SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 76, 31 March 1934, Page 10

SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS

Concurrently with the dramatic death of the century-old Calcutta "Englishman," which expired with the utterance on. its lips that i democracy is no solution of India's difficulties, comes a cabled story of "self-torture" in India, I of a Magistrate's ban on it, and of physical attempts .by the police to stop It, with consequent resistance, .revolver-shooting,.; and at least four "deaths. The Magistrate was fatally stabbed, and a constable and two rioters expired. If the attitude pf the law to "self-torture" is j clear-cut, the same cannot be said of ! the view taken by science. In 1931 •Dr. Hunt exhibited at the Royal Anthropological Institute photographs and cinema films of Indian of a dervish sect thrusting ilong iron skewers through the neck between the gullet and the backbone, and practising other forms of selftortnre. These tilings look horrible, but whether they inflict horrible pain on the exponent may be doubted. It has been suggested that, by the force of mind over matter, the looker-on feels the hook or skewer more than the man into whose flesh the implement is thrust. Professor C G. Sellgman, while he has no faTth- In' the power of suggestion to check the results of chemical action in the body (he cites the death of a "protected" dervish from snake-poisoning) yet says, "There are few alterations in bodily tone or rhythm that, under favourable circumstances, the mind cannot bring about." The mind may despise a skewer or a hook placed with deliberation in the flesh, but not the quick passage of a bullet through a vital part. The law of course is concerned not merely with the individual but with public order. Yetit is to be feared that democracy in India, however well intentioned, does sometimes go beyond its depth,