The brute vengeance shown by the Tamil Nadu (henceforth TN) police across the state towards the peaceful demonstrations by hundreds and thousands of youth on Monday 23,2017 bears all the marks of a political state gone awry.
What could happen in a totalitarian state happened in a democratic state on that tragic day for the protesters as well as hundreds and thousands of citizens in different parts of the state. The fury of the police violence was more pronounced on the marginalised communities such as the fisherfolk and the urban poor in areas such as Nadukuppam, Mattankuppam, Rutherpuram and Vysarpadi.
I am wondering whether TN police would have had the courage and mindset to enter the locales of the socially mobile upper and middle classes in Besant Nagar, RA Puram, Adayar and Anna Nagar to beat the residents, abuse the women and children and set on fire their vehicles in the name of taking on the protesters. What prevented them from going beyond the narrow lanes of Mattankuppam to enter the main roads around Parthasarathy temple in the name of chasing the protesters?
I am reminded of the brutality of the Czarist forces on innocent civilians in St.Petersburg on January 22 1905, which became the flash point of events leading to the 1917 Soviet Revolution. It was a bloody Sunday. What happened in Tamil Nadu on January 23 2017 was a bloody Monday. The brutalities in both cases bore the marks of a state gone awry.
How to relate to TN Police’s attack on protesters and marginalised communities such as the fisherfolk and the urban poor in areas such as Nadukuppam, Mattankuppam, Rutherpuram and Vysarpadi in the city of Chennai and other major protest venues such as Alanganallur (Madurai), Coimbatore and Erode with the theoretical prism of Walter Benjamin and contrast it with the brutal attacks by police on blacks in US ghettos such as Ferguson and Palestinians in West Bank?
The Benjaminian cues are provided by the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. Writing about the violence by the police on the blacks in Ferguson, a suburb outside St.Louis, Zizek said:”In U.S. slums and ghettos, police effectively function more and more as a force of occupation, something akin to Israeli patrols entering the Palestinian territories on the West Bank. …When police are no longer perceived as the agent of law, of the legal order, but as just another violent social agent, protests against the predominant social order also tend to take a different turn: that of exploding “abstract negativity” – in short, raw, aimless violence. ” (Zizek,2015).
Walter Benjamin was the first to define acts of violence both as violence and non-violence. According to Walter Benjamin (1921/1986), violence comes in two versions. Mythic violence and divine violence. Mythic violence arises out of the processes of law making and law preserving. War between two countries to settle border issues may result in new laws that binds their new territories. Law preservation refers to attempts by the state to honour the new rights for both parties.Benjamin alludes to what Anatole France said: “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”
Benjamin argues that police violence is one that comes into existence when the two versions of mythic violence are suspended. It constitutes its own territory in the guise of affirmation and reaffirmation of the state power. In the case of the police states, the police violence exists for the sake of its own preservation as the law, the law that was not born in the usual processes of law making and law preservation.
The divine violence, on the other hand, refers to what Benjamin calls as “lethal, but without spilling blood”. Here, we need to remember that the Benjamin logic excludes and includes violence as bloody and non-bloody.
Says Benjamin, “If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood. …Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake, divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living. The first demands sacrifice, the second accepts it.” (Benjamin,1921/1986, p.297)
In the Benjaminian logic, the divine violence, i.e the non-bloody kind, was made possible when nearly one million people gathered on the sands of Marina and other parts of Tamil Nadu to vent their long-held antipathy towards the failures of the law making and law preserving acts of the state headquartered in New Delhi and Chennai.
For instance, the harsh measures on common people such as demonetisation by the government at the centre demanded sacrifice. More than hundred commoners died in their acts of sacrifice at the alter of demonetisation since November 08 2016. The law making and law preservation as pillars of mythical violence ensured “bloody power over mere for its own sake,” without caring for the welfare of the people.
