On 5/15/08, ss wrote: > India is a country in which emotions and violence often overtake and outstrip > the ability of law enforcement to apply the penal code. A failure to recall > this leads to the basically meaningless question that asks if violence is a > legitimate form of criticism. Legitimate or not, violence is what tends to > happen in India far more often than "decent society" would like to see. >
In madras local lingo there is a term called "dharma adi".. it literally translates to "free beating" (though you could extrapolate the actual meaning of "dharma" to it too..) It commonly involves a traffic incident -a bigger vehicle (a motorcycle), crashing into a smaller vehicle (a bicycle) or vice - versa... Usually the owner of the bigger vehicle is blamed, and the crowd puts him to the sword : a few slaps, kicks, pushing him around etc... (Its quite a lot of fun, if you are one of the people handing out the slaps, though i suspect its not pleasant on the receiving end...).
