A cartoon that got its maker locked up on charges of sedition. A crudely provocative film that has set off riots in several parts of the world; this coming on the back of a doctored video alleging atrocities in Assam that triggered another violent riot. Go back a few months and rewind to another cartoon that made a mercurial Chief Minister jail a college professor. And another one about a revered Dalit figure, excavated after sixty years, that created a storm of protest.

Something significant is afoot. A new touchiness seems to be visible across the world; lines are getting blurred between the symbolic and the real, the abstract intent and the concrete action. Take the instance of the anti-Islam video that has sparked such a violent reaction in parts of the Muslim world. It is an obscure, tacky production that does not carry the support of any identifiable religious or political group and its current prominence is almost entirely a product of the protests against it, a pattern that it a recurring one- even the anti-corruption and Mamata Banerjee cartoons would have died in obscurity, had it not been for the action taken against their makers. What explains this inclination to look for disrespect, and then to explode with anger upon finding it and attributing it falsely to one’s perceived enemies? Why is it that outbreaks of anger have much more to do with perceived representational infractions than substantive behaviour in the real world?

In the case of the anti-Islam video, it is particularly difficult to understand what precisely is the source of the outrage. Given that one of the functions of the internet is to enable lunatics can to have their say in the medium and font of their choice, reacting to such a crude and deliberate attempt at incitement by getting incited seems like a remarkably short-sighted reaction. Apart from the fact that it is technologically infeasible to do too much about such attempts, it is a virtual invitation to every other fringe group to gain easy notoriety on the cheap. No religion or political formation can believe that it does not have its share of people who dislike it, and in some cases hate it with a venomous passion. The desire to eradicate the world of any sign of this hatred is a fantasy; what most groups settle for is to keep reasonable boundaries that prevent the faithful from being involuntarily exposed to views that they would find offensive and insulting.

In an earlier world, it could be argued that the device of blasphemy and the consequences it invited had its uses. It cordoned off the touchy areas of our life by keeping adherents in check and creating well demarcated boundaries between one social group and another. However, today the operating conditions have changed substantially. Due to the enormously inter-connected nature of our existence, whatever we feel about others is now easy to broadcast to everyone else at very little cost, both material and otherwise. The ordered nature of social groups with a few ports of communication have dissolved in a cacophony of individual untamed voices. In such a situation, a device like blasphemy needs to be invoked with some restraint, for it is in the danger of expending itself otherwise.

There is another factor at work too. In an earlier world, important people and lofty ideas enjoyed a natural protection from too much intemperate criticism. One lived in smaller, self-contained and largely homogenous world under a canopy of exaggerated respect. Truly public platforms were rare, and could in most cases be managed. For the important, the exposure to such volumes of vituperation is an unfamiliar and deeply disorienting experience. It is also why the current touchiness is shown most by groups that have enjoyed unchallenged power- the state, powerful leaders in all facets of public life and religious and quasi-religious groups. The desire seems to be to protect themselves by retreating into an enclave of guaranteed respect.

If we think about it, what Aseem Trivedi was really accused of was not sedition but blasphemy. In a lot of the cases, the reactions to criticism have followed the codes of blasphemy, rather than any other label that might have been used. In an ironical way, the role of religion is increasing in our life not only through its organised form, but also by way of treating other arenas of our life as if they were religion. When Mamata Banerjee reacts to a cartoon, or a book is banned because it contains something unpalatable, it is not because these are threats to the public but because they are seen to be blasphemous in nature. The reason why cartoons feature in so many of the issues of the day is because they are by definition rooted in the notion of blasphemy – they make the lofty and sacred look ridiculous. The touchiness about things symbolic is a sign that more subjects are asking to be treated with reverence rather than real respect; the problem is not with a specific criticism but with the very idea of criticism.

Attempts to understand these reactions by invoking notions of taste and historical injustice are misguided, particularly given the new context in which we all operate. If we start legitimising extreme reactions to any and every provocation, a swift descent to medievalism seems unavoidable. On the other hand, it is also true that the easy circulation of such material, available in such volume is not easy to adjust to. The volume and velocity of hate are going up dramatically while the capacity to handle the same has not grown significantly. The process of negotiating with the changed conditions is not being to be easy, but a retreat into the past is not an option. We will be living in a world with greater knowledge of who hates us and why, and reacting to every perceived slight with brute force will be an exercise in self-defeating futility.