As we stare with dismay at a spate of murders involving youngsters and the increasing flaunting of illegal firearms online, we must ask the difficult question of whether questionable behaviour by leaders is valourising and validating a dangerous new gun culture in some parts of India.
The latest trigger for worries came on Diwali eve from Bhubaneswar, where a 19-year-old allegedly fired at a 17-year-old in what police described as gang rivalry. Of the seven arrested, five were teenagers. Earlier in the week, a group of 20-year-olds in the Odisha capital playing with a handgun caused the death of their friend. A series of incidents across the country suggests that Odisha might only be catching up with an emerging gun culture.
Last week, a senior employee of a multinational company was gunned down in Faridabad over a parking dispute. Last year, school students in Bihar’s Rohtas district and Haryana’s Gurugram fired on their classmates. What makes the situation even more alarming is the signal such young people might be receiving from elders in positions of leadership. A woman IPS officer in Chhattisgarh was issued a show-cause notice after a video surfaced of her firing a submachine gun during Dussehra celebrations. Around the same time, Uttar Pradesh MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh displayed his collection of hundreds of licensed firearms at home.
It all points to a dangerous social media trend in which brandishing weapons and celebratory firing are increasingly seen as instruments of masculinity, influence and social standing. Between May and July alone, Bihar police booked more than 130 people for displaying illegal weapons on social media. Such imagery risks normalising violence, particularly among impressionable youngsters, who may associate guns with prestige and dominance.
What is needed is for parents, teachers and community leaders to signal a much higher threshold for weapons and violence. Law enforcement agencies must go harder than usual after networks involved in supplying guns to youngsters. For states like Odisha, which are waking up to this disturbing trend, there is no time to lose. There must be zero tolerance for online glorification of weapons. But none of this will succeed unless the political legitimisation of gun culture ends. The last thing India needs is a trigger-happy society.
