American New Thought writer Ernest Holmes said: “To believe in a just law of cause and effect, carrying with it a punishment or a reward, is to believe in righteousness.” India is not just confronted with economic and political challenges but is now facing an unprecedented assault on the belief in the supremacy of law and the adherence to certain basic moral regulation by none other than its own citizenry. It seems as if the nation has lost its moral compass and the law of the jungle prevails. There is no argument required to qualify this depressing assertion. The spate of incidents related to lawlessness and the rape and murder of minor girls in the recent past is testimony to our steep descent into the dark precipice of moral degradation and mobocracy.
If this is not the nadir then what is it?
Some news reports make you recoil and wince in pain and despair. The chilling murder of a toddler in Aligarh as an act of revenge over a loan dispute, an 8-year old girl raped and murdered in Mandwa slum in Bhopal, the brutal gang-rape of minor girl in Kushinagar, a 15-year old girl raped by her teacher in Kanpur, an 11-year old girl raped in Hamirpur and another 4-year old in Jabalpur and 5-year old girl in Ujjain raped without mercy – all establish our acute moral depravity. This sexual anarchy is compounded by growing incidents of lawlessness under the pretext of nationalism and religiosity.
Some of the latest incidents of hate crimes reported immediately after the results of the general elections were declared are: a young Mohammad Qasim is shot at in Begusarai district of Bihar after being identified as a Muslim and being told to go to Pakistan; three people in Seoni are beaten gruesomely on suspicion of carrying beef; a Muslim youth in Delhi’s Jaitpur is subjected to mob violence on purely communal lines; a Latvian national is attacked by local youth in Mathura for refusing to reply to ‘Ram-Ram’ greeting and an eminent gynaecologist and noted author Dr. Arun Gadre is reportedly harassed by a hate mob in New Delhi’s Connaught Place area and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Edward Bond has rightly emphasised that “Violence shapes and obsesses our society and if we do not stop being violent, then we have no future.”
The law was made more stringent but has it helped?
In its bid to stem the growing tide of sexual violence against girls and women, the government of India passed “The Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2018” in August 2018. The Bill amended the IPC, 1860 to increase the minimum punishment for rape of women from seven years to ten years. Rape and gang rape of girls below the age of 12 years will carry minimum imprisonment of 20 years and is extendable to life imprisonment or death. Rape of girls below the age of 16 years is punishable with imprisonment of 20 years or life imprisonment.
Before the introduction of this Bill the government had promulgated the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018. Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 investigation into the rape of a child must be completed within three months. The Ordinance reduced this time period to two months for all rape cases and bars anticipatory bail in cases of rape of minor girls below 16 years of age. Any appeal against a sentence for rape cases must be disposed of within six months.
Regarding hate crimes and mob lynching the Supreme Court of India had directed the Government of India in July last year to “draft new legislation to stop people taking law into own hands…(saying) it has to be curbed with an iron hand…Citizens cannot take law into their hands and cannot become law unto themselves.”
The government had constituted a high level committee under the Union Home Secretary with several senior government functionaries such as the Union Secretary, Department of Justice; Secretary, Department of Legal Affairs; Secretary, Legislative Department; and Secretary, Social Justice and Empowerment as members of the committee, to study and give its recommendations regarding ways and means to curb mob lynching. Some argue that current laws are sufficient to tame this menace and the problem is deeper and more complex to be resolved by new legislation. There are others who want a new law specifically to tackle the problem of lynching say that the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 may not have put an end to caste discrimination, but it helped by acting as a deterrent to casteist violence and prejudice.
There are laws and then there is justice
Aristotle propounded the concept that justice is limited by time and space. What is justice in Rome may not be justice in Athens. Similarly, a man who wins the case in a court of law will say that justice has been served while the person who lost the case may lament his fate and allude that there was a grave miscarriage of justice. Hence the axiom: “Justice should not only be done, but also seen to have been done”. You may have the best (just) laws in the world but if those laws are (to be implemented) at the hands of the unfair, corrupt, biased and incompetent, then the criminal justice system will suffer and honest and law-abiding people will stop having trust in the “system” while the anti-social and rogue elements will be emboldened to continue committing crimes with impunity, knowing fully well that the “system” is rigged in their favor. Justice may exist without law but laws must be made to serve justice. Law without justice is meaningless.
The way demonstrated by the Prophet
Aisha, the wife of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) reported that the Quraish were concerned about a woman from their tribe of Makhzum who had committed theft during the expedition of Victory (of Makkah). They convinced Usama bin Zaid to intercede with the Prophet on her behalf requesting clemency. The Prophet did not like it and said: “Do you intercede in one of the prescribed punishments of Allah?” Later he stood up and addressed the Companions saying: “This (injustice) destroyed those before you that when any one of (high) rank committed theft among them, they spared him, and when any weak one among them committed theft, they inflicted the prescribed punishment upon him. By Him in Whose Hand is my life, even if Fatima, daughter of Muhammad, were to commit theft, I would have cut off her hand.” The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) then commanded that the prescribed punishment should be given to the Makhzumi woman.” Islamic laws are divinely ordained. They need to be implemented without fear or favour. Only then would justice be truly served.