Kasab, the world came to call him, “the butcher”: butcher not because he shot dead 55 women, men and children, Hindu and Muslim at short range with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, but because it denoted his underprivileged southern Punjab caste. For millions of Indians, the man caught on closed circuit television cameras as he walked through the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus on the night of November 26, 2008, became the face of evil. The images don’t tell the story, though; at least not the important one — the story of how banal his evil was.

The man with the Kalashnikov didn’t kill because he wanted to change the world, or sought revenge or fame or money or even something resembling a cause. He killed because spilling blood was the only thing in a fifth-rate, inconsequential life that held out some prospect of power and agency and, as bizarre as it sounds, a life of some dignity.

Read Here – The Hindu