LAW, ETHICS AND JUSTICE

Justice delayed is justice denied, goes the popular cliché. But what about justice misplaced? Higher judiciary has time and again expressed concern at the misuse of the Criminal Procedure Code by clever operators to settle scores, intimidate adversaries, take undue advantage and even corner unpliable Government functionaries. These are times of information revolution and it is difficult to discriminate between use and misuse of law. But that is all the more reason to tread with caution as judicial officers may be misled by the crooks who use some provision of law to falsely implicate soft targets like professionals or working people who have less free time to spare and are thus easily cornered. There is a growing tendency these days to file complaint petition against innocent people and frame them in criminal cases. A case in point is Section 498 A. However, these days other provisions are also misused equally rampantly.

These were earlier more prevalent tactics of village politics where ignorance for the law was high. The irony is that these practices are being adopted in the cities, too, despite efforts to create legal awareness. The basic principle in law is that every person is innocent till proved otherwise. But what is happening is contrary to this spirit. A judicial officer may be easily carried away by the plea of a complainant and take at face value the witnesses produced, taking cognisance under various sections of CrPC. The assumption is that taking cognisance does not tantamount to pronouncement of guilt. But there is a basic issue. The mere issuance of summon by the court is damaging to the framed person and the agony and trauma an innocent person faces is itself a punishment. Then the running about, the search for lawyer and the cost involved, all these add to his woes. Given the weakness of our law of torts, the victims suffers while the person framing him enjoys. Is there a way out?

Reforms are not only about privatisation. And if one area that needs maximum reform it is the law, which still is a vestige of the British Raj that treated Indians as subjects and not citizens. It is time we made the laws more responsive. If the lawmakers are busy with other business, the custodians of law must take the call. Creating legal awareness among citizens is the basic first step. But this has to be strengthened by other steps. The most important step is to sensitise the members of legal profession for being ethical.

 Almost all cases are lodged through lawyers. Even the false cases. If the lawyers can discourage their clients against false cases the problem can be arrested to large extent. A question of professional commitment may arise. But professional commitment cannot overlook unethical conduct. All professions have professional ethics. And the crux of all such ethics is to support the right and discourage the wrong. The problem of our society is falling ethical standards.

Ethical training must be a significant input in legal education with high credit points. The other step is to make legal practitioners understand, like the Chartered Accountants, that client’s interest cannot be above national interest or societal interest. The judicial officers also need to be trained and empowered. Rule of law is more about justice. It is there in the spirit rather than the letter of the law. It must be understood that judgements are more than just reading the law.

THE DEADLIEST SIN

Mahatma Gandhi talked about seven social sins in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925. Those seven sins were wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice and politics without principles. While all these sins are the curse of the present day society more than nine decades down the line, it may not be difficult to identify the deadliest of these.

The seventh one is politics without principles. It is the politics that is at the helm of everything. Though there may be hundreds of definitions about politics they all invariably suggest one thing — politics is ultimately about power. Power to rule, power to govern, power to command. Naturally if this is unprincipled what follows will come out in the form of chaos and disorderliness. This is what made the difference between the order of Gods and Demons, Rama and Ravana, dictators and democrats, despots and leaders. It is unfortunate that the present society is witnessing a lot of politics without principle. Regarding politics without principle Gandhi said that this ultimately would lead to violence and decadence. Politics is the struggle for power and acquiring the authority to make decisions for the large group.

For Gandhi principle was the expression of perfection without which it would not be possible to have a fair and square ruler. It is unfortunate that as the civilisations and the societies are marching ahead the politics is becoming more and more unprincipled. The wheel is turning backwards after coming a full circle as we witness the growing trend towards unprincipled politics which is only and only about concentrating power in one’s own hands. It’s only obvious as the cliché goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Democracies should be more about abdicrats, the liberals who believe in giving power to others. However, the modern democracies today are throwing more and more autocrats.

