Punjab Notes: Everyday violence: tradition, law and social regulation.

Byline: Mushtaq Soofi

One was at loss to make sense of a news last week which reported that two boys in separate incidents were subjected to extreme violence. In the first incident, two men attacked a seven- year-old boy with acid for crossing their fields in Bahawalnagar and in the second, a five-year-old child was hung upside down from a tree for stealing guava from an orchard by four adults in the district of Faisalabad. Sense of bewilderment in no way implies that violence against children is entirely a new phenomenon. Some form of violence has always been used against children with a view to educate, train and discipline them. Violence against minors is in fact an element of the component that regulates and controls future social life. What's new is its intensity and scale. Community instinct seems dead along with the traditional modes of social control and conflict resolution. In the past, not distant, if a child messed around, vandalised or stole something, he would be shooed out of the place or the men would give him/her a mock chase, giving him ample time to run away. In case of serious trouble, a complaint would be lodged with the child's parents. Adults, male and female, had a moral right to admonish any child found saying or doing things which were thought to be unbecoming of him/her. Men and women used to treat the children of others as their own. And children were taught to accept them as uncles and aunts, giving them the status of family members. The only places infested with violence were seminaries and schools where corporal punishment was the norm to discipline the children. Parents at the time of their child's admission would say to the teachers; 'chumm tuhada, haddiyan saadiyan [child's skin belongs to you and bones to us]' which meant the teacher was given a free hand to discipline the student with all means of persuasion and coercion at his disposal. Violence was employed as a sort of ancillary pedagogical tool.

Violence was part of the social structure in the traditional society, but a network of formal and informal institutions kept it in check. The former derived their authority from the state and the latter from the traditions. Panchait [local council] was a formal body with legal and at times quasi-legal status to deal with the local affairs concerning the community. It used to be dominated by influential people reflecting contours of social stratification. But, nevertheless, it tried to maintain a semblance of...