A Homage to Ankit Sharma
Yesterday a part
of me died. It was after reading a news. It was not that some more innocent Indians
were killed in cold blood in a senseless way in a riot. I am used to it by now having
grown up with seeing mindless violence around me. But yesterday was different. It
was how someone was murdered and how his body disposed off. His name was Ankit Sharma.
He was twenty six years old. He was on duty. He represented my police and my country,
the reasons why he was killed. And he was a Hindu, the reason why he was
stabbed four hundred times. This crime is a different sort of crime according
to victimology. It is a crime with a message, not a random one but one for the
whole country. We can miss it at our own peril.
As a psychologist who
has worked with criminal justice system for over two decades, I am used to dead
bodies. I have seen mutilated bodies, bodies of children, people burnt and sat
by their bedside to listen to their dying declaration. As a child, I saw my first
riot in 1970, in Bihar and saw dead bodies strewn on the streets. I had then
asked questions and my father told me about evil. In 1984, I saw a Sikh man
being chased and burnt by a mob. I had felt helpless not able to do anything. In
2002 I talked to many victims in Sabarmati express whose two bogeys were put on
fire. They disturbed me but didn’t make me numb. I had built a wall around me.
That wall, I realized, is no more since yesterday after reading about Ankit Sharma.
Each murder is
tragic. But the murder of Ankit Sharma symbolizes a threat to everything that
Indian civilization stands for.
There were four
hundred stab wounds on his body. In my career, the worst heinous murder I had come
across of killing by knife, the murderer, a meat seller had driven the knife in
the body of his victim 13 times and then stopped because he felt tired. How
many people it would have taken to drive the knives in the body of Ankit Sharma
400 times? And what would be that amount of hatred with which they would do so?
How much time, how much collective evil it would take on the part of a crowd to
do so? Was it only because he was a law enforcement officer and nothing more?
The way the body
of the victim was disposed off shows the feelings the perpetrators had towards the
victim and his identity. A body mutilated and thrown away in a drain shows
intense feelings of contempt for the victim and hatred towards him, an ideology
that sees the victim far removed from a human being. Where does it then come from
and is it not part of a macabre feeling that exists and is running as a collective
in the thinking of the people?
The story of Lala Lajpat
Rai comes to my mind. I read his story many times as a child and often visualized
him facing the British. Protesting Simon Commission, he received multiple injuries
on his head killing him. Crying in pain but his head held high, he had declared,
“Each blow on my head will become the death knell of the British Empire.” Can each
stab wound on Ankit Sharma’s body awaken the sleeping conscience of the nation today?
I pray it does. Otherwise, next time it will be one of us and no one left after
that.
Ankit Sharma’s death
shows how dangerous it can be for an officer to do his duty fearlessly in certain
areas, to belong to the faith of the majority of the country and last but not
the least do it around people opposed to the very idea of India.
Lynching has sometimes
given birth to new identities. From the ashes, has risen a new determination against
injustice. Sometimes it is an idea. The Blacks decided to unite after the
lynching by Ku Klux Klan. The chanting of ‘Kill the Jew’ led Theodore Herzl
more than a century ago to understand that Jews have no one to call their own.
Today, the conscience
of the nation is on trial. The murder of Ankit Sharma has raked our conscience
and will continue to do so till we understand two things. One why he was killed
and second how he was killed. During the Direct Action day, partition, the
countless riots, this is the story that has been repeated. The killers wanted
to send only one message and that was we will not accept ‘the other’ as an equal.
When ‘the other’ tries to change his identity that has remained the same for thousand
years, the perpetrator opposes him.
The other lesson from
victimology about this ghastly crime is that it is a crime with no moral dimension
for the perpetrators. The political climate in Delhi is not going to be the same
ever again after this election. As a result, the perpetrators of Ankit Sharma
have found overwhelming emotional satisfaction in manipulating, dominating,
controlling and exerting life and death. This is a message which should not get
lost to anyone, that it is here to stay. It will repeat itself now and replicate
itself till we find a closure.
There have been too
many people, more internationally than nationally, who have felt powerless and
out of control with the coming to power of Modi and the far reaching changes he
is bringing in the Indian society. The riots in Delhi and the symbolic killings
of the last few days is a desire to get that back that power they have lost.
Today, as a
citizen of India I pray and ask that the killing of Ankit Sharma be a fatal blow
to the narrative of ‘secularism’ thrust upon us, to the fanaticism that has taken
over in the last few days and one that made some of us as lesser than equals in
our country.
Rajat Mitra
Psychologist,
Speaker and Author of ‘The Infidel Next Door’
www.rajatmitra.co.in
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