Mob culture
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: February 02, 2010 -

By nature, a mob guided by a strong feeling of rage usually acts recklessly. Again, a mob cannot be built up anytime, anywhere.

Generally, a mob is fuelled by false propaganda or actual acts unacceptable to the society which caused widespread resentment and anguish.

Rape and murder of women and children is one such case where a mob assembled on its own, driven by the nature and degree of brutality involved in the crime. Manipur has witnessed many shocking crimes of rape and murder as well as resultant mob actions of burning down houses of the culprits or accused.

A mob has little time to pre-evaluate whether their actions are justified or not. But on second thought, everyone would agree that it is not a justified action to dismantle or vandalise a house and render the whole family homeless for a criminal activity perpetrated by one of the family members.

Here we may look back to the incidents of the last few days. The whole society was literally mad with anger on learning about the heinous rape and murder of a young girl together with her mother at Phayeng.

It was at this juncture that another young girl was found murdered after being raped. Given such situation, the uproar of the people is understandable. The mob built up under such a charged atmosphere cannot be stopped and they are not wrong for their action aimed at punishing the culprit.

But what cannot be justified was burning down the house of the culprit. The mob action also caused devastating damages to some adjacent houses.

While destruction of properties belonging to the culprit could be upheld as punitive action, destroying dwelling houses and other properties of his innocent family members and relatives cannot be accepted as justifiable.

The recent case was not a separate case or the first of its kind. Earlier too, there were many instances where mobs infuriated by shocking criminal activities of some individuals destroyed/vandalised properties of their families even as they had no hand in the crimes committed by their sons, brothers or fathers.

Such mob action of throwing innocent people into misery are often overlooked and this is what the society needs a serious re-thinking.

Generally, no one advises their husbands/sons to indulge in criminal and anti-social activities. This is a human culture.

Put simply, anti-social elements can be compared to a disease causing pathogen. But it cannot be accepted as a justifiable social norm to punish all those innocent persons together with the culprits because they happened to be relatives and near to the culprits .

Here, it is crucial for leaders, local clubs and elders of each and every locality to guide youngsters to the right target as and when they lose their senses because of some heinous crime or anti-social activity.

The responsibility lies solely with the local leaders/elders for no people from outside their locality can come to them and advise the highly charged and sentimental youngsters.

Many a time, even police were caught helpless in the face of strong people’s uprising. Yet, it would be in the fitness of things for all to do away with unruly mob culture of taking law into hands and victimising innocent people.

At times of charged atmosphere caused by anti-social activities which deeply hurt the collective sentiment of the people, not only social leaders and general public but the Government too need to be pro-active and take up some dissuasive measures like organising awareness programmes in order to direct people’s wrath and accompanying action to the right targets.