A test of civilisation
A village court in Faridpur forced the father and uncle of a 15-year old boy to pluck out his eyes as punishment for stealing a mobile phone. There was also a cash fine of 30,000 taka attached to that cruelty, which makes it even harder to calculate the price of the stolen good. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. What about two eyes for a mobile phone? The deafening sound of its dismal ring tone hasn't stopped since it made news.
Lucky for the boy, his eyes weren't exactly plucked out. The rest of the story stands as told. The father was coerced to hit his son in the eye with a twig or something, which left an abrasion on one eyeball. The boy has become blind in one eye. He is currently undergoing treatment in a hospital.
That takes care of half the worries about the boy. But what about those men, whose kangaroo court has put him through this ordeal? In effect, he has been subjected to triple injustice in one. He was going to loose his eyes, that also in the hands of his own father and, on top of it, pay in cash.
The Tupinamba tribe in South America practiced a similar brand of inordinate justice. When they captured an enemy, they forced him to consort with one of their women. Then they killed the enemy with his baby to increase the intensity of retribution.
What about that cabal of pervert men, whose idea of justice is so twisted? It was one man whose mobile phone was stolen, and he carried with him the influential villagers to put together a ludicrous trial. The whole thing happened in front of a crowd, where not a single soul is known to have raised his or her voice in protest.
What that tells us is scary. It tells us that we are living in two different centuries. Our cities are shining with the splendor of modern age, but the villages are submerged in the seething muck of medieval rage. An eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth is the idea of vengeance. Justice is altogether a different concept. It administers deserved punishment to the offender, not the punishment desired by the aggrieved.
For stealing, the boy should have gone to prison. At most he could be given a thrashing to see if he confessed to the wrongdoing. His family could be compelled to return the object or pay for it. If nothing worked, he could have been handed over to police.
But what happened to this boy is a form of feudal excess, where the strong took advantage of the weak. Not unlikely that many amongst those who conducted the trial could be guilty of even more outrageous transgressions. If property is theft as Proudhon famously said, we don't know if the stolen phone was bought with stolen money.
Hence it seems we are living in two different worlds. In one world, the thieves thrive and they steal from country budget. But nobody dares looking them in the eye, not to speak of laying hands on them. In another world, eyes are gouged out for stealing a paltry gadget.
In one world, men and women are promiscuous, but nobody does anything to them. In another world, they are given lashes, accused of adultery and fornication. I am not talking about two different planets. I am talking about the cities and the villages within the sovereign bounds of a single country.
So, this wasn't about right and wrong. This wasn't about truth and false. This was about weak and strong. The boy was tortured because he was weak. His family had no influence or means to push back the horror inflicted on him.
I don't know if there was a student amongst the onlookers, or a teacher, a holy man or anyone with wakeful conscience. I don't know if there was anybody who felt sorry, whose fist clenched in frustration because he couldn't muster courage to rescue a luckless victim. From what I know, everybody turned a blind eye to his plight with the possibility that some may have even derived sadistic pleasure from it.
In 1910, Winston Churchill was the home secretary and he said in the British parliament that the mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country. The boy's misfortune was very unfortunate. It tested us as a nation, and we blew it.
The boy has beaten his tormentors at their own game. Their madness cost him partial sight. But in his suffering, he proved something more frightening. There are sighted people amongst us who have completely lost their vision.
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