There is nothing much left to be said about the Rizwanur Rehman case that has not already found mention in all the Orkut communities, blogs, email forwards, online petitions, media coverage and government sound-bytes regarding the administrative shakeups (the removal of the Police Commissioner and transferring of concerned police officials) that the tragic case has brought in its wake. [For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, this wikipedia page gives you a brief overview of the case that has rocked West Bengal for the past month or so.]
In this day and age when we claim to have become “modern” (where modernity has sadly been defined as wearing skirts, talking in English and downloading ringtones), the fact that such a positively medieval thing can actually happen in a supposedly progressive city like Calcutta has left many of us in the educated middle-class elite angry and surprised.
Angry at the violence and the futile loss of life. Understandable. Angry at the police openly claiming to be able to bend the Constitution as they pleased. Again understandable.
But should we really be so surprised?
