The Era of Binaries and Whataboutism is Over!

Do you support Umar Khalid? 

Yes or No! 

Are you in favour of Article 370 or not? 

Yes or No! 

The binary game is again the flavour of the season, especially on prime-time television debates. The only change is that it is becoming more direct and threatening.

Do you support the Tukde Tukde Gang?

Yes or No?

Now there is no straightforward answer to every question, and many such questions aren't even based on any evidence. Answers to this sort of rhetoric cannot be a binary of Yes or No, For or Against, Black or White. There is scope for debate and interpretation in everything man-made unless it is a proven fact established by science, like the laws of physics or the fact that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. But in ‘New India’, defined by Right-wing commentators who otherwise revel in the great Indian tradition of Shastratha (debate), there is no room for any debate, discussion or shades of grey. 

If someone tries to be safe by bringing in a shade of grey and says, “I’ve no opinion on Umar Khalid as even the trial has not begun yet,” there is every likelihood that he or she would be trolled and hounded, if not attacked. 

And, if someone, after reading and listening to all that Khalid wrote and said, gives an opinion that, “He should be out on bail till the time some evidence surfaces,” the person in all likelihood would be slapped with an FIR.

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Dimaagi Naxal” remark during his Independence Day speech, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons on television debates have suddenly ratcheted up their tempo of making such claims using binaries.

Most of these claims have been proven fake through repeated fact checks by several fact-checking websites. 

The claims that Umar Khalid raised slogans like “Bharat Terey Tukde Honge…”, “Afzal Hum Sharminda Hain…” and that student activists Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid “celebrated” the death of 76 CRPF jawans in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh by CPI (Moists) in 2010 at Jawaharlal Nehru University have been proven false by fact-check websites like Alt News and International Business Times through the well-proven technique of reverse image search that is taught by Google itself.

Claims related to ‘Bharat Terey Tukde Honge’ and other slogans were trashed by the Hyderabad-based independent Truth Labs. Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, and Anirban Bhattacharya were also exonerated by the courts because of a lack of substantial evidence.

Yet the Right-wing troll army, aided by its spin doctors, is back with the same old wine in the same old bottle. The only difference this time is that they don’t have anything new to say or show.

A new spin to the story is that these "anti-India" controversial slogans were also raised during the CJP (Cockroach Janata Party) protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. No video, not even a doctored one, has surfaced so far. Yet, BJP spokespersons are making emphatic claims on television debates, threatening that they will make the videos public very soon. 

They might even come up with a video, in all likelihood a “doctored” one. But will they be able to sway public opinion now like they used to five or ten years ago? The answer is an emphatic No. Gen-Z youth and even those below adolescence, Gen Alpha, are beyond these binaries. They treat whataboutism with equal disdain. Situated in the present, they want straight fact-based answers to their straight point-blank questions.

Kaath Ki Handiya Aag Par Ek Baar Chadti Hai Baar Baar Nahin (A wooden pot can be put on fire only once not repeatedly). The era of binaries and whataboutism is over.

The writer is a senior independent journalist based in Delhi. The views are personal.