It is in human nature to take extreme positions during emotional outbursts. Ordinary people love to define things in black-and-white. There are few scopes for any grey area -- rational thinking to be precise. Let's take the case of the ongoing pestilence of lynching now raging in Bangladesh. Many social critics have jumped on the conclusion that it is an Eastern trait. Some of them even stretch their imagination to call the North Africans and South Asians in particular the most brutal of all in the vast East. They begin with the deadly and savage physical assaults on the deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on October 20, 2011. It occurred on a street, in broad daylight. The previous strongman was then already a vanquished person. It's but one instance, that too occurring during times of conflict and convulsions. But there are scores of instances, in which mobs beat a person dead suspecting him or her a thief, a child lifter or a robber in disguise. In 2015 in Afghanistan, a young Afghan woman was savagely hounded, tortured and beaten to death in Kabul by a group of frenzied people for her suspected blasphemy.
Incidents of death in mob beating on misplaced anger and suspicion have long been blamed on the East. Lynching occurrences are a common social phenomenon in South Asian countries. Of late, they have seen a troubling rise in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Social scientists single out the latent human trait of taking recourse to violence, mass hysteria and dogmatism and superstitions for this lynching mania. Mob beatings ending in death are generally linked to illiteracy, lack of enlightenment and the authorities' failure to enforce relevant laws stringently. All these drawbacks plague societies in least developed and developing countries. Yet there are ironical twists. In the 21st century, a handful of European and North American countries have found them veritably speechless at the happenings of brutal physical assaults and deaths of people in the open.
Social researchers point finger at the Asian and African countries for being ideal spots of lynching. But they cannot turn their focus away from the post-World War-II excesses done to the defeated Axis power leader and Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress and his henchmen. After 'summarily executing' them, the 'indignant' Italians hanged the persons upside down from a horizontal bar in Milan on April 28, 1945.
As has been seen over the last week, an abhorrent rumour played a great role in a mob beating frenzy in Bangladesh. As the atrocious killings spread to other parts of the country from the venue of the first incident, involving a mother of 2, at Badda in Dhaka, the whole episode assumed a highly disturbing character. The woman was suspected to be a child lifter. The incident bore all the symptoms of an insidious cancer slowly permeating the society. According to Ain O Salish Kendra, a total of 39 people were killed across the country in mob beating last year. This year, the number increased sharply. Thirty-six persons have reportedly fallen victim to these mindless deaths from just January to June.
The mob plays the most critical role in the incidents of lynching. As has been apprehended, a section in society with ulterior motive provokes ordinary people to swoop on apparently innocent persons. Many in the furious mob are even unaware of 'faults' of the latter. They won't stop until they make sure that the 'criminal' is dead. It's like witch-hunt of the medieval Europe. Given the rise in the ferocity of mob beating, nobody knows who'll stop it and how. But it must stop.
shihabskr@ymail.com