Confront Violence

editorial: 
Little over a week ago, a youth in his early twenties was shot outside a local discotheque by a person old enough to be his father. The violence was triggered by a minor altercation inside the disco. The victim survived the gunshot through sheer luck. The intent to kill in the finger which pulled the trigger is obvious from the fact that the youth was shot in the neck at point-blank range. News of the incident shocked Sikkim, as it rightly should, because it brought the society face to face with a new kind violence– a violence which was alien to Sikkim in its bloodlust. Violence is not new to any society, and fights and fisticuffs are not rare in the State either. The nature of violence in the past was mostly of the kind which lashed in the heat of the moment, and while the rare case ended in an accidental fatality, these mostly closed with bruises, sprains and the occasional broken bone. Most of the times, these were closed with a “compromise”. In the latest instance, the use of a gun and the intent to kill has added a new, very worrying dimension in the absence of matching incitement.
One hopes that this is an aberration and not a pointer to the things to come; but it would be unwise for the society at large to dismiss it as a rare anomaly and ignore the responsibility towards exercising some soul-searching to understand situations which could be triggering such outbursts. As mentioned earlier, violence is not a rare human condition, but what should be worrying for Sikkim is the possibility that the potential to deliver violence has multiplied from the power of fists and sticks to guns and bullets now.
There will be those who will blame the system and the political dispensation in power and others who will look at the cops to keep the streets safe. Both approaches are flawed because neither addresses the societal response which sets up such outbursts of violence. Some have already blamed the relatively new “culture” of partying and discotheques for the incident. This is almost childish because the question which really needs to be asked instead is why do so many people leave for parties and arrive at discos with so much anger when the idea is to let the hair down and enjoy. Fights are now routine wherever there is a gathering of strangers with even the Maghey Mela celebrations in Jorethang earlier this year closing with a fight despite strong police and VIP presence. Weekend bashes have literally become so. What is important for the society here to confront is the reason why so many people carry so much anger and hate bottled up inside them that violence seeps out so often. This is not to suggest that people here are inherently prone to violence, but a query which leads to the next enquiry - why, despite so much public violence, are such few incidents booked and penalised. The answer is obvious- they are all compromised eventually. While one can argue that compromises are healthy because this means that grudges are not allowed to fester, but on the flip side, when violence is allowed to pass without reprimand, it emboldens perpetrators to unleash even more of it the next time. It is a complicated vortex, but one which needs to be addressed because the nature of violence is changing in Sikkim…