25 November 2018 00:58 IST

When did we become a country where a world-renowned historian who has written some of the finest modern classics is not allowed to teach in the State that produced Mahatma Gandhi, and teach a course on Gandhi? Or where an inspiring musician, winner of the Magsaysay Award is “un-invited” to a concert?

The same people, or kinds of people, have triumphed in either case, and a government that promised us Ram Rajya has given us Troll Rajya.

It is a well-oiled system. The rulers activate the trolls who then give them a reason to block appointments and withdraw invitations in the name of security and nationalism. Nationalism should be made of sterner stuff.

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Thus it was that historian Ramachandra Guha, who was set to join Ahmedabad University, had the offer rescinded. And T.M. Krishna, another modern master, was told he was not welcome to sing at a concert.

A university and its students are deprived of interaction with one of our great minds, and an audience loses a chance to revel in the music of our most socially conscious singer with few peers as a performer. We should all hang our heads in shame. This is what we have come to. Intolerance is our national currency.

So now we are being told what to like and dislike, what to accept or reject, what constitutes Indianness by a group of trolls — many of them followed by the Prime Minister — who understands neither Gandhism nor freedom.

According to the classical dictionary definition, the troll is “an ugly cave-dwelling creature depicted as either a giant or a dwarf”. It is roughly the modern definition too. In Tolkien’s fictional world, they are portrayed as “large humanoids of great strength and poor intellect”. That sounds about right.

The copy-and-paste technique of trolls around the country would have been hilarious if it weren’t so sad. And dangerous. You only have to imagine other situations to understand the strange impact of trolls on our decision-making (acknowledging at all times, of course, that they are often paid to do what they do on behalf of those keen on apparent acceptance). Imagine if Virat Kohli were not picked in the Indian cricket team because the trolling community flooded the social media with anti-Kohli slogans. Or our best writers in English found it hard to find publishers and distributors in India because trolls decided that they should only write in Indian languages as part of the nationalism drive.

If the mind boggles at these examples, it should boggle with equal intensity at the Guha and Krishna situations.

They will continue to do their work, of course, but something important and valuable in our society has been lost. Those who ought to defend our rights are at the head of the queue to attack them, so who will mind the minders?

Every time an intellectual or an artiste is insulted, it diminishes us as Indians. Let us send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for us.

(Suresh Menon is Contributing Editor, The Hindu)