Constable Chetan: Symptom of our sickness

Railway Protection Force Constable Chetan Singh was ostensibly lucid as he embarked upon a killing spree on the JaipurMumbai Central Superfast Express After shooting dead his senior he moved from coach to coach zeroing in on three persons who sported a beard It seems Chetan asked their names to doublecheck their religious identity before pumping bullets into themThe lucidity he displayed in identifying his quarries was missing as he delivered what the media described as an incoherent speech He ranted against Pakistan and suggested that in case Muslims wanted to live in India they must vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister AdityanathIt was disclosed that Chetan suffered from a mental disorder and was on antipsychotic drugs This narrative led to the conclusion that Chetanrsquos killing spree had an individual particularitymdashhis mental disordermdashand was not linked to systemic factors The latter is spooky to contemplate because systemic factors would mean that there could be several Chetans waiting to randomly empty their guns on usYet that is what we must precisely domdashanalyse the links between Chetanrsquos mental disorder and systemic factorsFor one Chetan did not shoot randomly He did not open fire at a public place as so many American mass killers do He chose his victims his was a hate crime which to use the definition of Americarsquos FBI was ldquomotivated in whole or in part by an offenderrsquos biasrdquo against a race religion gender etc For the other his rant even in its incoherence echoed the rhetoric Indiarsquos public figures employ against Muslims Had he not killed before he spoke Chetan would have come across as a typical obsessive Modi or Adityanath bhaktldquoTerrorist acts are not caused by mental illness but mental illness can provide a background thatrsquos receptive to terrorist activityrdquo Dr Raj Persaud a reputed Londonbased psychiatrist and professor said in an interview in 2016 Persaud was analysing Mohamed L Bouhlelrsquos motivation in driving a lorry into a holiday crowd in Nice France Bouhlel too had been on antipsychotic medicationLikewise hate acts are not caused by mental illness but mental illness can provide a background thatrsquos receptive to hate activity Extremist ideologies attract those who are mentally disturbed Persaud suggests because they are able to rationalise all their resentment arising from a warped sense of reality Or as neuroscientist Jack Pemment says dangerous ideologies offer solutions a depressed mind may find valid for ending his painAs such in India there has always existed a reservoir of resentment miraculously held back from bursting out in fury There is resentment because of the precarity of life millions are condemned to live By demonising Muslims Hindutva provides them a faux reason for rationalising their anger and also a target to vent their fury uponHatred is not a symptom of any mental disorder clinical psychologist and professor Philip Yanos writes in Psychology Today Hate is manufactured by a brand of politics which dehumanises a social groupmdashthe dehumanised ones are perceived as evil Yet there is an impulse in humans to not kill persons labelled evil Yanos points out ldquoSome disorders include symptoms that may be associated with diminished impulse control which could plausibly be related to reactive violent outburstsrdquoChetan killed because his mental disorder likely weakened his impulse to control the hate inculcated in him by Hindutva evident from his speech But other factors can also weaken a personrsquos impulse to control hate such as being under the influence of alcohol or narcotics It also weakens when a leader uses the word ldquotermiterdquo to describe lsquoinfiltratorsrsquo a code name for Muslims Or when a minister leads a crowd to chant ldquoDesh ke gaddaron ko goli maaro saalon kordquo Their rhetoric legitimises violenceChetanrsquos speech on the train was dubbed as a rant Yet what he spoke was no different from the ramblings of local Hindutva leaders They too have spoken of packing off Muslims to Pakistan or making their stay in India conditional to chanting ldquoRam Ramrdquo or accusing them of conspiring against their homelandChetan shocks because his violence was directed against the three Muslims who had done him no harm But was his act any different from say that of Monu Manesar the man who allegedly killed two Muslims from Rajasthan on the suspicion that they were engaged in slaughtering cattleLast weekrsquos riot in Nuh Haryana led to retaliatory violence in Gurugram where a mosquersquos naib imam was killed Did those who shot him dead act any differently from Chetan The naib Imam had done no harm to his killers Such examples abound implicating just about every communityWe would be deceiving ourselves in case we think Chetanrsquos killing spree was merely because of his mental illness which might also be a condition waiting to be diagnosed among a substantial segment of Indians given the increasing frequency with which hatedriven violence is perpetrated Certainly the impulse not to hurt has weakened over the last nine years There is a post called Chief Statistician of India We desperately need to have a Chief Psychiatrist of India who could measure Indiarsquos growing sicknessThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper