Cruelty: East and West

By Vasudev Murthy, India

Cruelty is indeed a much loved, worldwide pastime and not the exclusive preserve of the barbarians of Asia

The revelation of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi's bloodlust for helpless animals destroyed any residual boyhood hero-worship I had for the man. I had a nice photo of him hitting Pat Pocock for a six in Chepauk. I'm glad I lost it.

Trust me; nothing will happen in this case. He is rich and famous and is well connected. The prosecution may use this opportunity to get autographs from the man for their children. He will probably be given a light fine, write a book, make a lot of money and we will all forget.

The Press will be blamed and we will all carry on. Because the target was a helpless animal with no pretensions to intellectual ability, we will shrug it off.

Fact: Man is cruel and enjoys inflicting pain and suffering on others. History records the vicarious pleasure of man in acts of savagery against man and beast.

With time, they don't seem to have the same impact and become droll memories. We hear, for instance, of the Mongolian Government's recent public campaign to reduce the negative aura around Genghis Khan who slaughtered and depopulated vast swathes of land.

"Genghis Khan wasn't really a bad guy," Mr Elbegdorj Tsahkia, the Mongolian prime minister, said recently with a grin. "He just had bad press."

But wait, if its any consolation, be assured that cruelty by various means is indeed a much-loved worldwide pastime and not the exclusive preserve of the barbarians of Asia. There is something about long drawn out pain and suffering that appeals to all of us everywhere in the world. Gandhi is believed to have said, when asked about western civilisation, "I think it would be a good idea." While it made for a sound byte, he may not have been that far off the mark. Let's take a look at some examples of European barbarism. Vlad the Impaler continues to receive bad press because of his peculiar ways. This 15th- century ruler of Wallachia in Romania impaled people live on blunt spears, hundreds at a time.

He once sat for breakfast in the midst of a field full of impaled and rotting people. When the Turks sent emissaries to him to talk peace, he nailed their clothes to their bodies and sent them home.

He once fed a large group of people well, then locked them in a building and burned it down. And so on.

The Spanish Inquisition involved large-scale torture and the wholesale expulsion of Jews by that fine man Torquemada, the "hammer of heretics".

This incidentally coincided with Columbus's sponsored visit to the New World in 1492. En route, the Spanish decimated the entire population of Arawak Indians in the Island of Hispaniola. In 1492, when Columbus came ashore, there were at least 1 million Arawak.

When Sir Francis Drake visited Hispaniola in 1585 he reported that not one Arawak still lived on the island.

They enjoyed cutting off the noses and ears of natives for starters and then went on to bigger things in Mexico including the torture of Cuauhtémoc by Cortez, and many others.

The garrotte was popular in Spain and its colonies.

It involved fitting an iron collar around the neck of the condemned man and then slowly slicing off the spinal cord.

In stiff-upper-lip England, public executions were a riotous public affair and people were killed to the cheers of the crowds (shades of modern Saudi).

Burning at the stake and other unusual forms of killing were popular.

The term "Hung, drawn and quartered" refers to the peculiar and elaborate public execution form which involved, first, a hanging which was halted just prior to actual death, then evisceration and removal of the internal organs of the criminal (still conscious) and their burning, intestines and all, in front of his eyes if he were still conscious, the occasional removal of the still-beating heart, a beheading and a slicing into four quarters of the body which were then despatched to various parts of the kingdom as a subtle warning to others.

Guy Fawkes, who made an abortive attempt to blow up Parliament, was one such victim. Walter Raleigh, quite an eminent historian and world traveller, was beheaded as was Edward I. The public enjoyed such spectacles and insisted on long drawn out sessions.

In France, the guillotine was immensely popular and was banned only in the 1970s when it was discovered that an innocent man had been killed.

Much scientific study went into the perfection of this mechanical device and thousands put to death, including King Louis XVI.

Maximilien Robespierre of the Council of Twelve who were all powerful during the French Revolution of the 1790s, and who pronounced a sentence often on erring anti-revolutionaries, was himself guillotined.

Madame Tussaud was given the job of collecting the severed heads and preparing wax death masks.

She took her collection and went to London and became quite famous. The people cheered and there was much gaiety.

Not that we have any shortage of such examples of barbarity in India, in the past or the present. Can such things happen in a "democracy" where we are routinely told "the law will take its course"?

Meanwhile, poor Pataudi has been ''unfairly'' blamed for indulging in a ''sport''.

How can such a fine, sophisticated Westernised Nawab possibly be so ruthless and destroy the nation's fauna? No, it's all a plot by the wicked press.

Source: Cruelty: East and West
Author: Vasudev Murthy

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