Leaving Whatsapp groups is often recommended for one's sanity especially if your social and political convictions clash with the majority there. After the initial thrill of discovering old classmates or hostel mates or long-lost cousins and sharing nostalgic memories, the fellowship soon becomes a liability.
The first remedy is to use the mute option for a week or year, and ignore the messages and forwards pumped on a daily basis by committed members and if that doesnt work, exit the group.
In these times when most are relearning or subverting facts through Whatsapp university, newspapers and books have become irrelevant to the majority who find it easier to watch videos dumbly and not exercise their minds and brains to read a book or daily.
One of the first groups I wriggled out of was a hostel group where some evangelically oriented members started forwarding Xian prayers in the morning and night and some faithfully said amen to that. When I asked the propriety of doing so in a group that had Hindu members, an administrator said the other community was free to forward their prayers or hymns. Despite exiting, the said admin adamantly put me back twice, so now I feel it is better to be a dormant member and save myself the trouble of checking privacy settings for a way out.
That groups on WA have a pernicious influence on Indian society is increasingly evident after the present regime got into power. WA groups have come in handy to renounce history and the contributions of freedom fighters and invent new heroes from cowards of yore.
Another group of WA scholars have risen among the Indian evangelicals, which every family is bound to have. After spending years shouting from streets and rooftops that Indian Hindus were worshipping lifeless statues and that true salvation was available only for those who are born again in Christ, they have had to change gear after Hindu fanatics and bigots clinched power at the Centre. No longer can they go around insulting pagan gods and distributing pamphlets that introduce JC to the non-believers.
So they have decided to get friendly with the original inhabitants of the land and pretend to respect their heritage and find a new target. A target that has been believed to have been enemies of JC's ancestors since the time of King Saul. The case of Israel's statehood has given reasons to hate this old enemy, as was seen during the recent clash for Jerusalem.
Now comes the need to rob them of any Abrahamic lineage and invent new history - making them a newer religion with a tribal God. A WA forward shared by an evangelical relative -- not surprisingly many of these born-agains are people who led a wayward or atheistic life earlier and now work in countries of the new-found enemy -- quoted one Cardinal Robert Sarah, who was touted as the next pontiff (a quick google search revealed that Sarah had given his resignation this February because his views were too radical and fundamentalistic for the liking of the present Pope, one of the best spiritual leaders we have seen). The said Sarah had recommended an ethnic cleansing of Europe's refugees from the sect to prevent the spread of militant believers.
Every religion has its share of fundamentalists, including Christianity. The friendly relative in our WA group is also a militant but who may be too cowardly to wage a holy crusade. Instead, his crusade will be fought across the social media distributing forwards and prayers.
And I thought it was best to leave that group than drive sense into them. For one believes only what one wants to believe. The husband himself is ignorant about Father Abraham's inheritors. The flaw in Bible classes taken since childhood is such that he believes the lap of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are his and his religion's alone. We have appropriated Jewish mythology in such a way that its original proponents have been ousted from its tales.
God save us and the groups that we continue to suffer in the digital world.
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