The acts of governments at the centre, state and the higher courts of India were taking the same route of mythical violence with regard to the cultural right of people of Tamil Nadu and the important interfaces between farmers, men, women, children, their everyday life practices, environment, farms and native cows/bulls. Jallikattu is not another agrarian sport, it embodies all these interfaces. From a post-colonial, late capitalism perspective of the governments at the centre, state, higher courts and international and national animal rights activists, Jallikattu is misread as a bull-taming sport of Tamil Nadu. From the perspective of those who did not understand the rhizomatic contexts of the students’ upsurge, the protesters were working with single agenda, lifting the ban on Jallikattu. They refused to understand that it was a rhizomatic protest with as many agendas as there were protesters.
The monumental show of solidarity by students, youth, women, rich, poor and the elderly during Jan.16-23 2016 at the sands of Marina beach, Chennai and different parts of the state accepted the Benjaminian sacrifice for the sake of pure power over all life (not just the right to stage Jallikattu, but a life free of political corruption, unhealthy beverages, culturally threatening corporate state and its collaborators, demanding justice for farmers, fishers etc.,
What followed the divine violence (non-bloody kind) of the hundreds and thousands of people in Marina beach, Alanganallur and Coimbatore was the unleashing of the police violence that was born in the suspension of the law making and law preservation domains and became law itself, in the company of the collaborators such as corporate media, who refuse to be on the side of the people and chose to be on the side of the sources of police violence, religious rightists and the weak law makers and law preservers.
The police state emerges when the police violence makes a mockery of the two pillars of mythical violence and makes its birth outside the domain of the suspension of law making violence and law preservation violence.
Based on my readings of the happenings in Tamil Nadu since the year of National Emergency, 1975, I can say emphatically that the TN police has been raring to make TN a police state for the past the four decades, beginning with the rule of Karunanidhi’s first term as Chief Ministership, followed by MGR and Jayalalitha. All the three made the TN police a villain of the fundamental rights of Indian citizens whenever they chose to exercise their right to divine violence, an acceptance of a sacrifice in a non-bloody way.
I am reminded of a host of riots, mass deaths and mass imprisonment made possible by police violence outside the domains of mythical violence. The 1992 Vachathi police brutality against tribals, the 1999 Thamirabarani killings of dalits (which included women and children), the Paramakudi riots of 2011, the Idinthakarai police atrocities of 2012 are but a small sample of the brutal counters of TN police to the non-bloody acts of the protesters.
However, the brutal attacks on protesters on Jan 23 2017 across Tamil Nadu pushes the above mentioned ones poor markers of comparison. I went to see the fisherfolk of Nadukuppam today (25 01 2017) and was shocked to see hundreds of small shops in the fish market gutted in fire, reportedly caused by the police, according to women who manned these shops.
The women and children bore the fury of the police marching into their homes and smashing people and things on the way, according to the victims. The police, according to these women, used phosphor to ignite their fish market and vehicles.
They are deeply traumatised by what they term as “police atrocities and lawlessness” in their area on January 23 2017. They showed their bandaged wounds and deep cuts on their bodies. Men, women, children and the elderly, none were spared, according to these women. They said they were more emotionally disturbed by the tag police used to brand them, “anti-socials”. They said, we only provided water to those students, who wanted it and were fleeing from police attacks on them.”We did not do any harm to anyone.”
According to the fisherfolk, the students had a very peaceful protest for eight days and fed everyone, including the fisherfolk and the policemen/women. One elderly women (aged 70) said “I lost fish worth Rs.4000 in the fire. I have two daughters and their children to support. I too was attacked by the police with small granite stones, which are not available in our area. The police brought them from elsewhere. The police were throwing some powder and vehicles and our shops were gutted.” Two elderly women in their 80s and 90s said they were almost trampled by the police who entered the house. They said they had their share of beatings too.
