If we criminalise mourning and grief, if we criminalise pleas for mercy, do we not dehumanise ourselves? I ask this question in the wake of a disturbing discourse that has followed Yakub Memon’s hanging.
The Tripura Governor, Tathagata Roy, suggested that the throng of people who attended Yakub Memon’s funeral were “potential terrorists” who should be kept under suspicion and surveillance. Sakshi Maharaj, the Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament, added that those who attended the funeral were “anti-national’ and should “go to Pakistan.” On social media, I noticed people wondering why a “mob” had turned up for the funeral of a “terrorist.” Several BJP leaders have suggested that those who pleaded for mercy for Yakub Memon should also be sent to Pakistan. And, of course, we are told that the police and intelligence are monitoring and suppressing any expression of protest, anger or grief at Memon’s hanging.
Why should silent, tearful, grieving people be branded as a mob or as terrorists? Why, in fact, are so many shedding tears for Yakub Memon? Why does his hanging evoke the kind of pain and sense of betrayal and loss – to Muslims and also to many others who cherish democratic values – that the demolition of the Babri Masjid or the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom did?
They are grieving for someone, a man who betrayed his brother, and brought himself and his family back to India from safety and luxury in the lap of the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan – only to have his trust in India’s systems betrayed. A man who claimed his innocence till the very end, and against whom the tenuous evidence (statements of an approver and two retracted confessions of co-accused) pointed at best to violations of the Arms Act – charges that have not invited the death penalty in the case of others like Sanjay Dutt.
And above all, they are grieving for a country in which the scales of justice have forgotten even to maintain a pretence of balance. A country where the mastermind of the 1992-'93 communal riots gets a state funeral and a memorial, while those very riots took Memon away from the life of a successful Chartered Accountant to a brutal death on a hangman’s noose.
The rule of law
The Sri Krishna Commission report had documented voluminous evidence nailing the role of Bal Thackeray and many others in the communal build-up and organised attacks on Muslims in Mumbai 1992-'93. The Commission had expressed agreement with the assessment of “Mahesh Narain Singh who was heading the team of investigators who investigated into the serial bomb blasts case”, emphasising that “the serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993.”
And yet, many news channels used the television podium to harangue the petitioners for mercy for Yakub Memon, asking them to show “respect for the rule of law.”
Why does “rule of law” become a long rope, endlessly flexible, when it comes to a Maya Kodnani or a Babu Bajrangi, but a rigid noose for Afzal Guru or Yakub Memon? How can “rule of law” give Babu Bajrangi – who was caught on camera boasting of having “felt like Maharana Pratap” after killing women and children in the 2002 Gujarat carnage – long periods of bail to attend a niece’s wedding or other routine family engagements? How can the same “rule of law” deny bail to Maruti workers for two and a half years – even though there is no substantial evidence against them?
Why does “rule of law” acquit all those accused in the Hashimpura massacre of Muslims or the massacre of oppressed castes and Muslims at Bathani Tola and Laxmanpur Bathe, feeling no pressure to appease the “collective conscience”? Why does the same “rule of law” that decides that the eyewitness testimony of massacre survivors isn’t enough even to convict a single person, decide that far flimsier evidence of peripheral involvement is enough to execute Afzal Guru or Yakub Memon to feed the rapacious creature called “collective conscience”? Why does the same “rule of law” that puts a noose around the necks of the Delhi December 16 rapists, fail even to drag the equally heinous rapists of Thangjam Manorama or the women of Kunan Poshpora, into a courtroom?
Media double standards
Many media channels present programmes on some terror cases with a high-pitched patriotic rhetoric and provocative, polarising hashtags. But why haven’t these channels shown the same unrelenting patriotic zeal and righteous indignation when terror cases are systematically sabotaged by investigative and prosecution agencies?
Why doesn’t the “nation want to know” that Rohini Salian, Public Prosecutor in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case, has gone public about the National Investigative Agency pressuring her to go soft on the case, citing “orders from above” after May 2014? Why not ask who gave those orders from above – in the very month that Narendra Modi became Prime Minister? In June 2014, soon after the Modi government took over, 14 key witnesses in the 2007 Ajmer blasts case turned hostile. One of them, Randhir Singh, defected from the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) to join the BJP, and was rewarded with a minister’s post in the BJP government of Jharkhand. Why doesn’t the “nation want to know” about this terrorism-cover-up scam openly and shamelessly perpetrated by the country’s ruling party?
The Jammu and Kashmir police claim to have lost the file of the 2004 mosque blast case – where is the shrill rhetoric and outrage that we would ordinarily hear on the fire-breathing channels about how a terrorism case file could be lost?
We are forced to conclude that not only investigative agencies, but much of the media too treat terror cases differently based on the identity of the accused. Those in power who are sabotaging the Sanghi terror cases to protect outfits and individuals close to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and BJP are not branded as anti-national.
It isn’t enough to blame “the system” for this state of affairs. If the scales of justice are to regain balance, we the citizens of the country must reject those who sow the seeds of hatred in the fertile soil of our own prejudices. We must instead fertilise the soil of our minds with empathy and solidarity with the Dalits, the minorities, the Kashmiris, the poor. We must share their pain at these double standards.
We must struggle to do away with the death penalty, and strive for justice for all the communal and caste massacres and terror cases irrespective of the political and social affiliation of the perpetrators.
