The traditional silly season for news has always been the somnolent summer months. When temperatures are high and politicians scarce on the ground, anything makes for a story, and most of it does. It is however autumn now. And just a week after a very surprising judgment in the Ayodhya case, one would have thought that all attention would be on the unravelling of the greatest communal knot in independent India. Instead we have a story over which, for the last three days, Congress and BJP spokespersons have cried themselves hoarse, sent off legal notices and accused each other of high perfidy.
For those who came in late, the story goes like this. The BJP has served a legal notice on the All India Congress Committee (AICC) for appropriating the domain name bjp.com and redirecting at least 38 lakh hits to its own website through some complicated cyber routing. The BJP?s own website is bjp.org, but they feel cheated out of cyber eyeballs nevertheless and even apprehend the hacking of their website through these means. It is a mystery to many as to why the BJP is expending so much energy on this matter. Middle class votebank and cyber security are some of the reasons being put forward for its proactive approach. But is it really the most important thing on which they can attack the Congress? Really?
What this points to also is the fact that both parties are now attaching a lot of importance to the cyber world and its various fora of social networking. Ever since Shashi Tharoor was tweeted out of office and LK Advani discovered the joys of free verse on the blogosphere, the two parties seem to have convinced themselves that the world is really ?out there?.
In 2007, during the Gujarat elections, narendramodi.com was often redirected to a dating site. Internet popularity polls were rigged but nobody sent out notices, legal or otherwise. It is 2010 now, and the myth of the urban, middle class votebank seems to have spurred parties to become serious, 140 characters at a time.
It is ironic, therefore, that this week also saw writer Malcolm Gladwell publish what is a very prescient piece in the New Yorker on the truth about social networking. The Iranian blogs and Moldova?s twitter mobilisation during great popular upheavals in these respective countries had been credited with ushering in a revolution.
Gladwell completely calls this bluff. The revolution, he says, cannot be tweeted.
India does not have to look far to check the truth of this conclusion. The Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11 were among the most horrific episodes in independent India?s history. The blogosphere, the twitterati and Facebookians exploded in calibrated rage and anger. Some were even persuaded to march to the Gateway of India with candles to protest the callous nature of our soft state. Come election time, however, Mumbai recorded some of the lowest voter turnouts. As usual, India?s democratic revolution was endorsed and supported by its unlettered, computer-free populace. Revolution may not necessarily flow from the barrel of the gun, but does it really flow from abbreviated communication? OMG (Oh My God), no.
The real revolution is when Mohammad Hashim Ansari, the octogenarian plaintiff in the Ayodhya case takes that extra step to reconcile with Mahant Gyan Das, to bring some closure to Ayodhya. When India remained calm after the verdict there were as many hate sites which popped up as those which commended the maturity of its handling. The Internet community is a misnomer. There is no community ?out there? but disparate individuals putting out opinion. Politics works on mobilising the collective, the Internet on the assumption of individual anomie.
The BJP would be better served if it went back to the drawing board and figured out why its core voter didn?t bother to come out and vote in the last two general elections. One clue: addiction to Facebook would not be the reason. The message is important in politics and so are the means. But to assume a constituency where none exists is silly. The party?s lawyers, fresh from their success in the Ayodhya case would be better served in other matters. And what?s to stop BJP?s cyber geeks from redirecting the AICC website?s traffic to itself? In life as in politics, don?t get mad, get even.