The Cauvery river water is a long-standing, unresolved political problem in the country that has led to sporadic unrests over the course of several decades in both states — Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The recent bill passed by the Supreme Court on September 5 ordering Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs of water for the next 10 days (which was eventually reduced to 12,000 cusecs) has led to several unfortunate and violent events in both the states.
Protests and riots have been commonplace, and Tamilians living in Karnataka and Kannadigas living in TN have been subjected to physical harassment and manhandling. Social media has been a key player in spurring violence in both the states. However, many prominent personalities and youngsters across the country have claimed that these wrongdoers don’t represent any particular state — but are evil elements that exploit the issue for committing these crimes.
They also took to social media to voice their opinions seeking peace, and have asked to spread the message far and wide — through videos, illustrations, and pictures — a far cry from the meme-makers making light of the situation.
Kirubha Shankar, a professional motivational speaker, says, “People get carried away when they see a video of someone getting beaten up, and are driven to go out and commit the same crime. However, people should be more sensible and mature about these issues. Letting emotions run amok is just not going to help farmers or anybody. They should understand that this is mob mentality. I suspect business motives behind this.”
Many actors including Vijay Sethupathi and RJ Balaji have posted videos, asking people to stop spreading violence-instigating posts. When contacted, Balaji said, “Creating memes mocking Kannada heroes and culture won’t move a thing. I was frustrated seeing these posts and so made the video. If someone really wants to do something productive for a cause, they should start reading and be knowledgeable about the issue. Some Facebook pages that spread rumours about the whole issue are doing this to increase their likes and shares, which is disgusting.”
Ramya Sriram, a cartoonist who created an illustration on the issue, also has a similar stand — “I feel that by and large, we are peaceful people. In addition, most of the trouble comes from political play and hate messages on the internet.
A bunch of troublemakers can create so much chaos, and the media tapping into it can spread even more hatred. I feel that violence is never the solution to any problem. We should focus on spreading messages of peace and positivity because that’s how we are in our daily lives. We live among diverse people and don’t think twice about it. But one person starts to attack, the other retaliates, and next thing you know there’s disruption everywhere.”
Environmentalist Nityanand Jayaraman opines that more than political and other motives, this unrest is due to people who like violence — “These people polarise to bring people together. Their main objective is to pit one set against the other. Those creating riots are not any different from beef vigilantes or terrorists.”
He adds, “Also, it shows how our political class has been a failure since the issue has been going on for a long time. Both the states abuse water and many genuine attempts to solve the problem have not been supported. Cauvery Family, an initiative with many key players from both the states came close to resolving the problem, but it failed since both governments didn’t render support to it.”