The big question is how successful are such leaders? In the short run, certainly they succeed. But a well-researched book by Archie Brown, The Myth of the Strong Leader once again demolishes this belief that has time and again been proved to be erroneous. According to the author’s contention, the central misconception that he sets out to expose is the notion that strong leaders who try to concentrate power in their own hands by dominating their colleagues and centralise decision making are successful. Management theories almost always have recommended against this kind of leadership. What happens is that the huge power amassed by an individual leader paves way for important errors at best and disaster and massive bloodshed at worst. What Brown seems to emphasise is that the very notion of strong leader is open to interpretation. Usually strong leaders are those leaders who acquire a charisma.But it is important to understand that charisma itself is a transient quality. Moreover, it is the followers who bestow charisma on the leaders though the person seems to embody the qualities that followers are looking for. But it has to be realised that ultimately it is the credibility that is important and packaging only has limited life, charisma thus is overrated. Gandhi’s credibility led to his long lasting charisma and not vice versa. And credibility comes from principled stand, whether you like it or not.

SELECTIVE LYNCHING: MOB VIOLENCE OR OMINOUS SIGNS?

Who lives if India dies and who dies if India lives — these words of Jawaharlal Nehru spoken decades ago echo even today as communities are being targeted for selective lynching.

If the recent incidents of mob violence are any symptoms, all is not well with the country’s health. From Delhi to Jharkhand, from Kashmir to Kerala we are witnessing violent outbursts of mobs against select individuals and groups on flimsy and sometimes false pretexts. The day the young teenager Junaid was brutally murdered in the train between Delhi and Mathura, another incident happened in Giridih of Jharkhand. These do not seem to be stray incidents of spontaneous mob violence. They may well be part of large devious designs aimed to destroy the social fabric of this great country where different communities, castes, classes and religions had learned to co-exist after bitter experiences. The incidents are pointers that indicate a trend and need to be viewed in a larger perspective. Dismissing them as hate crimes localised to certain regions may be a naïve conclusion.

The point that can be ignored at our own peril is that some sinister forces are working to pit one community against another. It was mob lynching in Jharkhand sometime back and the trigger was that the victims were alleged child lifters. It was mob lynching in Uttar Pradesh and the victims were accused of carrying beef. The list is endless. Pitting community against community, class against class, caste against caste appears to be a diabolic design. It has to be understood that the incidents are not just spontaneous reactions to some provocation. Rather they seem to be a dangerous game plan with oblique motives and executed by those forces who plant agent provocateurs among masses. Inciting people to violence and murder appear to be well orchestrated actions.  Why are we not looking at this angle is rather surprising given the fact that ‘foreign hand’ has a known history in India.

Of course, sometimes these acts are also carried out to settle personal scores. It has happened in the past too. The attack on the police and army personnel in Jammu and Kashmir can also be acts of planned and calculated behaviour camouflaged as mob violence. We can be reminded of what happened some three decades ago in Kolkata when DCP Vinod Mehta was brutally lynched at Garden Reach. A similar incident took place in Bihar in which a mob incited by a scheming Parliamentarian lynched the Gopalganj DMG Krishnaiyyah some two decades ago. Whether it is for personal score or the part of a larger anti-India campaign, the fact remains that these lynchings are not simple acts of mob violence. They are carefully planned acts of murder. It is time to go deep into such incidents and look at them with the critical lens. Sleeper cells can be planted for these acts too. It is time our intelligence agencies examine these seemingly improbable theories because anything that happens occasionally is an accident, but if frequency is beyond reasonable degree it may be a part of a larger conspiracy. These ominous portends are not to be winked over.

We may be reminded of a famous couplet from Iqbal paraphrased below:

Think of the nation o’ ignorant, the trouble is lurking; indications of impending disaster are there is the skies. If you do not take guard you may well perish and your tale may get erased from the books of history.

THE INSECURITY SYNDROME

There is a popular theory of human motivation given by Abraham Maslow that is called the need-hierarchy theory. The theory suggests that human needs can be classified into five categories ranging from the basic physiological ones to the more esoteric higher order ones, the most coveted fifth one being the need for self-actualisation. But with change in times and aspirations, and of course life expectancy, it seems as if there is a need to revisit the hierarchy. Or maybe Maslow had missed a point. Had he been familiar with our ancient Indian literature and scriptural narratives, he would have modified his hypothesis and straight away put sixth need, the highest one, above self-actualisation — the need to live forever. That perhaps is the need that was mentioned by Yuddhistira during his famous Mahabharata dialogue with Yaksha. In the course of the tete-a-tete, Yaksha asks Yuddhistira what is the greatest surprise. The reply that the Pandava king gave was that seeing people long for eternal life despite seeing that death is inevitable is the greatest surprise. The pauranic tales of kings hoping for eternal youth and asking their sons to give their own youth so that the fathers can enjoy eternal life is in similar vein. Even the story of king Shantanu, Bhishma’s father in longing to marry Ganga has similar leanings.

