“First they came...” wrote Martin Niemöller, a 20th century German pastor and poet. It was written as Adolf Hitler’s hordes attacked and eliminated the Communists, then the Socialists, and their hatred finally led to the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews. It was a poignant admission of the cowardice of German intellectuals who did not stand up to Hitler’s army of murderous hatred. It aptly sums up the prevailing atmosphere on social media in India, where the trolls spare none.

Anyone who does not agree with a particular viewpoint is subject to vitriol and abuse, which has come to form the dominant form of discourse, if one can call it that, on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, sometimes even on LinkedIn, Instagram.

It wasn’t that the world’s largest democracy was immune to online hate and trolling earlier, but the crass and organised wrath that has come to be unleashed in the last three years and which has come to dominate the discourse at a time of social-economic-political transition is new. Worryingly, it has become the new normal, and it’s almost impossible for anyone to escape the digital claptrap should he or she so much as express any opinion.