The score is 2-1, the cynics say.
Kasab and Afzal Guru to one side.
Yakub Memon to the other side.
The courts, the pre-ordained
referee.
The game of terror to what the fight
against terrorism seems to have been reduced to is
on.
And there’s a full house, so justice
be damned.
There is no doubt about the role
played by these three accused persons in the separate terror acts that rocked
India . They needed to be brought to
book. The problem is with the manner in which it was brought about in the case
of Afzal Guru and today, Yakub Memon.
Hitler wanted Germans to turn in
Jews. That was the law. It was therefore legal to snitch on a Jew hiding
somewhere. You would be declared a law-abiding citizen if you ensured there was
one Jew less in your locality. The Gestapo would laud you, the local court would
back your act.
Is law an instrument to follow
blindly? Isn’t its efficacy determined by its interpretation? Can’t say, the
law-abiding Germans said after it was all over for them in 1945: We were only
following orders.
The murder of Jews was a legal act,
as far as they were concerned.
The Obama administration, we are
told, thought it would be upholding the law against terror if it used unmanned
drones to kill American citizens suspected of terrorist
links.
The Indian State was also upholding the law by
executing Yakub Memon on his 54th
birthday.
Some time in the future we will know
if terrorism was dealt a deathly blow by Yakub’s execution, whether death
penalty is a violation of human rights, whether Yakub was promised immunity and
was eventually cheated out of it, whether he deserved the death warrant, whether
the issue of the warrant while passing the test of the law, as the Supreme Court
noted, also passed the test of justice.
Meanwhile, we will hear voices, lots
of voices, all voices of protest which, if we didn’t know better, would make
Yakub seem actually innocent. So, what’s the issue?
I hear a susurrus of lament that the
law is about conforming to the detailed instructions of a State edict, that it
has nothing to do with justice. They say that the law deals with evidence and
not necessarily the truth. They say that it is a contest between evidence and
fact. The winning side argues the evidence that could be proved in court. Not
necessarily the facts. And when a case results in a judgment, it is said the
purpose of truth has been served. But then, we are told that fact is objectively
real, while truth must conform to fact. In which case, how can law be said to
have served the purpose of fact or truth, when both are distinct in character
with evidence, the only variable the sentiment-free law is capable of dealing
with?
In the 1940s in Germany , loyal
Germans saw a Jew hiding in a closet, reported to the police. The police picked
up the Jew. The courts said there was clear evidence the German did see the Jew
hiding in the closet and reported him and that it was as per law. The law, or
the process of the law, did not give enough incentive to the German to think if
reporting on a Jew – which would eventually lead to his/her murder – was right
or wrong. The German was not expected to pause to explore any personal feelings
for the Jew or consider, for a moment, whether the propaganda was true that the
Jew who ran a clinic in the day and taught music in the evening was an evil
person. The German did not have to wonder if the law was bad in taste, if it was
undemocratic, if it was the product of a fascist agenda, if it was a gross
miscarriage of justice.
Theoretically, these arguments arise
out of a paradox that has befuddled man ever since King Charles signed the Magna
Carta and set up the courts to enforce law, monitor its process and arbiter
disputes arising out of it. The paradox runs something like this -- Murder
requires death. It is part of the fundamental reciprocity that is the law. If
there is no death, there is no murder, therefore no law. You need to prove there
is a death and that the death was caused by murder. Only then, mind you, only
then, law comes into existence. Else, not.
You murder someone, you bring law
into existence. You spread a terror act, you allow law to breathe. You commit a
rape, arson, indulge in mayhem, whatever, you have given law a form and a shape
and an existence.
But you do not commit any of these
acts, but merely think about them, agitate over them in your mind, you do not
attract the law and you are still innocent. Never mind if such thinking
determines your entire approach to your life and your attitude to the world or
drives your ideological positions – that’s what human nature is all about and
history is full of them. You are still innocent in the eyes of the law.
By this logic, we are all innocent
until we commit any act which attracts the law. Whether you are a voyeur who is
thinking of having forced sex with a lady sitting opposite you in the metro;
whether the medical student who would love to buy the leaked question paper;
whether the upper caste government clerk who is angered by the promotion of a
lower caste colleague thanks to the reservation policy; whether the abused wife
who would like to murder her husband; whether the disillusioned youth who keeps
thinking of blowing up a locality or even a town; whether a raped woman who
would want to get hold of a weapon and kill all males; whether a bureaucrat in a
defence organization who had heard of making money bartering secrets.
You can’t be neutral on a moving
train. I’m reminded of the title of the memoirs of the flamboyant American
anti-war activist, Howard Zinn. The words ring true. We are on a moving train.
We are humans and like humans we all have bad thoughts, some of us commit bad
acts. Yet, as humans, as citizens of this government, as members of our
community, as participants in our government, in fast as a nation, we are all
moving in the same direction. Often, the State would want us also to be obedient
in moving in the same direction. If obedience is a strong word, it would want us
to be at least neutral, by not taking a stand either way. Even then, its purpose
is achieved. The question is, are we content remaining neutral?
All this verbosity can be summed up
in a sentence actually: Law is everything but human. Change it if it is wrong.
Change the law-makers if they are wrong. The noise over Yakub Memon, howsoever
justified, makes no difference if it remains just that – a noise.
As Louis Brandeis, the first Jew
appointed as a justice of the US Supreme Court and untiring social justice
activist, remarked: If we desire respect for the law we must first make it
respectable.