A dog’s life

The feudal culture must be broken down and no child should suffer the terrible trauma and pain Hussain faced.

Hussain Karim, nine years old, may never live a normal life again. His face has been badly mutilated; his nose has been torn off and his fingers badly damaged. Doctors at the Sargodha district headquarters fear he may also lose an arm. All this is not the result of an unavoidable accident, but the result of the deliberate actions of a powerful landlord who claims the child was stealing sugarcane from his fields. To stop him, six dogs were let loose on the boy, but his father says they were merely walking through the field and causing the crop no damage.

Attempts by the family of the victim to press charges have been thwarted, mainly as a result of arm-twisting and coercion by the police. Instead, the matter has been settled with the payment of around Rs21,000 to the boy’s family to cover medical expenses. This is what, it appears, a destroyed life is worth in the fiercely feudal culture which, sadly, still prevails in our society. It is driven on by the encouragement and open support of police and other officials who only see the benefits of keeping the powerful happy. Incidents of the same kind have taken place before in other locations across the country. The notion that all human life is valuable and that every citizen is equal is obviously one that has not sunk in to the mindset of our society. In addition to this, the existence of certain laws which encourage such ‘deals’ adds to the predicament of victims and their families.

Fiefdoms run by feudal overlords exist across the country within which ordinary people of the area are treated as serfs. They are subjected to repeated brutality, women are raped and we see acts as horrendous as the one in Sargodha. The authorities need to move in on the side of people. The feudal culture must be broken down, and no small child should ever again suffer the terrible trauma and pain Hussain faced simply because the powerful know they will not be held accountable, quite regardless of the acts of inhumanity they inflict on the powerless, who are able to do little to protect themselves from such outrages.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2011.