Two Young Girls and their “Mere Facebook Status”!

I was never an admirer of Mr Bal Thackeray.  Following the dictum “de mortuis nil nisi bonum”, I will not talk about him.  I will also keep quiet about the man and his politics. 

But there has been a furore of sorts about the two young girls who were arrested at the behest of a complaintant who apparently did not like the comments made by one of the girls on the events following the death of the Shiv Sena leader.  The girls were duly arrested, apparently illegally, and now the policemen who arrested them are facing trouble.  A couple of them have been suspended and the honourable magistrate has been given the heave-ho – possibly to some undesirable place.  TV channels and papers were arguing the case for the young girls. Now the Shiva Sainiks have taken up the cause of the cops by calling a bandh!

I think the channels and the papers were wrong in their assessment and the defence they put up.  They kept describing it as a “mere Facebook status”.  How can someone be arrested for “merely” liking a status on FB– went the refrain. And therefore, the arrest is such a big punishment for such a teeny weeny action. 

One cannot hunt with the hounds and run with the foxes.

Experience tells us that social media can be quite powerful.  Recall the “Pink Chaddi” campaign which started off as a family joke and then went on to become a small movement with a handful of people. We have seen how it spread all over the country through the social media, with Mr Muthalik getting far more undergarments than he would care for!  

We saw the potential of a single MMS which went viral in the city of Bengaluru and that had frightening consequences for our brethren from the North Eastern states.  So let us not understate the potential of a single status posted on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter or a single SMS.

The defence for the two young girls from Palghar cannot be that they merely posted something and so it is a “mere post” after all.  That sounds quite silly.  The question that needs to be answered is whether a status is judged as “mere” is based on the number of people who see it.

Just because a status is one that would be seen by her friends does the young lady has the freedom to say what she wants to say? Supposing that the status had gone viral, and a few thousand people had seen it, would it have made a difference to the defamatory nature of what she had said?  Similarly, it is the first “like” which makes a FB status go viral.  It is the proverbial match stick which makes a forest fire.

I do not wish to go into the merits of the post made by the young lady on Facebook, or her opinion about Mr Bal Thackery.  But I feel the standard of evaluation used to judge the “status” should be the same as if the young lady had gone on stage at a stadium full of people and made those statements.

 In other words, each one of us have to keep asking ourselves the question.    Would I make this sort of statement I am about to make on FB or Twitter if we were in an open place where not just our friends are standing, but  also a huge crowd of strangers are assembled.  Before “liking” a status, we also need to ask ourselves whether we would be willing to share that same stage where such statements are made.

Bala@Panjim