Last month, after the Madras High Court upheld the life sentence handed to Yuvaraj, prime accused in the murder of Dalit youth Gokulraj, several online ‘fan pages’ dedicated to him expressed disappointment with the verdict.
Yuvaraj, who is from the dominant Gounder caste, was convicted on June 2 for abducting and murdering Gokulraj in 2015 on the suspicion that he was in love with Swathi, a woman from Yuvaraj’s community. Gokulraj was beheaded and his body was found on a railway track in Namakkal.
When the high court upheld the session court’s verdict, Yuvaraj’s supporters said the judiciary had “failed the Gounder community”.
Esakki Muthu, the BJP’s social media in-charge in Tiruchendur, took it a step further and tweeted, “If 100 Gukulrajs are rejoicing that one Yuvaraj has been arrested, thousands of Yuvarajs are outside.”
Muthu was arrested and released on conditional bail. The party state vice-president Narayan Thirupathi told TNM that the BJP cannot take responsibility for an individual’s post.
“These tweets and statements are from the individual’s name. The party will never encourage or accept such statements,” he said. “In this social media era, it is difficult to keep track of what someone is saying. The concerned district leaders will take action on them if they have done something wrong.”
But Muthu’s tweet is just one of many other posts on social media warning that the government may have convicted one Yuvaraj, but many more like him will rise.
Pages valourising Yuvaraj cropped up after his party – the Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai – began fanning casteist flames in the Kongu belt of Tamil Nadu. The pages initially amplified his opinions but, over time, produced a volume of posts, stories and videos that encouraged others to emulate the acts of a man convicted of murder.
For example, a story posted by an Instagram page, kongu_samugam, on June 2 hailed Yuvaraj for wanting the “social fabric to remain intact in a time when money and power were valued”. The story also said, “We will always follow your path.”
The page has over 6,000 followers. It contains several posts praising Yuvaraj and calling the courts “biased against him because of his caste”.
Another page, gounders_of_dharapuram, with a little over 2,000 followers, posted a story on the day of the verdict, saying: “Do not be happy that you have arrested one Yuvaraj. Remember that there are many Yuvarajs on the outside.” Like kongu_samugam, the page has consistently been posting videos and pictures in open support of the murder convict.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are home to multiple pages that profess caste pride. Many of these pages aim to make people proud of their caste identity, appeal to them to marry within their own castes, and share video clips of prominent caste leaders with heroic, “mass appeal” background music…
This story was originally published in newslaundry.com. Read the full story here