How India is confusing serving justice with revenge
Last evening, my son, who had gone down to play with his friends in the apartment complex, came back home earlier than usual; he looked hassled. A bit of prodding and we discovered he had been bullied and hit by some older boys. The emotional father, immediately got agitated and adviced to return the blows in situations like these. The seven-year-old calmly responded, “Violence can never be a solution.”
Back in 2002, I had the opportunity of travelling to Kashmir to interview terrorists for some documentaries I was making on sponsored terrorism in the Valley. Most of these were young Kashmiri boys who had lost their loved ones and decided to take up the gun to avenge their deaths. Their stories were usually the same, their pain of loss, the anger owing to the violence they were subjected to and the bitterness against a system which failed to bring to justice their culprits was cultivated by elements who wanted to use them for their own ulterior motives.
On one occasion I got to speak to a terrorist who had been arrested for killing two officers who he believed were responsible for the death of his brother. I remember asking him, as we sat in his cell, ‘Was he at peace, now that he had avenged the alleged killers of his brother?’
He refused to look at me, he sat there silently staring at the floor, as I waited for him to answer, and just when I thought he will not speak, he said, “I took my revenge, I should have been at peace, felt proud of fulfilling my promise to my people, but then I saw the son of the man I killed outside, one day, I saw the same hatred in his eyes. In that moment, I realised, I had become what I fought all these years. I don’t think I will ever be at peace.” I felt sorry for the young man, he was a misguided soul, but then maybe that was the price he paid for learning that an eye for an eye turns the whole world blind.
Today as the country stands divided on the hanging of Yakub Memon, it might be considered unpatriotic or unnationalist to even say, that Yakub Memon did not deserve capital punishment.In fact no man or woman deserves capital punishment, no matter how heinous the crime committed. Capital punishment is nothing but a glorified form of revenge by the State, can we let avenging become a way of life, especially when truth and justice itself are relative?
My reasons are not driven by whether Yakub Memon was an innocent man or a pawn in the hands of the political establishment, or even a criminal who paid for his crimes with death.
As a citizen of this country, I would like to rest my faith in the judiciary and believe, despite the many versions of truth that are doing the rounds, the real truth was found and the punishment given was basis that.
My problem is with the death sentence. A society which accepts capital punishment as a justified means of making someone accountable for their crime is not civil. As eminent journalist, Seema Mustafa aptly puts it, “Violence by the state in any form is worse perhaps than by an individual as the state is supposed to be just and protect justice; be compassionate; be ethical and moral; and be larger than the base instincts that often overtake the individual.”
Capital punishment is against the fundamental right to life provided by our Constitution.
How can we promise the people, their right to life and then place exceptions and disclaimers? Can any state justify this? Can revenge really be called justice? Can one type of violence be acceptable and other not?
Now when we have moved on from the death of the “Mumbai serial bombing mastermind” to other news headlines of the day. Maybe we should take sometime to sit back and think, to debate, if death penalty is an acceptable form of punishment?
What we saw unfold in the last few days before and after the hanging of Yakub Memon is scary. The media, the prime time debaters, the so called caretakers of our collective conscience baying for his blood, justifying the hanging; the public being fed the minute-by-minute detail of a man preparing to be killed; TRPs rising as the nation sat glued to their TV sets, convinced that they had avenged the death of the 257 individuals who lost their lives in 1993 bombings; the politicians, who gave it a religious tone and the nationalists who made it a matter of great pride, should feel ashamed for glorifying a killing, even it was a criminal’s.
It is strange that we Indians, stake claim to being the great teachers and practitioners of non violence and still have no qualms in sending people to the gallows, justifying it in the name of serving justice.
I have not lost a dear one in a terror attack, but I have witnessed several terror attacks in Mumbai during my tenure as a journalist there, I have seen death up close, the horror unfold, the tears, the anger, the uncertainty, the fear of being the next victim and also resilience and the will, to keep moving.
I am all for punishment, severe and rigorous punishment, one where you detest your life every single day and repent for your wrongdoing. Death is easy, an escape. You can die as the cruel person you were, give up the will, the need to reform, to start over, to try mend things, to ensure no one else makes the same mistake, again. Justifying the end and never realising that a positive change was possible.
People change, we should always work towards reforming people, no one is a born criminal, they are by products of circumstances - of the society and its failure to provide a just environment.
Capital punishment is like curing the symptom, if one wants to cure a disease, we have to think deeper and look for more human solutions.
The usual argument thrown in is: these criminals live a luxurious life at the cost of the exchequer, the hard earned money of the people. Or that ending their lives is the best way to avoid incidents like IC-814 hijack. I used to believe the same, but give it a thought and you will understand - the problem is not with the convict but our system, which has so many loopholes that it can be easily exploited by anyone with a bit of money and power. If we want to get back at criminals, we have to cut off that feeding pipe first. You won’t need a real noose to make them pay for their misdeeds then.
I can imagine many young men and women, taking an oath to avenge the death of Memon. These are people who have been brought up to believe he is a hero, their hero, who did what he did to avenge the death of his brothers. It is their truth. It doesn’t matter, that many innocents were killed and not the actual killers. It is a never ending loop, one that will end with the death of the last man standing.
The point is, revenge and violence can never be part of any solution. The sooner we learn this, the safer we are.