“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared.” – Albert Camus
On 9th February 2013 the “collective conscience of the society” was satisfied when Afzal Guru was hanged by the Indian state without even informing his family. According to the police he was involved in the attack on Indian Parliament on December 2001. The evidence presented before the court was his phone number on a piece of paper which was claimed to be recovered from the body of one of the persons who took part in the attack. Even as the courts admitted that the evidence against him was weak and circumstantial his death sentence was upheld on the pretext of satisfying “the collective conscience of the society”. So a question naturally arises, what is this holy grail of collective conscience of the society which can be just stated to justify capital punishment.
Our consciousness about society starts to take shape through textbooks where we read about India’s glorious past and present and is constantly reminded of the fact that we should be proud to live in the world’s largest democracy. The questions regarding under-nourishment and poverty remain out of bounds of the syllabus. Our consciousness is then taken to the next stage when we watch debates on news channels and read newspapers. Through this course of attaining enlightenment we are slowly impregnated with the idea that “the collective conscience of the people” living in Kashmir, North East and in some parts of Central India is not compatible with the principles of Indian democracy and the model of development that is advertised around us.
This is perhaps because the consciousness of these people isn’t influenced by textbooks, state propaganda or corporate media but rather shaped by poverty and oppression. The “collective conscience” that was taken into consideration to award the death sentence was shaped, distorted, manipulated and acknowledged by the state itself. Even the politburo member of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Mr. Sitaram Yechuri looked too satisfied with the ‘law taking its own course’ though ‘justice’ has been delayed but at last served while completely ignoring the fact that death penalty only curbs one’s vision into the specificity of a certain incident, thus totally ignores its socio-economic and political context. He along with all other ”patriotic” parliamentary political leaders actually unmasked their own double-facade though- keen to establish the ”reign of law” where law itself is working as a repressive tool. In fact, everyone of them including the parliamentary ” Marxists” subscribed and fetishized the superiority of Indian ruling class who uses these kind of punishment as a projection of their power; like some goons flexing their muscles and in this course of work, intimidating the weak to retaliate. Its mere existentialism that a weak entity or a person denied of his/her rights, who is continuously smashed under the heavy boot of state machinery will react to prove his existence. Whatever demands these leaders or their parties can made to project themselves as secular, its actually a form violence, a form of religious fundamentalism.
Protest against the death punishment of Afzal Guru: National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations (NCHRO) demands the government of India to abolish the death punishment, as it against human rights. Article 5 of the Universal Declaration states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
In the recent past the whole country was in the grip of a jingoistic hysteria when two soldiers of the Indian Army was killed by Pakistani troopers and one of them was beheaded. “The collective conscience of the people” called for war against Pakistan with the right wing opposition parties losing no time to spew their venom on the neighboring state. One of the opposition leaders even demanded that 10 heads of enemies should be cut off in order to take revenge. Seeing the country engulf itself in such hysteria one cannot help but remind oneself as to why the country is not enraged with the fact that more number of jawans commit suicide than falling victims to the bullets of the enemy. “The collective conscience of the society” seems to take a backseat here. No questions are asked, no eyebrows are raised the state continues to function as usual.
It would be wrong if one concludes that this kind of “collective conscience” is unique to the Indian subcontinent. If one looks at the past century, one will invariably notice that it is the most violent century of human history. But still we are at ease with our “civilized” society. Wars and genocides of this century are justified by manipulating “the conscience of the society”. Hence it doesn’t appear to be violent to the believers of this “false conscience.”
False consciousness is rather a prerequisite to justify an inhuman act. In case of Afzal Guru, he was handed an unfair trial right from the beginning. He was tagged as a terrorist by the media even before the trial started. He was denied a lawyer of his choice in the lower court. The all-important SIM card which according to the police had connected the accused in the case on 4th December 2001 was found to be operational only from 6th December 2001. The laptop which was shown as strong evidence against Afzal Guru, according to the police contained a few fake Identity cards, passes which the terrorists used to gain access and a video clip of the Parliament. It is as if Afzal Guru deleted everything else and kept only these incriminating evidences so that the police can charge him. As fabricated and false evidences were piled up against him the conspiracy of the state was exposed when Supreme Court was forced to acquit two other co accused, S.A.R. Geelani and Navjot Sandhu, for lack of evidence. For eight years his petition to the President was kept pending and it was finally rejected on 3rd February 2013 but was not declared publicly. According to the guidelines of the Supreme Court, his right to the judicial review of President’s rejection of his petition was denied.
Finally, on the morning of 9th February 2013, the state in all secrecy hanged him in Tihar jail. Thus the mockery of justice reached a new level justified by “the collective conscience of the society”. It is obvious that the government at the centre have to regain their ground which they have lost owing to corruption charges and misgovernance. The only way it can regain its ground is to revive the jingoistic hysteria which it has done in an efficient manner by hanging Afzal Guru. The state power clearly projected that it will not show any consideration about the ”collective conscience” of the Kashmiri people thriving for their freedom ; they will have to live under the constant threat of state-promoted annihilation,rape and torture and they have to forget about their ”collective conscience” in front of the craftily knitted dominant ”Indian conscience” . Conceptually, it again reveals that this ”Indian mindset” exactly is not considering Kashmiri people as fellow Indians but actually as a subjugated community; a disobedient slave.
Whereas justice has to be served on the basis of freedom and people’s emancipation; this propagation of ”collective conscience of society” by the Indian ruling class is acting in opposite.
Its not only oppressing the dominated communities but on the contrary, is trying to build a cage of ”civic nationalism’ around the Indians; trying to dictate that if you are an Indian, you have to support death penalty, you have to support the torture by the Indian state on the oppressed nationalities; to be Indian is to accept the mass killings in Kashmir and the rapes in Manipur and the fake encounter in Chattisgarh and so on.
140 countries of the world have abolished death penalty but India seems to cling on to it. If one is familiar with history one cannot help but notice that during the rise of fascism death penalty was used as a tool to terrorize a population and suppress any kind of dissent. Looking at Afzal Guru’s case one can see a similar trend. It should be remembered that fascism is not only measured by the number it kills but rather by the way it kills. Afzal Guru thus became one of the thousands of victims of the fake “collective conscience of the society” in which we live where an inhuman act is more preferred over democracy and equality, which brought Hitler in power in Germany.
“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared.” – Albert Camus 