It is man who commits beastly crimes, not the beasts. The notion of crime prevails in a situation where there is a society. Some kinds of beasts live in groups or communities. They are different from a human society which is guided by written or traditional rules. Man is prone to transgress these rules. It gets involved in socially or morally abhorrent acts. Beasts are driven by stimuli, humans by reason or a glaring lack of it. That at moments illogical criminal instincts get the better of humans has been seen one more time in Bangladesh in the orgiastic beating of a youth to death. The hapless youth, called Sagor Mia, was alleged to have attempted to steal a water pump from a hatchery at Gouripur in Mymensingh on September 26. A merciless and frenzied bout of physical assault and torture of the post-teen boy followed. At one moment of the brutal swoop on the youth by the hatchery people, the youth, tied to a concrete pole, slumped to his feet. Exhausted and apparently at the end of his enduring capability, he stopped breathing. To say without mincing words, the death of the ill-fated young man resulted from savageries unleashed on him by a group of people in reckless abandon.
The appalling death of the Mymensingh youth instantly reminds one of a similar death by beating of the 13-year-old boy Rajon in Sylhet in 2015. Like in that case, the brutality in Mymensingh has also triggered spontaneous outcry on the social media.
These two savageries, along with many others, must have played their due role in presenting the nation as one nursing a brutal self in its subconscious. Whether it is true warrants an expert-level debate on our changing behavioural pattern. No matter what the conclusion of the discourse is, one thing is clear: a section of people in Bangladesh society is becoming hooked on the practice of indulging in sadistic cruelties and violence.
Let us hark back to the primitive times. Originally under the broader identity of animals, humans have continued to advance; beasts haven't. The beasts remained mostly stuck to their earlier shape and nature. Man continued to evolve from his old self of the beasts into a species that earned the identity of the 'most wonderful creation' of nature. However, both man and beasts have a lot of traits in common, as well as dissimilar features.
The features common to the two species or sub-species are awfully limited. Man, the superb product of evolution, outshines beasts in a lot of spheres. Yet humans on many occasions pale beside beasts, especially when it comes to some basic animal instincts. Beasts are not normally vengeful and do not conspire against others. A male beast doesn't molest a female one. A beast is never seen taking pleasure from inflicting pain on another. In the animal world, a number of species, some birds and primates in particular, mourn deaths of another from the similar group. Mourning is essentially a human practice. But lo, how miserably the expression of having pity on someone became corrupt by the aberrant conduct of some people in the primitive savage societies. Ours appears to be getting reverted to those.
In the context of the present-day Bangladesh, empathy, compassion, bereavement and similar other human feelings are increasingly proving hollow. Pessimists may call these expressions meaningless theatrics. There would not have been much indignation had these been the rule. Problems arise because an act devoid of pity and sensitivity distresses many, especially those who nurture semblances of human qualities. The pains and ordeals undergone by Sagor Mias and Rajons rob many of their night's sleep. These unquiet souls keep haunting people. Meanwhile, social corrosion continues unabated. No aspiring middle-income nation can afford to get along with it.
shihabskr@ymail.com