A young mother said that her one year old child is yet to recover from the trauma of the police atrocity inside her house and has been crying since then. Police picked everyone on their brutal marches, including workers who were returning home. One young person with deep cut and eight stitches and a swollen hand said he was returning home that day after work and the week’s salary of Rs 3000. The police thrashed him and took his money and cell phone and hauled him to the station.
All the women and the elderly men said they are scared to go to sleep and are always on the lookout for more police attacks. They said the able bodied men have left for safe places outside the city for the fear of being caught by the police. It was heart wrenching to hear the horrors of police violence in an area that is only three kilo metres from the state government’s head quarters, Fort St.George. This is emblematic of the interstice where the conventions of mythical violence fail and the police violence becomes the law, the law beyond the law, the rule of law as enshrined in India’s Constitution.
One can also draw into this discourse what ordinary citizens experienced on their morning and afternoon encounters with the hundreds of policemen/women who kept them immobile in traffic for the sake of functioning as the efficient convoy police for the CMs, who represented the domains of mythical violence. Many a time, the police booed the commoners away and abused and yelled at them, when they were veering away from the commands of the police. The Tamil poet Bharathidasan defined social progress at the point where the erasure of monarchy paves way for people’s rule. People’s rule has been more a misnomer than a reality in TN, thanks to the trap of the police state. All the regimes during the past four decades were according top priority to the police sector in matters of housing, vehicles etc., without doing any performance audit. All the leaders of the regimes had their favourites to execute their verbal and non verbal orders.
Police state is the one that suspends the rights of the citizens and leverages the rights of the rulers. Police states do not exist only in totalitarian, one party systems. They can exist in India. They can exist in Tamil Nadu. They can exist in USA. They can exist anywhere where the linkages within the domains of mythical violence are overpowered by the police violence. This has been proved time and again.
Police state is the one where police violence comes in the most brutal form of violence against law and the subjects of law, the people.
On December 01,2015 when Chennai faced a deluge, the hundreds of Chennai cops were standing in pounding rains on the Chief Minister’s convoy route every ten feet. It is needless to say here that Chennai’s citizens were drowning in their hundreds across the city at this hour. This is a typical trajectory which caused the birth of both the Bloody Sunday and the Bloody Monday referred earlier.
Police state is the one where the officers who become members of Indian Police Service and their juniors in different cadres become a single organism baying for the blood of the weaker, marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society and their benefactors, the rights groups which seek to provide them support and relief.
The unwarranted remarks of the Coimbatore Police Commissioner in a recent press meet urging protesters to severe links with those who use the term “Thozhar” (Comrade) and his manner of linking such an act with reference to democratic organisations he listed as “extremists” (The Hindu,2017) is the hallmark of verbal police violence. The repeated recourse to police inspired news narratives by Tamil television channels in their coverage of the 2017 Tamil Nadu youth protests is the hall mark of what aids police violence.
The violence the TN police let loose on the poor fisherfolk in Nadukuppam, the downtrodden in Vyasarpadi and the peaceful protesters on Marina, Alanganallur and different parts of the state has to be condemned by every citizen of this nation, if we wish to prove to the perpetrators of police violence that police violence is antithetical to the spirit of Indian constitution. Martin Luther King, who was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi said famously, “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love…
We deserve, as citizens of India, more waves of non-bloody divine violence as the youth of Tamil Nadu enacted for eight days during January 16-23,2017.
We deserve zero tolerance towards police violence. We have to lend helping hands to the millions of the poor and marginalised Indians who are still struggling for their food, shelter education and fundamental rights.
References
1.Benjamin, Walter (1921/1986), “Critique of Violence” in Reflections:Essays, Aphorisms and Autobiographical Writings, Schocken Books, New York.
2.The Hindu, (2017), “Extremists Incited Violence” Available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Coimbatore/Extremists-incited-violence-police/article17089008.ece
3.Zizek, Slavoj (2015), “Divine Violence in Ferguson,” The European, Available at http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/slavoj-zizek/9774-slavoj-zizek-on-ferguson-and-violence
GR 