Samar Halarnkar - How India's justice system is giving in to the mob
In the centre of the counter revolution stood the judiciary. Unlike administrative acts, which rest on considerations of convenience and expediency, judicial decisions rest on law, that is on right and wrong, and they always enjoy the limelight of publicity. Law is perhaps the most pernicious of all weapons in political struggles, precisely because of the halo that surrounds the concepts of right and justice.. Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism p 27
I have, for the
record, never been to Pakistan. I am acutely aware of how that nation's
bleed-them-with-a-thousand-cuts policy works, how it has ended bleeding them
instead and in the process changed their founding essence. I suppose that
automatically makes me a nationalist.
But, here’s the thing:
I am very keen to meet Pakistanis, and the few I have met make me eager to go
there some day. Indeed, there is no country in the world I am keener to visit.
My wife's old homeland lies there, and someday we will take up the offer made
by a hospitable Pakistani to visit the old home towns of my in-laws and listen
to qawwalis in the moonlight – under armed guard, of course. By now, you are
thinking, this man is anti-national. File a sedition case.
This line of reasoning
may sound ridiculous – to put it mildly – but that is how paranoid, insecure
and angry people think, and there is every evidence Indians are beginning to
nurture the same bizarre version of nationalism that has consumed Pakistan. As
this process progresses, history and the world beyond tell us, the first thing
to be sacrificed is the rule of law. The mob becomes the law.
Courting sedition: That is why a court in
lush, prosperous Kodagu – a former princely state now integrated into Karnataka
– will, instead of throwing it out, hear a petition on Saturday filed by a local lawyer,
accusing former Congress MP and actor Ramya (real name, Divya Spandana) of
sedition for, well, liking Pakistanis and their hospitality.
That is why Amnesty
International India finds itself being investigated for sedition charges merely
because it hosted an event where some in the audience shouted Kashmiri freedom
slogans – never mind that the law and various interpretations of it emphasise
that slogans can never be seditious unless accompanied by the threat of
violence.
Rahul Pandita: Kashmiri Pandits Don’t Have To Be Flag-Bearers Of The Indian State
That is why, earlier this week, when a mob in Palwal, Haryana, attacked a van suspected of carrying beef, the police intervened, and instead of checking if the meat was really beef, buried it because the mob demanded it, then stepped back to let them burn the van. As for the three men in the van – two of them Muslim – they were arrested, of course, and sent to jail. That is why all manner of recent atrocities have ended with the victims of criminality ending up as the accused.
Rahul Pandita: Kashmiri Pandits Don’t Have To Be Flag-Bearers Of The Indian State
That is why, earlier this week, when a mob in Palwal, Haryana, attacked a van suspected of carrying beef, the police intervened, and instead of checking if the meat was really beef, buried it because the mob demanded it, then stepped back to let them burn the van. As for the three men in the van – two of them Muslim – they were arrested, of course, and sent to jail. That is why all manner of recent atrocities have ended with the victims of criminality ending up as the accused.
Mob rule a slippery
slope: When the mob dictates
how the law will be implemented or discarded, societies start down a slippery
slope. When the mob's motives are religion and/or nationalism, the moral high
ground so vacated is almost impossible to regain.
We see that in
Pakistan, where the police and judges, as a matter of routine, let off
murderers who kill minorities on imagined blasphemies of Islam, slit the
throats of their own daughters and sisters for what they believe to be the act
of dishonouring families by exercising choice in marriage or life.
Further West, Turkey's
rationality is fast slipping away, as a paranoid president uses vague and
dubious laws to arrest journalists, judges and anyone who might not agree with
him. This week in Turkey, a court ordered special issues of
a socialist newspaper seized, the telecommunications regulator blocked access
to two news agency websites and various editors and reporters were arrested and
detained on either vague terrorism charges or held with no declared reason.
To our east, Thailand
uses its lèse majesté (injured majesty) law to imprison anyone considered
to have insulted the king, which is why a man who insulted the king’s dog
faces imprisonment (15 years), as does a taxi driver whose mocking of the king
was recorded on a passenger's mobile phone, and an activist who dared cite
research to question if a battle led by the king's 16th-century forefather had
taken place.