Living forever, then, appears to be highest desire of man. At least the rich and famous people who have wealth and they want to enjoy it forever. The filthy rich of the America are proving that hypothesis right — the desire of man to live forever. In fact, this was the greatest boon that the demon kings in our pauranic tales always wanted from Gods. Be it Hiranyakashyap or Ravana. This is the greatest surprise that though ages after ages it has been proved that this world is a temporary abode, yet people want to live forever. In one of the recent issues of the American weekly, The Week, there is an interesting story of the superrich Americans detailed by journalist Evan Osnos. He talked to a range of the very rich Silicon valley tycoons and East Coast financiers who are all preparing for the apocalypse, the end of the world. Here are some of those plans. Stock piling guns, ammunition, tinned food, gold coins, and even motorcycles. Many have bought rural land and equipped it with water supply systems and electric generators. Some have also kept helicopters and underground bunkers with air filtration system. There is a survival condo project, a 15-story apartment complex built underground in Kansas. It contains 12 apartments, can support 75 people, with enough food and fuel to last five years. This and many more preparations are being made for an impending catastrophe. They have given a strange name to it. The acronym is SHTF that is when the Shit Hits the Fan. So this kind of survival issue is the new obsession of the rich. There are some consultants, too, offering tips to prepare for the end of the world. Death then seems to be the greatest fear, the greatest anxiety and eternal life the greatest desire. That is life, that is maya. If there is one certainty in this world, it is death. Yet people want to defy death. Even if the world ends. The billion or now trillion dollar question is who lives if the world ends.

UNDERSTANDING YOGA

What is yoga? Well, if you ask this question to some body chances are that you will be ridiculed to shame. Remember that popular Orient Fan commercial of yesteryears created by marketing guru late Shunu Sen. The simpleton in the commercial wants to know why to buy Orient Fan. He is told that Orient Fan has PSPO. Poor fellow acknowledges his ignorance about PSPO and all the hell breaks loose. Woh PSPO nahi jaanta! He does not know PSPO? This is how he is ridiculed, implying in no uncertain terms ‘shame on you’. Interestingly someone asked Shunu Sen what is PSPO. The shockingly simple reply was that ‘even I do not know’. Well that is yoga today for the masses. It is the latest fad around the town. With United Nations declaring a World Yoga Day on 21st of June yoga became a globally accepted fashion. We in India celebrated world yoga day, even yoga week at many places during the last few days. But the question remains what is yoga though it may not be the politically correct question. Coming to an answer then may be rather ticklish as yoga today has come to connote many things. It is fashion, it is a form of exercise to keep body in shape, it is a business, too, for quite a few smart operators and, of course, it is the band wagon on which to jump or else you are left behind. But all these apart, yoga is a much deeper concept which very few understand. Yoga is a science based on psychobiology. Yoga is a philosophy of life. Yoga is a psychological state. And above all yoga is the path to communion with the ultimate reality, the way to realise your real self. Media campaigns and popular discourses have made yoga appear as a series of techniques that can keep your physical and physiological health in right shape. It may be true to a certain extent. But not for all practitioners of yoga. Yoga is a science, an art and a practice. But most importantly yoga is the technique of mental fitness. Its aim is to achieve mental fitness or mind control. And through mind control to arrive at fitness of internal physiological mechanisms and get total health. Total health is not the way it is commonly understood. Total health is a holistic concept that encompasses a complete mind body synchronisation. The mind body conundrum is the cause of most of our problems. Yoga tends to resolve this by training the mind first. And then through the mind it controls bodily mechanisms by impacting the endocrine systems, the nervous system and the vascular system. The three are connected and interdependent. It is this aspect of yoga that has to be understood if its real objective is to be realised. According to Shree Aurobindo yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. It aims to reach the spiritual through the ritual motions of the bodily postures, ultimately leading to the communion with the divine. This is achieved through complete subjugation of the human personal will that is mind driven. To control the mind is crucial. But it is not all. Once mind is reined, the human being is ready to change his thought process and arrives at equanimity that is advocated in the Gita.