Witnessing Salil Chaturvedi’s real time revolution

On October 18, earlier this week, this newspaper’s Edit page carried ‘Patriotism for Dummies’ (authored by this writer) describing a nasty assault on Salil Chaturvedi, the Chorao-based writer, poet, disability activist and wheelchair user. He had been lifted to a seat to watch Rajnikanth’s latest movie at the Panjim multiplex. When the national anthem played, a belligerent couple whacked his head for not standing up.After realizing he was physically unable to rise, they slipped away when the lights dimmed. But the spinal injury survivor was left shaken and hurt, and has never gone back to a cinema, fearing another attack could leave permanent damage.
A few hours after the newspaper appeared in print and on the Internet, it was already clear the story was resonating widely. That afternoon, eminent novelist (and part-time Aldona resident) Amitav Ghosh shared it via social networking platform Twitter, writing “shocking story: disabled poet attacked because he couldn't stand for the Indian national anthem before a movie” He has over 140,000 “followers”, and 500 immediately “retweeted”. Later in the evening, veteran news anchor (and proud Goan) Rajdeep Sardesai posted the link to nearly five million. Now Salil Chaturvedi’s story went viral. Just a few hours later, he found himself talking to Barkha Dutt on a live satellite link, for prime time national television.
Chaturvedi lives in serene contemplation, on an island that strongly recalls the laid-back Goa of previous eras. But now his name was trending on Twitter, his cinema contretemps being hotly discussed across the country. He says, “It’s quite apparent— the virtual world is actually hyper-real. It’s been breath-taking and educative to watch the distance the story has travelled in such a short span of time. We have all heard of breaking stories but this was more like an explosion that I witnessed.” At one point, thousands of people were discussing the topic simultaneously on Facebook (where the link is still being shared like clockwork). And all that was before the mainstream media jumped in.
The bemused poet reports, “within a day of the story appearing in Times of India, I was receiving calls from NDTV, Times Now and Aaj Tak asking for interviews. A radio channel from Bombay wanted a live ‘phono’, newspapers and online media wanted quotes and clarifications. Someone wanted WhatsApp pictures, some wanted me to respond to questions via video. In a matter of hours a camera team flew in from Bombay to set up the live chat with Barkha Dutt. My email account started piling up with messages, from as far away as Johannesburg. A cousin gave me updates on the reactions to the story on Twitter and Facebook. It’s all been a bit overwhelming, and of course, extremely gratifying that a story can generate so much impact in such a short time. And to think I live on an island where we have to go to the road to get mobile connectivity and the Internet service is sketchy.”
What Chaturvedi experienced was unthinkable just a few years ago. Local stories rarely crossed to the national mainstream, and newspapers reached only their subscribers. Starting just two decades ago, the Internet changed everything. But the most significant transformation has come in just the last decade, as Facebook (founded 2004), Twitter (launched 2006) and WhatsApp (just 6 years old) comprehensively altered the way we receive, share and discuss news, and every other genre of communication. It takes a long time on a slow ferry to physically reach Chaturvedi’s idyll, but he can span the globe in a split-second in the virtual world. Social media has shrunk the planet to the size of your palm.
That’s particularly true in India, where close to 70% of nearly 250 million smartphone users regularly use social media platforms. This huge mass of Indians online dramatically changes how the media chooses, pursues and covers stories, which are now often driven or even generated by the online crowd. This often has a negative impact, as we’ve seen with the logic of baying mobs leading directly to unseemly jingoism paraded onscreen and on front pages. But the same phenomena can work in the opposite direction, like this week, when mass revulsion about the cowardly beating in Panjim leaped from social media to prime time national news. The result has been an unusually thoughtful national discussion about the folly of imposing warped ideas of nationalism on unwilling citizens, and the value of truly principled patriotism. It is a genuine revolution, still unfolding in real time.
The writer is a photographer and widely published columnist