In supposedly secular
France, wearing a certain kind of clothing – let’s say it, Islamic clothing –
is becoming illegal. The latest unreal case unfolded this week on a beach in Nice when armed police
forced a woman to, well, unclothe, by removing the layer of her burkini that
covered her head. In another case, a mother with children was made to take off
her headscarf, as other beach-goers shouted “go home” and applauded the police.
As internet memes pointed out, the French have no problem with a nun's habit or
a full-body wetsuit (they might want to take inspiration from Scotland and Canada, where the police have approved the hijab as part of
optional official uniform).
On the edge of
anarchy: There are a few things
in common in the cases and countries I mentioned. First, these are all supposed
to be democracies with varying degrees of freedom. Second, these democracies
are witnessing increasingly bizarre and illogical interpretations of
criminality. Third, for whatever reason, the bizarreness is correlated with a
decline in the democratic process. Fourth, that decline is clearly hastened as
the justice system wilts in the face of the mob and its paranoia.
In India, it is rare
that the police and courts side with the law and against the government of the
day. Thus far, this has been made amply clear in places and among people on the
fringes of what we could now describe as India’s “collective conscience”, which
the Supreme Court once described as a reason to hang a man whose conviction appeared
riddled with doubts. In the North East, Chhattisgarh and Kashmir, the Centre
has almost never allowed the prosecution of security forces for murder,
violating fundamental rights and other laws of the land.
When this collective
conscience enters government policy, anarchy is just a step away. The Congress
began this policy of appeasing the mob – opening the gates of the Babri Masjid,
legislating its way past the rights of Shah Bano and millions of Muslim women –
and dragged India to a point where the gates of hate can be forced open by
anyone with an agenda and a backing mob.
Appeasing the mob: With the advent of the
Bharatiya Janata Party, majoritarian mob rule is accelerating most visibly in
the proliferation of vigilante organisations cloaked in religious rationale,
from fighting “love jihad” to protecting the holy cow. Far from cracking down
and sending a message that mob rule cannot prevail, police, courts and
governments are increasingly either looking the other way or providing official
sanction to the mob as the Maharashtra government has done by issuing volunteers with identity cards to monitor the beef ban.
More than 2,000 applications, a large number from Hindutva groups, have poured in.
No good can come from
Maharashtra's sanction to official vigilantism, which comes after the state
tried to ban the consumption of beef, a move struck down by the high court. So,
India is poised on that slippery slope. The courts will indicate, in the coming
days, if they intend to hold firm or join the slide into the cesspit of
paranoid nationalism. As for me, I'm off to befriend a Pakistani.
http://scroll.in/article/814991/how-indias-justice-system-is-giving-in-to-the-mob
see also
The full,
11,350-word text of Neha Dixit's five-part investigation "Operation
#BabyLift" on how the Sangh Parivar flouted every Indian and international
law on child right to traffic 31 young tribal girls from Assam to Punjab and
Gujarat to ‘Hinduise’ them.
RSS Declared Unlawful: Text of GOI communique February 4, 1948
Smruti Koppikar - Maharashtra CM has no will to pursue my father’s murder
Petition in Supreme Court Accuses NIA of Soft-Pedaling Hindutva Terror Cases
After Malegaon, Ajmer Blast Case Faces Allegations of Sabotage // Witnesses turn hostile in Samjhauta case
Smruti Koppikar - Maharashtra CM has no will to pursue my father’s murder
Petition in Supreme Court Accuses NIA of Soft-Pedaling Hindutva Terror Cases
After Malegaon, Ajmer Blast Case Faces Allegations of Sabotage // Witnesses turn hostile in Samjhauta case
Ulema now demand expulsion of Taslima Nasrin
Terrifying implications of the Staines judgement
Murder of TP Chandrasekharan 2012
Terrifying implications of the Staines judgement
Murder of TP Chandrasekharan 2012
