Punjab Notes: Civilised mob in pursuit of its quarry.

Byline: Mushtaq-soofi

'An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent,' is what Edmund Burke, a politician, said in the British Parliament in 1789 on the occasion of impeachment of Warren Hastings, the then head of the East India Company.

The event that put the politician in a quandary appears to be not earth shaking if we compare it with what happened recently in Lahore; a savage attack by a large group of lawyers on the Punjab Institute of Cardiology, a leading hospital in the country. People here are no strangers to violence and savagery but still it was a real stunner that left some gasping for speech and reduced others to stuttering and muttering. Wittgenstein's aphorism that 'what can be said at all can be said clearly...' seems at times a far cry from the experiences of concrete life. Things may be transparent and yet so opaque that saying them clearly would be almost impossible.

Punjab being the oldest society in South Asia has a long history of mob violence. Elias Canetti has shown in his 'Crowds and Power' how a mob when it turns into a pack can be dangerously violent. An individual feeling vulnerable joins a group in search of safety and strength. Group in turn provides him/her with an over-arching concept of collective identity underpinned by its particular composition and number. Group's cohesion is ensured through collective actions. The group functions with a kind of tribal orientation.

Remember Rig-Veda? In its Mantras tribal aggression is glorified. Hunting and hounding of Harappa people is conceived as divinely acts. Tribe has two significant aspects; one, it works on a clear binary of 'us and them', two, it believes in collective punishment for its foes. Arya's hatred of Harappa tribes was so intense that it was institutialised with the result that it percolated through to subconscious level. It is still alive after thousands of years and can be witnessed in the treatment meted out to the remaining nomadic Harappa tribes surviving on the margins of contemporary society. The distinguishing mark of this divide was skin colour which created identities for both Harappans and Aryans.

Arya after their settlement, apart from wars, indulged in mob violence against Harappans whenever and wherever possible. Just one story from ancient Punjab will suffice by way of example. It's narrated in a mythopoeic manner showing how language - documents, books, inscriptions and other texts - were...