Democracy Losing Ground To Mobocracy: A Diverse Socio-Legal Perspective

The rise of rational masses which played a major role in strengthening democracies worldwide, has subjected these very societies to various kinds of confusion and misfortunes due to misinformation and spread of fake news, thereby, disrupting the very foundation of the right to freedom of speech and expression. At the heart of such chaos, lies intolerance which gives rise to mob violence whereby the democratic values and mechanisms are reduced to play at the hands of ill-informed mob which disregards these values at the behest of its leadership. The Supreme Court of India urged the government to pass a new anti-lynching law and to curb the spread of Internet rumours after dozens of people were killed in a string of mob attacks fuelled largely by social media1. It is disturbing to note that mobocracy in India is moving towards becoming the new “normal.” The paper seeks to lay emphasis on the mobocracy and human rights violations that are taking place in different parts of India. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part will deal the concepts of democracy and mobocracy. Secondly, it will deal with the changing dynamics of democracy through mobocracy. The third block will deal with the effects of current legal framework on mob violence and its analysis. Lastly, the paper seeks to suggest guidelines and measures to prevent mob violence through a central legislation. Recently, the state governments of Manipur, Rajasthan and West Bengal, came up with their laws against mob-violence and mob-lynching. However, the aforementioned problems are grave human rights violations and a strict Central legislation is the need of the hour