The ‘rights industry’

Sambit Patra, the voluble Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman, in a recent newspaper article refers to “the human rights industry” (my emphasis), which he said made Yakub Memon look like a “prisoner of conscience”. His choice of words is telling: for people like Mr Patra, people who fight for human rights are part of an “industry”. That echoes Narendra Modi’s jibe of “five-star activists”.

During a television debate I took part in the other day, this kind of abusive labelling (for really that’s what it is), cropped up often. For the hardliners in our society, “activist” has become a dirty word: activists are responsible, according to these hardliners, for all the ills of our society — delaying projects, objecting to development, obstructing justice, etc. Actually, without activists, the world would be a sorrier place — environmental concerns would be brushed aside; poor people would be displaced without compensation; people would be hanged without an appeal.

In the ongoing debate on the death penalty, Yakub Memon is really nothing but a distraction. Yet, at the same time, we must look at why the carrying out of his death sentence caused so much discussion. First of all, there was the undeniable fact that Memon had already spent 22 years in jail, and jail authorities said that his behaviour was exemplary: if you are looking for an illustration of the ability of the justice system to reform people, this was a shining one. Then there was the disagreement between two Supreme Court judges at the last minute, so a larger bench had to be constituted.

That larger bench sat and discussed the case in an unprecedented past-midnight hearing, and the decision to hang Memon was taken barely two hours before the deed was done. Juxtapose this with the simultaneous news that the Supreme Court had spared Rajiv Gandhi’s killers from the noose, and you have enough dissonance in Memon’s case.

Was Yakub Memon guilty? Yes. Did he deserve the ultimate sentence? Yes. Were Rajiv Gandhi’s killers guilty? Yes. Did they deserve the ultimate sentence? Yes. Were the many murderers in death row guilty beyond doubt of “rarest of rare” crimes, deserving of the ultimate sentence? Yes. Why weren’t they carried out? Because the Supreme Court decided that there was an inordinate delay between their sentencing and the carrying out of their sentence. Isn’t 22 years long enough? Is justice, then, even-handed in our country?

If you want more examples of our skewed justice system, here they are. After the 1993 Mumbai blasts in which 257 people died, Memon and 10 others were sentenced to death and nearly 90 were given other sentences. But before these blasts, there were the Mumbai anti-Muslim riots in which more than 900 people were killed. How many people were given death sentences? None. How many were given life sentences? None. How many were given long sentences? None. In fact, only three, yes three people were convicted, and each was given only a year in jail. If you protest against the obvious inequity that these figures represent, you are labelled an anti-national member of the activist industry.

You don’t have to argue that Yakub Memon was innocent to draw attention to other glaring inequities in the dispensing of justice. What has happened in the Malegaon and Ajmer cases where Hindu “terrorists” were involved? Nothing. Why was Ujjwal Nikam, the public prosecutor in the Mumbai blast case, made a hero while Rohini Salian, the public prosecutor in the Malegaon case, dropped from the team? When thousands of Sikhs were killed by Hindu mobs in Delhi in 1984, and thousands of Muslims were killed by Hindu mobs in Gujarat in 2002, how many of the killers have been prosecuted by the state? The answer is as near zero as possible.

Activists who point this out are no less patriotic than the hardliners, who now find loudspeakers everywhere to broadcast their views. In fact, and I want to emphasise this, the activists are more patriotic, because they want India to be a just society.

A society where a terrorist is a terrorist whether he is Hindu or Muslim. Where a killer is a killer, whatever his name. Where a murderer is a murderer, whether he is rich or poor. That’s what is a given in a just society. To want that for your country is not being anti-national, it is being very, very pro-national.

The debate on the death penalty has got sidelined in these arguments, so much so that someone like Shashi Tharoor, who spoke strongly against it, was dubbed unpatriotic! For those whose minds move very slowly like unoiled wheels, let us repeat that being against the death penalty is not being a supporter of terrorism. I know I am labouring the point, but subtlety is lost on the trolls who now control all the buttons.

Ask yourself why capital punishment has been discarded in almost all developed countries like Europe and Britain. The reason is that years of research have shown that the ultimate deterrent is no deterrent at all to those who kill. Someone driven to murder, either in cold blood or on sudden impulse, does not think of consequences, while the pathological killer is hardly aware of right or wrong. As for the terrorist, he wants to die, spurred on by a deluded sense of martyrdom. Don’t we read about suicide bombers every day?

The arguments against capital punishment, on the other hand, are compelling. The first is the moral question of whether the state has the right to take away life when it cannot give life. Also, should the state, whose duty is to be a moral exemplar, descend to the level of a killer to extract retribution, or should it not give the killer long years in jail to repent and reform?

Finally, and most importantly, there have been well-documented cases, in the US, especially of the wrong man being sent to the gallows. When that happens, do you say sorry to the corpse? In India, there’s yet another reason to jettison the death penalty: the large majority of those who pay the ultimate price for their crimes are poor and illiterate, and thus unable to hire the best legal brains unlike the well off. Do we want justice in our country openly favouring the wealthy?

The debate about capital punishment is too important to get enmeshed in emotion or in extraneous considerations of caste and creed. That debate must be logical and reasoned, and it must begin now.

The writer is a senior journalist