Crimes and labels-A confirmation bias…
This is something that I started thinking about after spending time on social media and following the news there. I am not someone to take news on face value. I usually go to various sources and then form my own opinion about what is broadcasted. By now, the well informed know how social media algorithms function. If not, please go ahead and watch this documentary called ‘The Social Dilemma’. The opinions of most people are based on a confirmation bias. When I would sit in small groups and hear people talk about other sects and communities, after a point it was only becoming more and more clear as to where we were headed as a society.
Hence I took to social media to rant about how crimes should not have labels. Our news media often reports stuff like, ‘A Dalit got raped’….’An upper caste Hindu got beaten up.’….’A Muslim got lynched’. Why do we need to attach a name , religion, caste or class to a particular crime?
When the reporting is done in this manner, it often colors our perspective. We can have statistics of the crime in police and intelligence records to study whether a particular class or community is being targeted, unless it is an explicit large scale communal genocide. It is otherwise pointless and inflammatory putting the information out in the public domain. It then gets misused by vested interests.
When a person who is unaware of his brother belonging to his community being attacked someplace and is informed of the news, he incites an unnecessary response elsewhere thus setting into motion a communal upheaval.
The atrocity of a rape or lynching or murder does not change depending on who does it. If we are truly unbiased with our legal proceedings, we do not require to label crimes. Justice should be done irrespective.
We then have the international media picking it up and people debating on how Hindu’s are intolerant and an other section espousing the criminality of their Muslim brethren. We are all born to be a part of some or the other religion or sect by default. It isn’t something we choose. So, if a heinous crime is committed somewhere, it is but obvious they will come with an identity. Just the way we do not reveal names of rape victims/survivors, we should also stop reporting crimes on the basis of religious or caste identities. For every criminal, there will be hundreds of others in the same community fighting for peace and sanity.
We can rather have our media report what crime was committed, the age and gender of the victim and what were the results of the court proceedings and what kind of redressal was done. Let people then debate on whether the events that followed the crime, and the punishment meted out were justified? Let the debate be impartial with just facts to back them up. That might be one way to kill the confirmation bias.
