Cruelty is inevitable in a society intolerant of dissent

In Burichang, Comilla, a young man accused of stealing copper wire from Sakura Steel Mill was caught and tortured by setting two German Shepherd dogs upon him. The victim’s name is Shri Joy Chandra Sarkar, a scrap trader. In the viral video, two hunting dogs are seen biting the young man while several men beat him mercilessly with sticks. Helpless from dog bites and blows, the youth screamed in agony.

I forced myself to watch the video despite its unbearable brutality, muting my phone at times to block out his screams. How can such inhuman torture be inflicted upon a man? Are those who carried it out even human? Why is their mental make-up so steeped in cruelty? And why, among so many bystanders, did not a single person dare to intervene?

Many years ago, beside the Biman office in Motijheel, a frenzied mob burnt several young men alive with their motorbikes. That horrifying event caused a stir everywhere, for such brutal incidents were not as frequent then as they are now. In the 1960s, during Pakistan rule, villagers in GM Hat, Feni district, chased down two robbers after a Hindu merchant’s house was looted. In a vast paddy field they beat the robbers to death, even though the men fired shots. A few days earlier, after another robbery at a Hindu home, police had arrested innocent villagers, which fuelled the people’s anger.

The villagers’ fury was worsened by those unjust arrests. After the killings, police reinforcements arrived not only from Feni but also from headquarters, creating an atmosphere of fear. Though they were robbers, they were still human beings; beating two men to death was not considered normal, even under Pakistan rule. Local union council members, chairmen and other dignitaries were repeatedly interrogated. With no camera phones then, the killers could not be identified.

I once watched Humayun Ahmed’s play Nimful. The captured robber Mona, played by actor Asaduzzaman Noor, was tied with his young son to a tree and beaten several times. In the drawing room of Morol Chowdhury, at the headmaster’s suggestion, it was decided after Asr prayers to gouge out Mona’s eyes with date thorns. Announcements were made by loudspeaker, and a feast arranged, so that people could gather to witness the spectacle. Even amid fear and danger, Mona and his little son felt hunger as the aroma of pilaf wafted from the kitchen. Only the Morol’s teenage daughter Madina showed compassion, giving the child water, for which she was slapped by her father. Children too rushed in after hearing the loudspeaker. The zeal and excitement with which the whole society—from young to old, men and women—awaited the gouging of Mona’s eyes was nothing but unforgivable savagery. One line in the play reads, “Sometimes man ceases to be man, and becomes a demon.”

According to Islam, there is a law of amputating the hand of a thief. Yet Hazrat Omar (RA), in applying it, exercised his own judgement—asking why the theft occurred, whether the state had ensured food for the man beforehand. During famine he suspended the punishment. Clearly, Khalifa Omar (RA) understood that when a starving person has no food, faith in religion’s principles alone cannot sustain him. Driven by hunger, people will scavenge from dustbins and drains. After the fall of the Awami League government in the recent mass uprising, one youth was seen randomly beating women with sticks, calling them “prostitutes”. He even travelled to Cox’s Bazar, where he beat a woman in front of police, as though playing Iran’s “morality police”. These self-appointed enforcers never give a penny in charity, instead rebuking beggars with, “Can’t you work?”

Shamim Osman too once stormed Narayanganj’s Tanbazar, beating sex workers to drive them out, but made no effort to arrange their food or shelter. When a homeless mother cannot feed her child, starving and untreated until death’s door, she does not fear the baton of the morality police while selling her body.

Once there was a slogan: if robbing money at gunpoint makes one a terrorist, then taking bribes over files is also terrorism. If selling one’s body for money makes one a prostitute, then selling morality for money is prostitution too. Morality is sold when signatures are given for cash, jobs traded, nominations bought, party posts sold, lies written for reward. If there is real zeal to catch thieves, let them arrest the looters of 234 billion dollars named in the White Paper, not petty scrap dealers accused of stealing copper wire. The British looted India and took it all to England, West Pakistan plundered East Pakistan to build three capitals, today illicit funds create “second homes” in Malaysia and “Begumpara” in Canada. Yet in the past thirteen months not a single thief has been caught, not a single taka brought back. Still we hear of billions being stolen. Even after a great mass uprising, new theft somehow makes old theft automatically justified.

In the Secondary School Certificate exam I once memorised an essay titled “Confessions of a Thief”. There too mobs beat a thief. A passer-by showed his bloodied body to his child, asking, “Son, have you seen a thief?” The child replied, “Father, where is the thief? That is a man.” The thief had not cried despite beatings, kicks and blows, but when he heard the child’s words, tears rolled down his face.

Since the start of the mass uprising, countless videos of killings have shown again and again that there is a strange joy in killing—joy in killing one’s own kind. Almost daily, bodies are being recovered from rivers, making it seem as if Bangladesh’s rivers have become floating cemeteries. Dumping bodies in rivers makes destroying evidence easy. If such heinous crimes can continue unchecked, then there is no need to risk enforced disappearances or crossfire killings.

Within man lies a destructive instinct without remedy. Thus children today enjoy watching tigers hunt deer on the Discovery Channel, or tigers fight crocodiles. In World War II, Hitler’s soldiers massacred people, Yahya Khan’s soldiers did the same in Pakistan, and now Israel’s soldiers kill Palestinians with even greater cruelty. People die at human hands in Malaysia’s jungles, Libya’s remote deserts, and Colombia’s drug cartel vendettas. People enjoy tormenting people, which is why wrestling remains a popular sport.

In Roman times, emperors staged fights to entertain thousands of spectators—man against man, man against beast, fought until death. Despite thousands of years of civilisation, humanity has not abandoned its primal thirst for blood. That is why, in our time, a young man accused of stealing wire in a steel mill could be brutally beaten and mauled by German Shepherd dogs.

Zeauddin Ahmed: Former Executive Director, Bangladesh Bank