India and Pakistan were born out of anger. Anger against colonial rule. But, funnily, the ugly and horrible violence that mid-wifed the birth of the two nations was not directed at the British at all. We were busy killing ourselves. Indians were murdering Indians.
Pakistanis were murdering Pakistanis. Of different religious persuasions perhaps. But it was unquestionably fratricide. The British quietly sneaked out, lucky to have escaped without a scratch. They must have been amused to see that we were more interested in killing each other than getting rid of them.
That fratricide continues. We are a free nation, true. But our hearts and minds remain colonised by old hates, old angers, old prejudices and these surface ever so often, under strange and peculiar circumstances, to claim so many innocent lives that we have actually become inured to the violence. Usually it has nothing to do with the obvious flashpoint. It's a free floating rage that's constantly looking for a reason to express itself. No wonder the victims are invariably innocent people and the perpetrators of the violence are always in desperate search for an excuse to justify it.
Look carefully at every provocation that has resulted in acts of violence, murder, vandalism and you'll find it's not what it's made out to be. The arguments subsequently put out to explain the violence are often so convoluted that it's obvious they are an afterthought.
Hours are spent in concocting a plausible theory. Not many are still convinced that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was as pre-planned as its perpetrators now claim, to seek political mileage. Nor is everyone convinced that the bomb blasts here took place to avenge Ayodhya or the riots that followed it. Many believe Godhra was a concoction to justify the Gujarat carnage. In short, every act of violence seeks a justification after the event.
This is not only true of mob violence. It's also true of individual acts. We kill first and then try to explain it. Everyone knew that Graham Staines was not an evangelist converting the tribals of Orissa.
He was, like Mother Teresa, just a simple missionary working among the poor and trying to give them a life. Those who killed him and his sons so brutally knew that. But to justify the ghastly crime they gave it a communal colour. This won them sympathisers among the radical fringe. Similarly, every crime that hits the headlines today—be it Aarushi's murder or Maria and Jerome chopping up Neeraj Grover into three hundred pieces and then burning them—takes weeks and months to finally find a reason for its occurrence. Most of it is actually random violence trying to explain itself.
Take last week's Sikh rampage in Mulund. The Sikhs and the Dera Sacha Sauda have been at loggerheads for years now. It's a festering intra-faith conflict. All it took was an underwear buying mission by the Dera chief to trigger off a violent confrontation in a mall that left hundreds injured, one killed, and public property vandalised. It was ghastly, purposeless violence. The victims were innocent men and women who had no idea what sparked off the mayhem. All they saw were hordes of angry Sikhs running around with their swords unsheathed a scary sight at the best of times but doubly scary when you don't know why.
This is India's faultline. There's simply too much free floating rage homing in on hapless targets. A dowry demand quickly conflagrates into bride burning. A simple traffic accident can end in a total stranger shot dead. An unrequited love becomes a reason for an acid attack. An unfaithful lover, a target for a hired thug. An eloped daughter, the perfect victim for an honour killing. Someone refuses you a drink and you pump a bullet into her head. No, none of the reasons are compelling. This is violence for the sake of violence, as when a frenzied mob seizes upon a hapless young pickpocket not to hand him over to the police but to murder him in a macabre ritualistic orgy of vigil.
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