07 January 2013, 11:21 AM IST
If more evidence were needed, the unspeakably savage rape and torture of a 23-year-old girl in Delhi has shown that India has what might be called a very high Violence Quotient (VQ), particularly directed at women. If IQ is a measure of our intelligence, and EQ is a measure of our ability, or lack of it, to empathise with others and bond with them at an emotional level, VQ is a yardstick of an individual's, or a society's, capacity for uncontrolled and violent behaviour.
While the ancient civilisation that the new nation of India boasts, can lay legitimate claim to a rich legacy of intellectual and emotional wealth, our 21st century society scores most visibly on the VQ scale. Violence is an infectious disease; it breeds on itself, and spreads from one person to the other, from one act to another.
The horrific violence that was perpetrated on the young woman whom The Times of India named Nirbhaya did not die with her. The virus of that violence lives on in our midst, lives within us, feeding off our emotions of fear, and rage, and hatred. The terrible brutality that the victim was subjected to has had an equal and inevitable reaction among many, if not most, of us who demand the harshest possible penalty for her assailants. Indeed, the more normally pacific and law-abiding the individual, the more virulent the infection of violence. Even those who have long been staunch opponents of capital punishment - on the grounds that it is a form of state-sponsored revenge which far from redressing any crime or acting as a deterrent for future acts of criminality only further brutalises us as a society - are now joining in the widespread demand that Nirbhaya's killers in particular, and rapists in general, be hanged.
Gauging the depth of public outrage, Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir has, while emphasising that the law would take its course as swiftly and sternly as possible, warned against our getting "carried away", referring to a demand made in several quarters that the accused not be sent to trial but be handed over to the public who would "deal with them". The special security being given to the accused to ensure that they aren't exposed to mob fury has fuelled the climate of anger and vengeance.
In the course of his remarks, Justice Kabir observed that rape - the most motiveless of all acts of violence, the only objective of which is the total physical and mental subjugation of another human being - is not just "a crime against the body but it is also a crime against the soul".
Rape is indeed a crime against that innermost part of us which some call the soul. And while it most directly and obviously is an assault on the spirit of the victim, to a degree it is also an assault on the collective spirit, or soul, of all of us who comprise society.
Any act of gross violence, of which rape is the most repugnant, acts like a stone thrown into the still water of a pond. The impact of the stone causes ripples to spread over the surface of the entire pond, disturbing the water so that it no longer reflects the sky. An act of violence against one individual sends ripples of retributive counter-violence through all of us. It increases the Violence Quotient of us as a society. Hang rapists by all means. But will killing a rapist also kill the contagion of violence that prompted the rape in the first place, or will it only further spread that contagion? Will the violent death of a violent criminal increase or decrease our VQ.
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