
and expression of people. Is it really necessary to reduce the degree of the freedom or it
requires something more than that.

CHAPTER-4

Comparative study on the various measures taken by us and India to tackle the
problem of fake news.

The fourth chapter will try to have a comparative study of various measures taken by
different countries to curb the spread of fake news and hate crime.

CHAPTER-5

Conclusion

The fifth chapter mainly deals with the major findings of the research after collecting primary
data and also consists of certain recommendations to overcome the issue.

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