What happens when we’re exposed to stunning videos
Narendra Modi. The clip shows two women being paraded naked in Manipur as part of a sexual assault against them. For many weeks before it went viral online, most of India was unmoved by the communal violence in Manipur.
Not because Indians don’t have a heart, but because our threshold for public compassion is high. But the video did shock Indians. People had heard that such things were done to women as a form of communal revenge, but now they could see it.
For decades, how to ‘integrate’ the north-east had been talked about; the video clip from one of its states was a sign that what unites India is all that is wrong with us. The video, which appears to have been suppressed by the Manipur government for weeks, may well have ended the violence in the state. The humanitarian impact of mobile phones is immense.
People react to an extraordinary video of an atrocity as though what separated them from compassion was hard evidence. But a clip is not just visible evidence of an event, it contains the full force of drama. There will come a time when people stop reacting even to extraordinary videos.
Already, our lives are filled with videos from real life that stun and shock us, but only for a few minutes. In fact, people have stopped reacting to extraordinariness; they are only reacting to the newness of the genre. As I set out to write, I watched a clip from Chennai of a cow attacking a nine-year-old girl, who screams in fright.
Her mother watches in horror as the cow repeatedly flings the girl on its horns, trying to gore her. There are many videos from Indian street life that show the sacred animal attacking pedestrians. Also of stray dogs mauling people, including children.
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