Rage, as a form of violence, often blurs the line between personal and political, individual and collective. Rahul Raj, in his mid-twenties, had wanted two things. He wanted to kill Raj Thackeray; he also wanted the attention of the media and the police commissioner. He was carrying a loaded gun, which he fired randomly a few times, apart from trying to strangle the conductor of the bus he had ‘hijacked’. So, after a few warnings, the police shot and killed him. It is up to the Maharashtra police now to justify this extreme measure. Would it have been too risky to simply injure or overpower him in order to take away his weapon? Several inquiries into the incident have been promised, but the primary account of what happened in that Mumbai bus will remain the police’s version, supplemented by fragments from the panicking witnesses. That is always what happens with successful police ‘encounters’. Inquiries are necessarily post facto, and post mortem.

The violent unreason of the young man’s anger is, in this case, part of a larger and longer history of dangerous unreason. Mr Thackeray, the man Raj wanted to kill, and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena have embarked on a course of violent chauvinism in their state, directed against north Indians (and particularly people from Bihar). This has gravely destabilized law and order in both Maharashtra and Bihar. While in Patna, Raj had not taken part in the prolonged unrest going on in the state against the MNS’s attacks on jobseekers from Bihar. But before leaving for Mumbai, he did mention to his father the mysterious death of Pawan Mahato, the boy from Bihar who was found dead on the tracks in Mumbai. Most of Bihar, including its political leaders across rival parties, continue to see this incident as demanding the highest order of judicial and political attention from the Centre. That protest and concern have now become indistinguishable from Bihar’s outrage against the shooting of Raj. So, it would be wrong to see Raj’s action as a sudden eruption of violence provoked by mysterious, internal compulsions. Whatever the justification of the police’s arbitrary action against this, a complex chain of responsibility, and of cause and effect, links Raj to a violence that is much larger and systemic than the anger of a random young man. His desire to kill and the decision to kill him are two moments in the same history of violence.