The Dadri lynching and return of awards by some writers have led to a widespread debate on the (perceived) increasing religious intolerance in India.
The first question in this debate pertains to the claim of rise of religious intolerance in the country, citing recent incidents. The absolute numbers, however, suggest there has not been an increase in communal incidents. Some argue that numbers don’t capture everything – especially the general perception of people – and hence relying on just numbers may not amount to a fair assessment of the situation. To disentangle this knot, we should carefully look at the objective and methodology of quantifying intolerance.
There are broadly two ways of measuring a quantity – measuring its presence and measuring the effect of its absence. For example, weight of a body is directly measurable, and hence we are measuring its presence. Religious intolerance, unlike weight, isn’t a directly measurable quantity. When we attempt to measure intolerance, we are actually trying to quantify the effects of lack of tolerance (measuring its absence).
Arguments quoting data inherently assume that effects of lack of tolerance manifest only in form of communal incidents. This isn’t true. The lack of tolerance needn’t manifest only in form of communal incidents. One may not physically attack someone but express disdain or intolerance through verbal means, making the other person equally uncomfortable and insecure.
Quantifying intolerance is similar to quantifying sadness. To know if a person is sad, one can check if (s)he has visited a psychiatrist. If there is record of such a visit, it is probably an indication that the person is indeed sad. But if there is no record of such a visit, one can’t necessarily conclude that the person is not sad. Not every sad person goes to a psychiatrist. Similarly, an increase in communal incidents can confirm the hypothesis of “rise in intolerance” but a non-increase in this number doesn’t necessarily deny the claim of “raising intolerance”.
Verbal expression of intolerance is contingent on the differential weightage of individual statements. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Tipping Point, discusses the phenomenon of spread of news, and impact of the message of call-for-action. One of the key factors in this phenomenon is the presence of a well-connected person and who can wield influence. For example, a tweet by Barrack Obama reassuring the child who was arrested recently in US probably sent a stronger signal than any other gesture by a normal US citizen.
The opposite seems to have happened in India: Statements by political leaders justifying an incident along with the lack of reassuring statements can contribute to the intolerance phenomenon.
Also, arguments quoting data assume that all incidents are of same magnitude. One must realise that the manifestations of religious intolerance are often different. Good policing plays an important role in preventing the manifestation of these beliefs in violent or non-violent forms. Culture and environment too play an important role by associating stigma to such beliefs.
The second question in the debate on religious intolerance is: why now? One side claims that this is selective outrage, and questions why similar events in the past didn’t evoke such responses. The other side calls this “whataboutery”. What are we missing in the data here? If the same number of incidents happened in the past, why didn’t they evoke such a response?
If you are trying to break a rock with a hammer, the rock may break at the 100th hit. Does it mean that the rock broke because of the 100th hit alone? Was there something special about the 100th hit? Probably not. It may be because the previous 99 hits built the necessary momentum. Consider the example of the Nirbhaya incident. Surely, there have been many incidents of rape before it, but why was there outrage only for this incident and why not before? Similarly, it was widely believed that corruption is entrenched in our system. Why were there widespread protests only around 2010? People who protested during these incidents weren’t necessarily selectively outraging nor were they doing it because of prejudices. It also doesn’t mean that these people approve of earlier instances of corruption and rapes. What then explains the phenomenon of protest at these particular points of time?
As evident from the example of breaking the rock, there are threshold effects at work here. The underlying displeasure is manifested visibly (vocally) when any one or more of the following conditions are met:
(i) Scale – News of corruption of Rs 1,000 doesn’t evoke the same response as that of news of corruption of Rs 2 lakh crores.
(ii) Intensity – Even if the number of deaths is more, it may not evoke strong response if they are spread out across time. Probably there might have been more farmer suicides in our country as compared to the deaths due to earthquake but the news of an earthquake and its damage evokes stronger response.
(iii) Form – Individual response also depends on the form of the incident. Lynching of a person by a mob is considered brutal as compared to shooting a person, even though it is same in terms of numbers (one death). Similarly, the details of the Nirbhaya incident was one of the reasons for strong response.
(iv) Proximity – The response also depends on the proximity factor. One may react strongly if someone among their friend or those whom (s)he associates with, is a victim. The spread of media and its coverage can also reduce the proximity gap.
Numbers can’t explain why we respond more to some incidents and not to others because they don’t capture the above factors. Recent research in behavioural economics and psychology shed light on numerous such instances where comparing numbers alone can’t explain our decisions. This isn’t special about some particular people. It is the way humans perceive information and act.
In the current context, the response might have been due to one of more of the above factors – the form of murder (Dadri), the proximity of person (fellow award winner), statements by some political leaders to the effect of justifying the incident, lack of strong statements from the leaders of community and political leaders reassuring the public and so on.
Thus, when someone argues that there is no increase in religious intolerance quoting the number of communal incidents or raise the question of “earlier-there-were-two-communal-incidents-daily-why-now?” they are missing out all the above nuances.