Troubled

An old post that i found in drafts but thought i had published...

This morning I woke and listened, as I do on weekdays to Ravish Kumar, while drinking tea and eating oatmeal. He was talking about the custodial death of the two men in Tamil Nadu. He reconstructed the events in a sort of story board and it was painful to watch the unfolding of the around twelve hours of torture the father and son went through. Then the forced medical certificate of wellness and the magistrate signing the remand request without even seeing the men. All this because the men allegedly refused to shut down their shop during lockdown hours. 

The men were beaten relentlessly, they were stripped and allegedly sexually tortured by the police. What gave the police the right or reason to do this? I cannot connect the degree of torture to their supposed crime -- that they didn’t shut down their shop? I mean police are not allowed to punish anyone even for worse crimes, are they? Courts and processes are required. But more and more I hear such stories. 

I kept wondering if I would be able to torture anyone – for anything – in the way the police tortured these two? What internal inhibitions, controls, moral codes, compassion would I need to drop to do something so horrific? What conditions allow one to lose all humanity? Even if extreme trauma might push someone to this – the policemen had experienced no such events. 

It feels like a lot of people who occupy positions of power lose their compassion, their humility and capacity to connect to the life and right to life of others. They feel entitled to the things and actions that are detrimental to others. And if that rise to power has been through violence and the reasons for coveting the power is to promote exclusion, superiority of one race or community and discriminate against the ‘other', if it is systemic, or the belief shared by a large group of people the capacity to be uncaring seems higher? And knowing you can get away with it – that nobody can touch you – makes it even more easy. There seems to be a thrill in destroying another that I don’t really understand. 

This made me think of the times I have been mean and got away with it – the only things I suffered were pangs of my conscience and deep regret. But it stopped me from behaving in that way again. Who would I be I wondered if instead getting away with meanness gave me a high and I wanted to do it again and again?

It feels like I hear less and less of instances where misuse of power are punished and more where such people continue to flourish. It is very satisfying to feel that indeed, ‘what goes around comes around.’ But don’t see much of that. 

Police atrocities in India seem on the rise. Or maybe more are being recorded now. Ravish interviewed a man who analyses these atrocities – by religion, by economics, gender etc. The man said that we have these stats and we will continue collecting them but no reform, no change is anywhere in sight. 

I see some friends in the US also posting such stuff about the Police there too. 

Desperate right now – just to hear a story of someone getting their just dues. It is very satisfying to see this happen, and though in fiction I see this I haven’t seen real justice in a long time, particularly in India. Deeply troubled.