Strategically Speaking: Its Complicated ! ! !

-An insight to cases of Mass hysteria in India.

Mass hysteria is quite common in the 1.2 billion’s land because of high illiteracy rates and lack of scientific revolution in many parts of the country. Weak administration, fruitless investigations and lack of credible investigating agency are some reasons for such cases in abundance. 'The monkey man of Delhi' grabbed headlines in early 2001 for months and the mystery surrounding it is still intact. Mass hysteria happens when a large class of people show common psychological and emotional stress and anxiety which is sparked of with an event or rumour. Due to high cultural and religious bonding among groups of people, parts of India are prone to such cases of mass hysteria.

One such case happened in the southern state of Tamil Nadu when MGR died. It almost led to a condition of anarchy when people heard the news of M.G Ramachandran's sickness and of him being rushed to US for treatment in 1984. Lakhs of people took to streets of Chennai outside movie theatres where hospitalised MGR’s photos were being shown. People refused to leave the streets for the days MGR stayed in hospital. They were crying and praying at the same time that their god father gets well soon. Over 100 people attempted self-immolation following the news of their beloved actor turned politician’s death who served as TN's chief minister 3 times. The news of his death sparked of a series of unprecedented events in the state ranging from looting, rioting to suicides. Rioters targeted buses, shops, offices, movie theatres and the condition worsened so much that ultimately police issued shoot at sight orders. Similar condition is seen even in modern times there whenever Rajnikanth is hospitalised. People flock the streets and close bus service at the earliest (Rajnikanth was a bus conductor in Chennai before joining acting industry) and experts believe his death will be another such event that will be bigger than all earlier events. It’s sad but there’s no way we can stop it as of now. When I was at Chennai two months ago I was really shocked at MGR’s memorial when I saw people from all religions and caste coming and bowing their heads in front of MGR’s memorial stone. Some were getting down on the ground with joined hands and prayed for few minutes. Such is the crowd everyday there that police have to handle everyone themselves while closing the gates at night as devotees keep coming.

Muh-Nochwa case : Muhnochwa means ‘Face- snatcher’. The name is not the only strange thing in this case which rocked the media in the summers of 2002.

Uttar Pradesh was reeling under drought and there was a grim situation all over the state specially those parts where farming is the main source of income. One of those days villagers started to complain of strange events after evenings when they return from their fields. At first people could not describe anything but strangely they started getting injured and hospitalized. All of them had burnt marks and scratches on their faces as if something had scratched them. It became to be known as muhnochwa all over the state and more and more such reports started to pour in from remote areas of the state. Police did not pay attention to it questioning the authenticity of such attacks. Authorities got into action only when such attacks started to trouble Lucknow residents too. The first hand reports were simple but mysterious as nobody saw any object or person scratching them but only red/green/blue light suddenly and there appears scratch and burn marks all over the face and neck. The sensation troubled the politicians too and they ordered Army and IIT Kanpur to look into the matter since police had conceived defeat. Authorities doubled the electricity to many villages to behold any such event but nothing surfaced except blue/green/red localized light that moves sideways close to the ground. Police even burnt down forests close to the roads where such attacks were reported. People killed many insects, hoppers etc but the attacks remained a mystery. After a month or so the attacks stopped but the fear among people stayed.

Three years later i.e in 2005 IIT Kanpur researchers claimed to have solved the mystery. They suspected it to be a natural phenomenon called Ball Lightning which is frequently reported in Canada and US during drought. Long dry spells alter the conductance of ground significantly and results into formation of charged balls which can give an electric shock of 100 watts at a time. It explains the burn and scratch marks of the victims due to the effects of dense charge coming in contact with skin. These balls are generally blue in colour but due to varied scattering in the atmosphere it may appear red or green to us and they mostly stay close to ground disappearing after few minutes.

Visiting a drought effected area? Think Again.

Lets focus on the third and the most famous case which is still a mystery as even today we don’t know who was behind it. Guessed right we are talking of the monkey-man case that created a havoc in Delhi and areas of close proximity to Delhi like Gaziabad. First reported as a monkey with super athletic skills jumping from one building to another, sometimes stealing food but that’s the behaviour of any monkey right? And Delhi/Haryana residents were always being troubled by army of monkeys since ages. This was not an issue until that super athletic monkey started burglary, stealing diamonds. Now any layman could have guessed that it’s not just a monkey as because what would a monkey know about the value of diamonds? It’s something cherished by humans not by those banana loving creatures. That’s when the thief got a new name ‘monkey-man’ and media played a big and wicked role to spread its terror creating a nation-wide sensation. Soon it became a craze to confess about sightings of monkey man. An old woman jumped from stairs in fear of monkey man and died instantly! Thanks to media. A saint got public beating on street as people thought he was the monkey man in his black attire! Likewise many misunderstandings happened and many people got injured in such mishaps. On the other hand the Kala Bandar (As it was commonly known) continued its stealing from various parts of Delhi. Police could only come up with its sketch which many witnesses didn’t agree to. Many believed it was a big monkey that runs like human while police artist drew it as a monkey wearing helmet and as they say imagination is a whole new universe. Everyone tried to fit him in his/her imagination. Soon monkey man reports stopped and police stopped its investigation (What they could have done anyways, hehe!). Later again monkey-man reports started coming from Gaziabad and parts of Haryana but then again investigation led to nothing. 13 years later we are still unable to know what it was all about. What we do know from latest research is that a monkey can do all that a human can do if he is taught to. So stealing diamonds in a planned way is not a big deal but then again no investigation is going on that case in India so I guess we will never get to know what that was.

Till then all we have is some bizarre imagination! Man or monkey? Genetically modified monkey-man ?

There are many, many (Trust me) such cases which come up every now and then in this country. The latest I saw in news was the salt crisis hysteria a month ago when vested interests used the social network to spread a rumor of salt shortage in the eastern parts of India. What next? The panic stricken people bought salt night and day in big( bigger) bags thereby actually creating a shortage. Stop laughing! There’s more. Soon salt prices rocketed and police started acting. Many shopkeepers took advantage of the rumor and hid salt bags to charge people extra and to indulge in black marketing. Thanks to some sane and educated minds who pitched in their views that all this was a farce and urged govt to step in. Police arrested the shopkeepers who took advantage of the situation and in a day or two all of this ended and I could peacefully sprinkle some extra salt in my lemonade. Those mischief creators by the way are still not known who used the social media to give wind to the rumor.

I can go on describing more such incidents like Mumbai beach sea water turning sweet case 2006, Tamil Nadu Vampire scare etc but it will get too long and time consuming. Let us leave it for future blogs. Till then stay alert and don’t believe everything you come across in news or social media. Not all blogs are trustworthy like this too, specially the blogs of congress politicians! Haha ! Be Safe!

P.S All these details are available in the net in trustworthy websites. Every such case is in Wikipedia too so I din't make up anything okay!