A Game of Chinese Whispers

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A GAME OF CHINESE WHISPERS
Nikhil Reddy Kothakota, Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad, 2nd year , BA LLB

Editorial Note: In this blog post, the author expresses an opinion about why it is important to introduce law students to the concept of objectivity.

Once when I was 12 and the class was playing the game of Chinese whispers, the intended “Grandma fed her cats” through the succession of ears and whispers down the line became “Grandma baked her cats” and that is the effect of information passing down, diluted and mutated in form. Having said that...

Welcome to your law school, here your teeth grind against each other and your ears are sharp in anticipation, with your eyes looking out. Here, the entire world looks like an arena or a battlefield and the romanticism of every TV show with young lawyers and attorneys will soon be lost on you. You will smile with a certain nostalgia when you look at young hopeful students who rush into morning classes like there’s no tomorrow.

Quite evidently, every law school is different from the others, and we like to point out how ours is better than say, the next one. Most things remain but same all throughout, but what you will encounter around every corner, every dusty quaint classroom or even while taking leisurely night strolls along the campus wall is an opinion. A whole plethora of opinions surrounds us, being jumbled into a mix, an amalgamated mass that is so nauseous and inefficient by the end of the day, that no real change can be made it. However, everyone is proud of having one and you will hear us say, “We will stick to our view even if it means death”.

It is quite understandable and natural for one to desire to express oneself. After all, every human being is entitled to their own opinion, for it is a quintessential component of his or her being. So let us not go into the intricacies of free speech but rather consider the basis of your opinion—where do you get your news from? Which pots brew which stories?

I can dismiss every other news source that does not support my personal viewpoint as ‘fake news’ (the term that is in vogue these days), dismissed with a wave of hand, with the words FAKE NEWS splattered across the pages in red, glaring red!

In a world full of double standards, double entendres and hidden motives, it is easy for facts to get lost in a wave of cynicism, with the war on opposing ideologies, satire and ridicule  culminating into a heaping mess of insufferable hosh posh.

It is here that objectivity of the mind comes to play, through what is known as common parlance as ‘fact checking’. The importance of having a mind free from all biases cannot be stressed upon enough especially in these times where the media is pushing opinions onto the public, in order to separate political or socio-economic commentary from raw set of facts, which take up very less reading space compared to the former. It is difficult to be indifferent to all the noise that surrounds us but we must view the world with almost disinterest in order to be a judge of our cause, a judge who rules over his own passions.

It is this idea which needs to be taught in every law school—the concept of objectivity—if not as a separate course, then engrained into the intricacies of the curriculum itself, not for the sake of research papers or gleaning certifications, but as a moral duty we owe and have taken up, especially being part of a field of education where activism plays an important part. We, law students need to be trained to be someone who can balance the riling emotions of believers, with the most intricately painted picture, true in colour, form and shape in a world where perception and portrayal, intention and outcome coincide, in such a way we do not end up giving poor old grandma a heart attack, when she is at the receiving end.

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