When a man, dressed smartly, suspiciously stands near a game of cricket, only to try and steal the bag which has everyone’s expensive smartphones in it, a heavy-handed approach is only a matter of course if he gets caught red-handed. In what has become a common thread of brutality in the guise of street justice, the individual in question was manhandled by the witness, dragged all the way to the entrance of the “physical” field, and beaten by the crowd that eventually surrounded him.
By the time I personally reached the ruckus, the blue sports jacket he had been wearing had been taken off, his face was a dishevelled maroon, and his eyes spoke of fear and his face of desperation. He was, apparently, a well-sought-after thief amongst the regulars of the field, with various residents quipping in with their own stories of how he had taken his or her bag, his or her laptop, his or her mobile phone.
Random passers-by threw in a punch or two, a slap or three. The sound reverberates across the open area of the private playground. One informs me: “We’ve been trying to catch this guy for months.” Another: “Should kill the bastard.” Someone else: “Don’t beat him that much. Take him to the police.”
By the time the crowd is moving out of the field, one of the guards is smacking the thief’s shins with a wooden stick. The thief remains silent throughout. And by the time we got back to our game, we were merely surprised there wasn’t blood oozing out of every pore of his skin.
Someone says, dejectedly, that taking him to the police will yield nothing. They’ll give him a few more slaps, leech out whatever money he had on him, and send him on his merry way, only for him to try his hands again at some other field, at some other person’s bag.
As the recent incident in Narayanganj attests, the thief I personally witnessed was lucky to not have been beaten to death or at least be critically injured and spend the night fighting for his life at some shoddy hospital. In Narayanganj, eight “suspected” robbers were “justiced” to death by the village’s residents after they had, allegedly, broken into a rice shop.
In Dhaka Tribune on August, 2013, it was reported that at least 650 people were killed in the last four years as a result of mob violence. What drives presumably sane citizens in our nation to resort to such heinous acts as murder?
Tales of the Bengali sense of empathy, of human intimacy, are dispersed a-plenty in the national narrative. Our religion and ideals of brotherhood and sisterhood, all under the banner of one nation, have always been touted by nationalist and non-nationalists alike, with multitudes upon multitudes of reasons being thrown to justify patriotism.
Perhaps it’s too much of a stretch to bring in ideas of national identity into singular incidents, but with the recent passing of the Martyred Intellectuals’ Day and the upcoming Victory Day -- which only serves to highlight how cruel an oppressive and brutal regime can end up being -- acts such as these only serve to highlight how violence serves to make villains of us all, and does nothing for either side in the battle.
Since we’re such fans of finding a scapegoat and sending them, post-haste, to a destination comprising of physical harm and often, subsequently, beyond the grave, it cannot be denied that, for us, the face of justice is black and blue.
With other recent hullabaloo such as Moja Losss?’s supposed admin being arrested for “spreading anti-state propaganda,” what seeps through is that we, collectively, as a nation, do not have our priorities in order and have a severely warped sense of justice. When it comes to matching the punishment to the crime, we, continuously, fail.
And since we’re also such fans of finding someone to blame, who should we put at the end of the firing range for perpetrating such a culture of violence? Is it our police, who we, once, in a different setting, perhaps under a different timeline, expected to serve as our guardians but who now cannot be relied on to protect us on and off streets, as they’re too busy looking for avenues to fill their pockets with bribes?
Or is it our legal system, which cannot be trusted to dole out true justice in any form? Because, with enough money, enough power, anyone and everyone can buy a verdict or lengthen a judicial process? Because our version of so-called justice is not blind, merely blindfolded as much as its greed allows? Because anyone and everyone can be above the law?
Or should we turn to our politicians, the ones we elect out of a lack of choice, whose empty promises we feed on despite knowing full well how empty they truly are? Or is the fault within us? Are we so removed from humanity that killing another individual for a crime as small as theft is acceptable and justified? What is a nation to do that is stuck between a rock and a hard place? When there is only one way to go about doing things that in itself becomes the right way. Who is to blame in such a blameless game?
As much as can be repeated, the solution to errant behaviour isn’t to answer it with a quick roughing-up and/or a threat to life, otherwise incidents such as these would be shoved into the nation’s past, and that’s where it would remain. Punishment that relies on an eye-for-an-eye approach has no hopes of curbing future crime, and such a damned form of justice is doomed from the start.
What needs to be changed is the situation itself, and the people themselves will automatically accommodate. A culture of impunity will continually and consistently regurgitate mob behaviour from a people that has no inherent desire to do so. Or, at least, one can hope. Will we have the audacity to call it a sickness when this becomes the only thing we can do? Will we dare call it errant when this becomes the new normal?