Compassion
When I was a House Surgeon at Trivandrum Medical College, I had just gone out for a cup of tea at about 2.00 am, and was returning when I heard a commotion, and I was seeing a man inside the first floor ward...being chased by a crowd shouting “thief” .... he had apparently flicked ₹5.00 from a woman bystander..... I saw him jumping from the 1st floor window to the ground.... and another crowd surrounded him... and started beating and kicking the hapless guy.....these were people who had no idea why they were beating up the guy... they had not seen this “thief” steal.... but because somebody shouted “thief” everybody joined in the “fun”... I saw some guys trying to put a foot or two to kick him, because they couldn’t reach him! This is how a mob works! All their humanity turns to beastiity in a fleeting second...
It is another story about how I ran into the crowd wearing my Doctors white coat and shouting at the crowd to disengage and finally succeeded in saving the poor guy from the mob.... the poor man was in severe pain.... almost in shock.... the police was summoned and we took him to the casualty.... only to find that he had suffered a hip bone fracture during the his jump from the 1st floor....all the beating and kicking... were like adding injury to severe injury....
The poor health condition of Madhu, the young man from Wynad who was killed by a similar mob, would not have helped him in withstanding those assaults.....Even if we catch a terrorist, I think we should simply hand him over to the police to face legal action; we can’t be Judge, jury and executioner...when we caught a boy who had gone into the home of a senior IAS officer at the Omanthoorar Government Estate, we simply handed him over to police..... similarly, recently when a poor guy walked into my house, and locked himself up in one of the rooms, we simply called the police and handed him over...... no violence whatsoever was used....the Policemen also behaved in a dignified manner...
.....which begs the question..... do we have the right to physically or mentally hurt our fellow human beings? The road rages, the assault on young couples hanging out, are signs of a society slowly turning inhumane.....I for one feel that we should not hurt anybody by word, deed, look or thought.....we need not not judge anybody......let the judges do that! While we all are aghast and outraged at what happened to Madhu, let’s do an introspection as to how we react to such incidents....we need to practise non-violence..... Of course, then how do we react if we are the victims of assault ourselves?.... we should definitely react... only that much physical force as what will allow us to extricate us from that situation....but we don’t have the right to take anybody’s life...all are our own people.... people with certain circumstances....certain ideologies.... but our own very fellow human beings...