Australian Matt Gordon’s experience of being threatened for bearing a tattoo of a goddess on his leg is another example of the fact that we are getting increasingly thin-skinned about faith. The police having sided with the threatening group was censured in the media – and rightly so. The police are supposed to be enablers, not attackers.

Why are there so many instances of police misconduct and brutality? What incensed this policeman, enough to read Gordon a lecture on Hindu religion? The DCP dismissed the incident as “trivial”, but trivial it is certainly not. The big question is: Why is our police force like this?

One answer could be the nature of the beast: I have a lathi and I shall wield it freely while I can. But that’s simplistic. Look at the conditions in which the constable lives and works, the unrelenting exposure to the dark side of society, or even the hours and hours of bandobast duty, come the weather. He draws a salary likely between ₹12,000 and ₹20,000 and works elastic hours. No wonder cops and bribes are synonymous.

In the tattoo case, how can we expect the constable to think differently from the belief systems that prevail in his society? If his society has unshakeable faith in the power of Yellamma, he will be offended by her likeness on a leg because he considers it disrespectful. It hurts his religious sentiments because touching or showing anything with the leg is considered disrespectful.

A cop does not cast off his thinking when he wears his uniform. He is given a few sessions on police attitude during training, but clearly it’s not enough. He needs social, psychological, emotional skills to handle issues in a secular manner. So long as he remains ignorant of how to separate church from state, we can expect more sound and fury over nothing.

Sandhya Rao Deputy Editor

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