Kavita Krishnan is a politburo member of the CPI(ML).
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The Tripura Governor, Tathagata Roy, suggested that the throng of people who attended Yakub Memon’s funeral were “potential terrorists” who should be kept under suspicion and surveillance. Sakshi Maharaj, the Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament, added that those who attended the funeral were “anti-national’ and should “go to Pakistan.” On social media, I noticed people wondering why a “mob” had turned up for the funeral of a “terrorist.” Several BJP leaders have suggested that those who pleaded for mercy for Yakub Memon should also be sent to Pakistan. And, of course, we are told that the police and intelligence are monitoring and suppressing any expression of protest, anger or grief at Memon’s hanging.
Why should silent, tearful, grieving people be branded as a mob or as terrorists? Why, in fact, are so many shedding tears for Yakub Memon? Why does his hanging evoke the kind of pain and sense of betrayal and loss – to Muslims and also to many others who cherish democratic values – that the demolition of the Babri Masjid or the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom did?
They are grieving for someone, a man who betrayed his brother, and brought himself and his family back to India from safety and luxury in the lap of the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan – only to have his trust in India’s systems betrayed. A man who claimed his innocence till the very end, and against whom the tenuous evidence (statements of an approver and two retracted confessions of co-accused) pointed at best to violations of the Arms Act – charges that have not invited the death penalty in the case of others like Sanjay Dutt.
And above all, they are grieving for a country in which the scales of justice have forgotten even to maintain a pretence of balance. A country where the mastermind of the 1992-'93 communal riots gets a state funeral and a memorial, while those very riots took Memon away from the life of a successful Chartered Accountant to a brutal death on a hangman’s noose.
The rule of law
The Sri Krishna Commission report had documented voluminous evidence nailing the role of Bal Thackeray and many others in the communal build-up and organised attacks on Muslims in Mumbai 1992-'93. The Commission had expressed agreement with the assessment of “Mahesh Narain Singh who was heading the team of investigators who investigated into the serial bomb blasts case”, emphasising that “the serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993.”
And yet, many news channels used the television podium to harangue the petitioners for mercy for Yakub Memon, asking them to show “respect for the rule of law.”
Why does “rule of law” become a long rope, endlessly flexible, when it comes to a Maya Kodnani or a Babu Bajrangi, but a rigid noose for Afzal Guru or Yakub Memon? How can “rule of law” give Babu Bajrangi – who was caught on camera boasting of having “felt like Maharana Pratap” after killing women and children in the 2002 Gujarat carnage – long periods of bail to attend a niece’s wedding or other routine family engagements? How can the same “rule of law” deny bail to Maruti workers for two and a half years – even though there is no substantial evidence against them?
Why does “rule of law” acquit all those accused in the Hashimpura massacre of Muslims or the massacre of oppressed castes and Muslims at Bathani Tola and Laxmanpur Bathe, feeling no pressure to appease the “collective conscience”? Why does the same “rule of law” that decides that the eyewitness testimony of massacre survivors isn’t enough even to convict a single person, decide that far flimsier evidence of peripheral involvement is enough to execute Afzal Guru or Yakub Memon to feed the rapacious creature called “collective conscience”? Why does the same “rule of law” that puts a noose around the necks of the Delhi December 16 rapists, fail even to drag the equally heinous rapists of Thangjam Manorama or the women of Kunan Poshpora, into a courtroom?
Media double standards
Many media channels present programmes on some terror cases with a high-pitched patriotic rhetoric and provocative, polarising hashtags. But why haven’t these channels shown the same unrelenting patriotic zeal and righteous indignation when terror cases are systematically sabotaged by investigative and prosecution agencies?
Why doesn’t the “nation want to know” that Rohini Salian, Public Prosecutor in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case, has gone public about the National Investigative Agency pressuring her to go soft on the case, citing “orders from above” after May 2014? Why not ask who gave those orders from above – in the very month that Narendra Modi became Prime Minister? In June 2014, soon after the Modi government took over, 14 key witnesses in the 2007 Ajmer blasts case turned hostile. One of them, Randhir Singh, defected from the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) to join the BJP, and was rewarded with a minister’s post in the BJP government of Jharkhand. Why doesn’t the “nation want to know” about this terrorism-cover-up scam openly and shamelessly perpetrated by the country’s ruling party?
The Jammu and Kashmir police claim to have lost the file of the 2004 mosque blast case – where is the shrill rhetoric and outrage that we would ordinarily hear on the fire-breathing channels about how a terrorism case file could be lost?
We are forced to conclude that not only investigative agencies, but much of the media too treat terror cases differently based on the identity of the accused. Those in power who are sabotaging the Sanghi terror cases to protect outfits and individuals close to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and BJP are not branded as anti-national.
It isn’t enough to blame “the system” for this state of affairs. If the scales of justice are to regain balance, we the citizens of the country must reject those who sow the seeds of hatred in the fertile soil of our own prejudices. We must instead fertilise the soil of our minds with empathy and solidarity with the Dalits, the minorities, the Kashmiris, the poor. We must share their pain at these double standards.
We must struggle to do away with the death penalty, and strive for justice for all the communal and caste massacres and terror cases irrespective of the political and social affiliation of the perpetrators.
Kavita Krishnan is a politburo member of the CPI(ML).