Dear Chief Justice of India,
On behalf of all faceless nameless social media trolls, I am writing this letter. Before I start ranting, please let me explain what trolls mean and why they choose to remain faceless and nameless. Trolls are the ones who criticise powerful people, politicians, law makers, bureaucrats, journalist celebrities, intellectuals, civil society, businessmen, Judiciary and Courts too.
So, you must be thinking why are we called trolls not critics? Because we criticise people who don’t like to be criticised. For example, elite journalists, if we question them, they will see it as an attack on journalism, they themselves want power to question everyone but they don’t like to be questioned back because they are sitting on their self-assumed pedestal of being the 4th pillar of Democracy. So they started calling us troll and once they started naming social media critics as troll, all others joined them in calling us troll. We kind of like this name so we are happily accepting it.
Why do we choose to be nameless and faceless? Nothing is hidden from you milord, you are very well aware how powerful people react when you take them to the place they are not comfortable in and expose them. They can go after our jobs, our family and sometime, send goons to beat us up. And there is also a benefit of being nameless and faceless that powerful people will have to reply on topic only and they can’t use religion, caste or race to divert the topic.
Who are abusive trolls? Trolls mostly use humour, sarcasm, satire or meme to criticise but it is backed with facts not abuses. Anyone, including me, using abuses is giving bad name to trolls and must avoid it and it also makes it easy for powerful people to take action. Not only trolls but anyone who is abusing should be dealt with laws, be it a Rajya Sabha MP calling an actress ‘haramkhor’ or an actor abusing journalist. But such abusive ‘trolls’ are few in number.
Milord, coming to the point, recently you asked central agencies to take action against trolls who are questioning judges on social media. Had this statement come from any politician or journalist, we would have seen as badge of honour but this statement coming from lordship has hurt us badly. We look upon you as our chief defender of freedom of expression. To paraphrase Justice Gautam Patel, ‘there is no such things as too much dissent’. Justice Chandrachud advices us to ‘stand up and be dissenters’. And while protecting rights of dissenters, Delhi Court said ‘if you don’t agree with the author, don’t read the book’. There are thousands of instances when Judiciary stood up for dissenters and freedom of expression.
As I had mentioned earlier, we are called trolls by people who don’t like to be criticised, with due respect to your chair, judiciary has joined that league when you asked central agencies to take action against social media trolls. We are taught that everyone has right to criticise anyone and no one is above law, even the law makers and law implementer. It should not be a crime to criticise any court order or any judge at his/her personal capacity. People should be bound to follow court order no matter if they like it or not, but criticising that order should not be crime.
Coming to attack on the judiciary, It’s not trolls who are hurting judiciary, its news publishers and media who portray court order as per their wish. They can turn a court order towards any direction as per their need. They use oral remarks of judges as headlines of article, which might be completely different from the order of that case. Nothing is harming judiciary more than fake news. And I am really sorry to say this but courts always protect those fake news peddlers in the name of freedom of press and dissent. Instead of going after trolls, milords should have asked law makers to frame laws against fake news peddlers. I am not against freedom of press, but freedom comes with a price and here that price is one and only TRUTH. Freedom of press must not be confused with freedom to lie.
Milord, I am too young to tell this, but in my opinion, serving judges should refrain for putting their opinion and off-the-cuff remarks, as suggested by supreme court. Once a judge has an opinion, his/her chances of being unbiased gets reduced and it can also influence the decision. Judges are supposed to be unbiased and no opinion is unbiased.
Concluding this letter with an expectation that courts will protect freedom of expression of trolls who are already targeted by many powerful chairs. And in future, if anyone will attack on freedom of expression of trolls, courts will take Suo moto to defend trolls and idea of India.
If you find this letter offensive, please accept my apologies. I am now off to the nearest communal mandir to pray that I get away with just one rupee fine like Prashant Bhushan, who attacked the judiciary far more uncharitably than any of us trolls do.
Yours obediently,
Nameless, faceless but not shameless troll.
