Munna of Dhanmondi!
Habib Khondker, Singapore
"Before he left he shouted at me and told me that he was known as "Munna of Dhanmondi" (as if I should have known of him or perhaps I should have)." During the Eid holidays, as the occasion demanded, I spent sometime reflecting on this line drawn from Kazi Anwarul Masud's post-editorial "An Encounter with Violence" (Nov 23). Why did the mugger on the street have to make his identity known? I am not so much concerned with the declining law and order situation in Dhaka here (or for that matter, Bangladesh simply because there so many people who are) as much as with the psychology of a common criminal. I explore psychology to find a window on the social context.I have two hypotheses to offer. First, the mugger wanted to get a rival mugger into trouble. Our unfriendly mugger in the proceeding of the crime found out who his victim was -- a retired secretary, diplomat etc. and thought that if he assumed the identity of his rival, the rival would get into trouble. Maybe he and Munna were fishing in the same water and what better way to get the other guy out of business and hopefully in some jail with the help of police! And even if we assume that police won't take him to custody, not so much out of sympathy, but for a payoff, Munna's transaction costs will increase and thus he would become uncompetitive and hence inconvenienced. My second hypothesis is that the mugger told the truth. He is Munna. But why would he be so foolish as to draw attention to himself? Why not? Like all business enterprises, Munna also needs some advertisement. Advertisement or name recognition or brand-recognition is good for business. It increases productivity and saves transaction costs. Next time Munna stops a passenger of a rickshaw, he would not need to hurl abuses, brandish pistol, just say the magic word, "Microsoft" or "Intel Inside," or in this specific case, "Munna of Dhanmondi." That will do the magic trick. The purse will come out automatically. Few weeks and more purses later, Munna will sit in the comfort of his room and hire some apprentice goons to take charge of the Dhanmondi and nearby streets. Their magic word would be "We are Munna's men." Now Munna has graduated from being a street hawker hawking his ware of violence and fear and in return earning a livelihood to a proper petty bourgeois with some men working for him. Munna has now become a brand name in the shadowy "surface world" (in the past, it was called underworld, but not any more) of crime and extortion. He has become a new star in the galaxy of the semi-outlaws (I use this new name because some of them are not totally outside of laws; in fact, may even work with some help from the enforcers of law!). I was told that someone recently called up a company boss asking for some favor and all he had to do was to claim that he was from "Seven-Star," a fixture in Dhaka's crime horizon. A reflection: It is also possible that all Munna wants is recognition. After all, he like many hardworking men on the street is just trying to make a quick buck and has chosen this (dis)honest path of living. And like many people, he is unsure about the line that separates honest from dishonest, which is quickly slipping and what is just and what is unjust is also rapidly becoming vague. Munna is as much a victim of a culture of violence, corruption and crime as some of the victims of his crime. Some philosophers contend that most people are driven to earn recognition. Whatever we do, we need recognition, which is sometimes deemed more important than monetary rewards. This is true for most people whether it is a street criminal or the writer of this letter. We need to find a way of helping people earn recognition but not at the expense of others.
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