The Logic of the Slap: Mob justice for one eventually becomes violence for all

A few weeks ago, a video clip went viral on social media showing an old man, who had told a taxi driver not to litter in public, being mercilessly beaten in front of his wife. The clip then pivots to members of Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Min­ister Eknath Shinde’s party, tracing and catching hold of the taxi driver, slapping him and taking him to the police station. No one could have felt sorry for him.

On July 7, it was again in the district of Thane, a redoubt of the party, that a Shiv Sena corporator and his men could be seen abusing doctors and beating them in a hospi­tal. The clip is viral too. But this time there is no sympathy for the corporator. The party has disowned him, and he is now absconding with a police case was filed.

You would think this is the appropriate response to each event. The necessary violence is celebrated while the wanton one is con­demned. That would, however, be a fallacy. The mindset of the first is the one that led to the sec­ond. The corporator who beat the doctor did it, in his mind, for the same reason the taxi driver was slapped. Both believed in their own legitimacy to use violence. This is a throwback to a world before institu­tions were created to provide redress, like police and courts. Those can’t be trusted, so it must be people like them who do it. It is what the underworld don thinks too. Once you allow the rightness of such actions for doing good, then it inevitably creeps into everything.

Enforcement of justice is a flawed project because there are never going to be enough resources. Every small case cannot be investigated like a murder, or courts can’t start hearing the day it is listed. Yet, society lives with it because the alternative is worse: whoever is strong will decide what justice is and how to mete it out. From a taxi driver to a doc­tor is a short jump of arbitrariness. It is more important to protect the doctor than to punish the driver, and that can’t be done without protecting the rights of both of them.