Concern should be about mob mentality : Disturbing mob culture
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 19 2018 -

Time to set the record straight in the face of some extremely inhuman posers raised by some individuals, especially on social networking sites like Facebook.

The concern should not be about what Farooque was doing at Tharoijam on September 13.

The concern should be about mob mentality which seems to have got a stranglehold on some section of the people and the manner in which the young man was so brutally lynched or beaten to death.

And even as some individuals did raise the inhuman question at this point of time, it is heartening to see the outpouring of anger and the empathy towards the victim by a good number of young people cutting across community divide.

It was in line with this that a candlelight vigil was staged by some conscientious people at Kangla and by the North East Forum for International Solidarity at the North campus of Delhi University.

Apart from the outpouring of anger and the empathy extended to the family of the late Farooque, it would help if any of the young people could sit down and jot down their thoughts and send it for publication to the Imphal based newspapers.

A series of write ups against the mob mentality will surely go some way in addressing the issue at hand.

And The Sangai Express will be more than happy to accommodate any write ups against mob culture in the State.

Just jot down your thoughts and mail it to the office of this newspaper.

The Sangai Express will also be more than happy to set aside a day in a week to carry such articles/write ups/contributions from the people.

Move out from the social media and reach out to the people through the newspapers.

Many factors are there which are seen to have encouraged mob culture.

Prominent among these factors is the growing habit or culture of the people to get together, deliberate and then go on a destruction spree and even go to the extent of expelling a family from a locality for a crime committed by a member.

At times houses of such a family are reduced to cinders, all in the belief that the people are punishing the guilty.

The crime committed by the guilty may be horrendous but this is not the way for society as a whole to react.

No one should forget that the criminal in question is also a product of society.

When such practices occur regularly and come to be something accepted by society, then the question of addressing mob culture stands defeated.

It is this mindset which exploded in all its ugliness at Tharoijam on September 13.

The root cause of the Tharoijam incident should be seen in its correct perspective and perhaps the first step should be to admit that in one way or the other it is society’s approach to many issues which have given rise to this mindset.

Apart from this the lack of confidence in the justice delivery system stands out prominently.

What happened at Tharoijam is a shame on Manipur and let this be the time for all to come to the point that taking the law into one’s hand can never be the answer to any issue.