A history of torture
SURESH PRANJALI
Based on the first-hand experiences of the refugee leader of the Bhutanese democratic movement, TekNath Rizal, Torture: Killing Me Softly shares many elements with Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, which deals with the history of the modern penal system. Foucault’s book had introduced the brilliant ideas of the “body of the condemned” and “Panopticism”, where he had traced the historical shift in the methods of punishment from physical torture to self-regulation.
Like in Foucault’s work, Rizal also includes descriptions of brutal and malevolent mind control as a form of torture used concurrently with other atrocious physical forms of punishment in Bhutan. Rizal reveals his experiences in a topical order. His writing incorporates quite a bit of painful imagery, evident in lines like: “Some times, my nose starts bleeding profusely and I come suddenly under seizure; my whole body starts writhing in pain. At other times, food in front of my eyes suddenly starts appearing like human excreta or I would see it riddled with insects.” Rizal attempts to re-justify the impact of mind-control,used in a way as to incapacitate a person, rid his mind of all objective until he loses his wits. His descriptive accounts capture the realities of torture andthe isolation inherent in being locked up in Bhutan’s prisons.
What the book does exceedingly well is impart in a very visual and vivid manner the various procedures of psychological and corporeal control wielded by the Bhutanese government on political prisoners. Rizal, a long-time activist fighting for social equality in Bhutan, had been a victim of Bhutan’s ethnic cleansing himself, having spent almost 10 years in a Bhutanese jail, and is, in this way, the perfect representative for the sufferers of such a system.
At times, the descriptions are so graphic that the book reads like a gruesome work of horror. Readers will probably not only internalise the bizarre and inhuman things experienced by the author but also dwell on what Rizal still believes—that Bhutanese authorities continue to control his mind even today by means of an electronic device, another reiteration of the idea of Foucault’s ‘Panopticon’.
Many would agree that there are only a handful of truly professional book editors in Nepal, who are able to handle authors and manuscripts with proficiency. These editors are expected to supervise a variety of genres, ranging from fiction, nonfiction to textbooks, but there is a general indolence in the way Nepali editors work in reading, reviewing and rewriting manuscripts. The editing in this book, however, goes against that general practice, and has been stringently achieved.
Deepak Adhikari’s decade-long experience in writing and editing shines through here, shaping Rizal’s ideas in an apt way. Still, there are some occasional slip-ups in terms of grammar and a vague imbalance in the language used, which can often bedry and laden with heavy details. Although largely readable, these small oversights on the part of the editor have cost the book a certain amount of credibility.
Torture will undeniably move readers, offering some rather unsettling and rare insights into the psychology of torture as used in the penal system. And for many, the book will compel them to ask questions about the progression of a persecuting society, possible as it is to juxtapose the personal accounts depicted here on the modern prison system.
Pranjali is a student at Nepa School of Social Sciences
Source: The Kathmandu Post