Dead 'Maoists' clearly don't rate biers; it's enough to truss them up like animals.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Maoist, rebel, not-human-enough
Dead 'Maoists' clearly don't rate biers; it's enough to truss them up like animals.
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15 comments:
Precisely what I was thinking. Remember the outrage a few years ago when photos of the Bangladesh army carrying dead BSF soldiers on poles, in exactly this manner, were splashed across the papers? Why do our people think it's OK now?
Wow, you noticed this too, eh? That's exactly what I thought. Looks more like a picture from a Jim Corbett/Kenneth Anderson book than anything else.
It is good you posted this; I also saw this photo this morning and was thinking the very same thing.
"Antigone: Even so, we have a duty to the dead.
Creon: Not to give equal honor to the good and bad.
Antigone: Who knows? In the country of the dead that may be the law.
Creon: An enemy can't be a friend even when dead."
Rahul, Ludwig, HB: All part of the enterprise to 'other' them. Makes it easier to kill, or commit atrocities.
I'm wondering if the presence of the photograph is enough or if the Hindu intends to comment on it further.
Falstaff: Excellent quote, thanks. Antigone is the classic exposition of State vs. those in opposition of it.
The photo is in all the papers. TOI, Asian Age. I was equally appalled this morning. WTF. Glad you posted this.
Good to see that progress is being made on the Maoist problem.
Unsurprising that you posted about this, but nary a word about the cowardly attack on a passenger train a few weeks back...
banno: was it? that's good. it is a PTI photograph, after all.
cat: fair point. it wasn't because i didn't notice, or didn't think it was condemnable. it was because i was extremely busy. not that it's a good enough excuse, i admit.
also, please, i don't support the maoists or their violence, or their equally fascist intolerance of dissent. plus their idea that lives are expendable for the greater common good. did i, somehow, give you the idea that i did?
About the train, I have not seen any evidence that the Maoists did it. They did not claim responsibility, which they usually do. (Most terrorist organisations, in fact, like to claim credit even when they patently didn't do it.) The only "evidence" the papers reported were a false report that PCPA claimed responsibility, and a police claim that PCPA leaflets were found on the site -- very convincing, that.
The Maoists are guilty of atrocities and I'm no fan of what they do in the name of fighting for tribals. But blaming everything on them is not likely to help either. Our railways are rickety, and that's a problem to be dealt with in its own right.
rahul: didn't they? i thought i read something about someone claiming responsibility. but, as i said, i was very busy then.
SB: That's one way of looking at it. You could also say that Antigone is the classic exposition of the absurdity of caring what you do with a corpse. Or of how, in the fight between overweaning power and meaningless piety, both sides have lost sight of Justice. Sophocles is too smart a writer to see things in black and white.
Ironically, pictures of dead rebels being carried around on poles in the national press may actually be a sign of democratic health. In a police state, rebels disappear and their bodies are never found.
Space: Fair enough. A perspective that aspires to be balanced is all I ask.
Falstaff: In the pure, abstract sense, of course a corpse feels nothing: you could boil it down for glue, use the skin for leather, make blankets out of the hair and it will make no difference to the dead.
All the same, how one treats the dead says a lot about the society one is in. To ignore the signals the treatment sends out is to be wilfully blind.
Also, yes, the freedom of the press to publish such photographs indicates a functioning democracy, but surely that isn't a reason for complacency?
SB: I just think it's interesting that everyone seems to look at this picture and focus on the bit about a corpse being treated in way that violate some arcane convention. No one asks: Who was this person in life? Who killed him / her? How do we know he / she was really a rebel? What process was followed in deciding to kill this person? Who is accountable for this death, and how, if at all, can they be questioned? Oh, no, what everyone's all agog about is how the dead body is being treated. Like THAT's the real issue.
Now what does that reaction say about the society you live in? That it privileges symbolism over substance?
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