The state vs The truth
I tried very hard to find a word to a feeling, but failed. I don’t know what it is called but I can assure that it’s not a pleasant experience. Just imagine as a child, if on one fine Sunday morning your parents promise you to take you to have an utterly delicious bowl of ice cream that you were craving for since long. You think and imagine it for the whole day, but in the evening, for some reason, the plan gets cancelled and you end up eating some homemade sweet. Likewise, the new school bag that was promised to you, the summer trip for which you were almost prepared or the bike deal with your dad that came very close, gets cancelled. Doesn’t it hit hard? You craved for a thing; it gets promised to you; you start imagining it as your own; you start living that life, but alas, at the end, all the imagination and no materialization. It feels terribly hard, when you face the ground reality, when you don’t receive what you thought so passionately.
I felt this.
As a child, my favorite subject in school was Social Studies. The teacher taught us the great history of our nation; taught us about towering figures who built a strong, sustainable and a solid democratic system in India, where in every citizen could dwell happily. The teacher told us that ours is the largest constitution which is very meticulously designed. The teacher ensured us, that our law and order promises justice to all the people of India. If truth be told, I used to feel elated listening to such features and I grew up imagining that this was all true and our system indeed delivers justice to all the citizens. But alas, it was all a sham. Now as a grown up, I feel the same as I felt after that uneaten utterly delicious bowl of ice cream that I craved for earlier. My imagination did not manifest and I feel so sulky. I grew up only to see India of my aspirations instilled in me by my teacher which turned out to be false.
I have no humility left. I strongly state that the judiciary in India is nothing but an under performing institution which has not been and cannot be reformed or re-framed. Indian Judiciary is nothing short of a museum. The establishment of the system, the founding fathers of the constitution, the earlier upholders of truth and justice are the only things worth admiring in this museum, and like any other museum, no other components are useful in contemporary time. After close to seventy years of independence, the third pillar of our democracy is still crippled. The guilty walks out freely and the poor walks in the courts daily. Then on what grounds do we broaden our chest and baselessly argue that ‘All are equal before the law in our nation’. This is sheer nonsense. The law that may condemn a taxi driver may not condemn a film star; a daily wage worker may be locked up in jail for theft, but a businessman might be set free despite a bigger theft. The law that punishes a rikshawwala may not necessarily punish a Rolls-Royce wala. The sections of the Indian Penal Code may be differently written for a rapist residing in slum area and a rapist residing in a corporate house. There must be separate courts and separate judgments for a murderer living in say, lower parel of Mumbai and a murderer living in the lower house of the Parliament.
The courts in India have rather become a hang out place for a chosen few. A number of big lawyers consider themselves superior to the law and order system. They walk in the court rooms and loiter around the lobbies of Supreme Court as freely as if in their golf clubs. The law firms on the other hand have their own monopoly. There doesn’t seem to be a major difference or a major cultural change in the Indian judiciary. Gandhiji had in his autobiography; ‘My Experiments with truth’ portrayed the barristers of those times. He has written about Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, ace barrister in Mumbai who was a big name, who happened to be a charismatic figure not only in the Bombay High Court but also in the Congress. In fact, the Oscar winning movie ‘Gandhi’ by Richard Attenborough beautifully depicts, how the Congress party then, was a platform for the posh, well suited, cigar smoking, rich barristers to discuss ideas and frame policies. One thing is very clear and logical- the Judiciary in India is the most reluctant institution as far as change is concerned. Because nothing has changed, everything is pretty much the same. After Independence our literacy rate rose from 12% to 74.04%. The life expectancy rate grew from 32 years to 65 years. Railways, education, irrigation, transportation, everything flourished in India with the passage of time. However, with the third pillar of our democracy, things have only worsened with time. Be it during emergency, or be it with any high profile case, justice has not been delivered in its true spirit. You don’t win cases in courts based on your good merit but upon which senior counsel you hire. A number of alleged criminals would hire Sham Kethmalani (name changed, just a little), and then things would become like a bed of roses for them. And I am not even getting into the number of cases pending in our courts, along with some bizarre examples where the judgements are delivered not after days, weeks, months, years, decades but centuries (Google it).
I think we have been betrayed, either by our Social Studies’ teacher who taught us wrong stuff or the present system that doesn’t function how it is suppose to. Finally, I would merely wish that instead of chest thumping and singing cheers of our system, please take a moment and look around. Just acknowledge the defect once. We don’t need to rebel, we need not boycott any institution, but as least we can acknowledge that there is a rotten system in place and hence we create some room for improvement. Because ultimately what we wish for is a better India, where future generation gets their bowl of ice cream that is promised to them and they do not feel what I felt. It’s a bad feeling.
PS: I could have been less harsh while drafting this piece. Many might come up and say that justice has been done and people in power are punished, and I accept that, it’s completely true. Our Judiciary is not completely collapsed and it does deliver landmark judgments, but no amount of such exceptions can compensate with the pain, sufferings or agony that common people of our country have to undergo everyday outside and inside the courts.