Day 6: To seek revenge or not? That is the question...
*Another story from the Pad Yatra:
We left Joginder’s (a local farmer) house around 5 pm; as we left, three guys in their early twenties on a bike stopped us; the first guy, with a shaved head, a thin moustache, a bright red t-shirt and a stomach asked, through a mouth of paan, “aray, aap log kya kar rahe hain?” (What are you doing here?) “We’re on a pad yatra...” we said, and then continued walking.
Two minutes later, after reaching a small bridge, the same bike approaches us. This time, sounding more impatient, the guy in the red shirt asked, “Hamen aur jankari chahiye aap logon ke bare mein...yeh pad yatra kya hai...?” (We need more information...what’s a pad yatra?) Before we could even start explaining, a second bike arrived, and then a third. Within 3 minutes, at least 50 people showed up. The quiet roar was growing, as more and more people continued to show up—all of whom were men.
Things escalated when a man in a round man in a long, white kurta showed up; as soon as he got off the bike, the smell of alcohol came toward me like an incoming tidal wave. He started waddling like a penguin toward Rahul (not his real name); he began demanding ID and expressing anger and disbelief that we would consider entering the village without his permission. Rahul tried to explain to him what we were doing, but was unable to get much of a word in between the man’s inebriated egotistical pronouncements: “aray tum hamko nahin pahachante ho? Main is gaon ka malik hoon.” (What...you don’t know me!? I’m the boss of this village.) Rahul, who has little patience for such ego and disrespect said, “aapko pahachan karke, ham kya karenge?” (And even if I did know you, then so what?)
Immediately, the man’s hand rose up in the air to hit Rahul; you know when some kind of weight, like a phone charger, is attached to the end of a string and you flick the wire and the weighted part moves awkwardly through the air before striking down hard? That’s what his drunken punch looked like. With that kind of aim, he missed Rahul two or three times before finally connecting and hitting him. Opportunistically, one of the man’s cronies, a skinny man in his 40’s with long, wiry hair, and down-slanting wrinkles above the eyes that seemed to indicate many years of anger and stress, also swooped in to slap Rahul as well. There was a palpable fear that if Rahul were to do anything in self-defense, then a full out riot might break out, in which case the seven of us would stand no chance against the 100 plus people, who, by that time, had shown up.
We quickly pulled him out from the spot, where the man and a bunch of bystanders had cornered him. In the midst of that chaos and crowds, we weren’t able to coordinate as a team on what to do, but somehow we seemed to have this sixth-sense interconnectivity, through which we each figured out that we needed to divide the larger group into smaller groups in order to get our story across.
So I took one group off the bridge, including the two girls and two of the boys as well, toward a field; Abodh took another crowd off to another side of the bridge; and Ganesh took another over to a different part of the bridge. By some strike of luck, Ganesh had a distant relative in that village, so he was called in. With that relative, we marched back to his house, with the entire crowd following us. Once we reached, the crowd continued to yell and throw things, making a huge commotion.
By now, we understood the local dynamics at play; apparently the man who started all of the fighting to begin with was the brother of the local Mukhiya (elected mayor/leader), and with elections coming up, he was trying to show his muscle power to convince people to vote for his brother. On the other hand, Ganesh’s relative from the village had many problems with this leader and instead, called the other candidate in to help control the crowd. He showed up with his own crew of strong men and supporters as well. So, now, while we sat inside the house, we could hear insults, swears, and some physical altercation between the two parties. At one point, in the midst of their fight, someone broke open one of the doors to the house, creating a large banging noise.
Eventually the police came as well, though according to local people, even the police were dividing along the lines of these two leaders, with one of the local police chiefs in the favour of the man who had hit Rahul, and the other in the favour of the man who Ganesh’s uncle called. To make a long story short, though, we finally got out of there, went to a different nearby town, where Ganesh and Abodh live, and then we stayed there.
Now, the next question to arise was: what do we do next? This is what we discussed today, 2 months after the incident; how did we deal with it? And what are our reflections post-hoc?
Before directly answering the question, I want to share an important learning I’ve had through such situations. While studying in university, I took a number of philosophy classes that dealt with issues like means versus ends, and in what cases the means justify the ends, and so on and so forth, especially as relates to the use of violence. It’s good and fine to have these discussions, but NONE OF THESE CLASSES PREPARE YOU FOR REAL LIFE. When someone you really care about or your own life is actually in eminent danger, then you don’t have time to philosophize about what the “right” thing to do is. The process of laying out a logical moral argument is completely different from the emotions experienced in survival mode. While there is a connection between how your philosophizing mind things and how you might naturally react in such a situation, the brain systems in play are completely different in the two situations.
And the survival brain has no empathy for what life circumstances might have led that man to be behaving like that in the first place. The survival brain says “so what” to “an eye-for-an-eye makes the whole world blind.” The survival brain wants to see perpetrators of harm punished. The survival brain always seeks revenge.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily justify violence, but it provides perspective for what kinds of perspectives and possibilities begin to emerge in the group’s conversation. There’s a strong underlying assumption in all the points that get spoken that, no matter what, the man who harmed us should face a punishment that is at least equal to what he committed. And the thing is, conversations are generally cumulative, meaning that people fRahule their points based on the previous points that were made. So as we sat in a room in Ganesh’s relative’s house, our conversation intermittently interrupted by the sounds of people fighting outside, our opinions continued to narrow in more and more toward harsher and harsher punishment for the perpetrator; our common pain was manifest in our shared imaginations of him suffering in some way.
But if you ask any of us during a normal / non-conflict time what we think about revenge, then we will say that we should avoid revenge at all costs. Why the gap between what we supposedly believe, and what we actually want to do when the situation arises? Given this gap, then, how do we save ourselves...from ourselves?
Well, I’m not really sure. But, after a lot of discussion, it took one conversation that went beyond normal punishments to get us into a new mindset. Abodh suggested that, rather than seeking out some direct punishment for the leader, we could instead do a cultural program in the village to bring everyone together and change the nature of the conversation from combat to cooperation. So as we currently stand, the plan is to go back to the very same village, where we were threatened and attacked, to seek peace and understanding. Stay tuned for updates on how it goes...!