LIFE IN INDIA IS ALL ABOUT CONNECTIONS

By Swapan Dasgupta

Judged by the lax standards of India where human life tends to be woefully cheap, the twin blasts in Boston that led to four deaths and many more injured, may have seemed relatively trivial. True, there was considerable admiration for the local police and the federal authorities that pursued the investigations with understated rigour and their success in identifying and apprehending the two unlikely perpetrators of the blasts, but this was offset by disagreeable comments that America “had it coming.” How the spectators of the Boston Marathon were responsible for the problems Moscow has with Chechnya, is a different matter altogether and unlikely to unsettle the pre-conceived theories of those who are relentless in putting their own spin on the so-called ‘roots of terrorism’.

President George W. Bush may well be the target of fashionable derision but it can scarcely be denied that his emphasis on Homeland Security has now become a bi-partisan goal, from which even the relatively more liberal President Obama dare not depart.

Compare this with the farce that was witnessed in India earlier this week over the sentencing of the perpetrators and facilitators of the devastating serial Bombay blasts of March 1992 that killed nearly 250 people and left countless others permanently disabled. The Supreme Court this week, accorded the film star Sanjay Dutt an extra month of freedom to surrender before the Mumbai. The ostensible reason was to allow the Bollywood star a little more time to complete his various shooting engagements, a move that will give a lot of respite to many film producers who had sunk in a great deal of money in films starring Dutt.

Not surprisingly, this generosity by the apex court didn’t go down too well with the great unwashed. It is a cruel fact of life that there isn’t enough justice to go round the world. However, conceding the element of iniquity in the administration of the law, there was outrage over the belief that class bias could be so openly and blatantly upheld. There may be sympathy for the film producers who stood to make whopping losses if Dutt was packed off to jail immediately, but there was little appreciation of the fact that a convicted criminal was being shown extra consideration, not to attend a sick relative or a moping pet dog, but to make some extra money.

True, the outrage over the leniency shown to Dutt resulted in some others convicted in the same conspiracy also getting some extra time to be with their families. But what I found interesting was the nonchalance with which India’s liberals and even representatives of the ruling Congress Party argued for all-round lenience. It was almost made out that some people were being punished for some youthful indiscretion that may have included stealing mangoes from orchards belonging to others. That Dutt and the others had been sentenced for their involvement in a case that resulted in a bloodbath was quietly forgotten. Equally forgotten was the fact that Dutt wasn’t a victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he knew exactly what he was doing in helping the underworld smuggle deadly weapons to wage against India. Sanjay Dutt was convicted under the Arms Act for possessing illegal weapons. In reality, his offence was more serious, almost treasonable. By modifying the sentence to suit his shooting schedules, the law displayed utter contempt for those who died in the blasts. There is generosity for those who sided with the terrorists and little concern for those who were victims of terror.

The Supreme Court doesn’t set the terms of the political discourse. As such, it cannot be blamed for the onrush of contrived sympathy for those who were convicted and still insist they were innocent. But it can be said that the show of indulgence has created the conditions for viewing the blasts of 1993 as a conjunctural misdemeanour that was now history. From an avowed position of ‘zero tolerance’ of terrorism, the liberal discourse is shifting to a forget and forgive approach. At this rate, Dawood Ibrahim may as well surrender and then approach the court to be given time to settle business affairs that haven unattended after two decades of absence from India. Maybe a Katju-type person may even oblige him and take into account the fact that he has no bank loan, speaks Urdu and probably loathes Narendra Modi.

I am not being facetious. Last week, I read in the papers that one S.M.A. Kazmi, said to be a journalist, who has been charged with involvement in the attack on an Israeli diplomat by Iranian terrorists two years ago, has used his bail period to start an Urdu newspaper that is ironically called  Qaumi Salamati (national security). I am not prejudging either the verdict of the court or the quality of the prosecution’s case. What I found revealing was that the inaugural function of Kazmi’s media venture was attended by the Chief Minister of Delhi, the Chairperson of the Minorities Commission and leaders of at least two political parties. What interests me is that a person charged with having links with terror groups that targets the diplomat of a friendly country, can secure political insurance with such ease.

In Boston, two blasts reaffirm the determination to stamp out terrorism; in India, life is all about connections.

Sunday Pioneer, April 21, 2103

PARDON CRY SMACKS OF LAW FOR PRIVILEGED

By Swapan Dasgupta

The British Empire, it has been suggested by at least one historian, was built on the principle of “Ornamentalism”—an innovative euphemism for pomp, splendour and pageantry. When it came to rewarding the distinguished men (women rarely featured) who served the Empire, the authorities were more than mindful that India is extremely status-conscious. One of the perquisites of loyalty, apart from Knighthoods and Rai Bahadur/ Khan Bahadur titles, was the privilege of being exempted from personal appearance in the civil courts.

Independent India has often made a fetish of repudiating the legacy of Empire. There is a sneer that invariably accompanies the invocation of the ‘colonial legacy’, despite the endurance of Lord Macaulay’s Indian Penal Code. In practice, however, our present-day rulers appear unwilling to dispense with the more iniquitous facets of Empire, particularly when it comes to privileges for the well-connected and the loyal.

Nothing highlights this more than the contrived outrage in rarefied circles of Delhi and Mumbai over the conviction of actor Sanjay Dutt under the Arms Act by the Supreme Court and his consequent five-year jail sentence (of which he has to serve some 42 months).

That many Bollywood producers whose films starring Sanjay are at a midway stage will be deeply upset by the apex court judgment is understandable. There is also likely to be considerable sympathy for his family and the deep embarrassment to his sister who represents a Mumbai constituency for the ruling Congress Party in the Lok Sabha. In addition, there are those who lament the misfortune that has hit the son of Sunil Dutt and Nargis, both highly regarded public figures. The case of Sanjay Dutt is indeed tragic.

Appreciating and sympathising with a personal tragedy is one thing but extending it to the realms of public policy is altogether different. This crucial distinction, plus the principle of ‘equality before law’ appears to have escaped the understanding of stalwarts such as Press Council chairman Justice Markandeya Katju and some other political and personal friends of Sanjay. With his penchant from going from the sublime, Katju has even suggested that Sanjay’s stellar role in popularising Gandhi-giri through a popular Bollywood film should be taken into consideration in judging the quantum of punishment. Sections of the political class have cited Katju’s pseudo-judicial opinion to argue for a pardon.

And the Law Minister Ashwini Kumar who, strictly speaking should not be commenting on individual cases, has let it be known that the Governor of Maharashtra K. Sankaranarayan “will use his discretionary power when there will be an appeal to him. He has the power to pardon”. Since the Governor is a political appointee who has served the Congress Party well in the past, the Law Minister’s use of the term “will” (as reported in Indian Express of March 23) assumes enormous significance. There is an inescapable suggestion that a pardon for Sanjay Dutt is pre-determined.

The law, as Mr Bumble famously said, “is an ass”. It may also be unmindful of the “quality of mercy”; but the scales of justice are held blindfolded. There can’t be one standard for Sanjay Dutt and another for the others convicted in the same case. If Sanjay is to be spared the ordeal of serving time in jail, a corresponding degree of generosity must be the norm for the others, including the 10 who have been awarded life imprisonment and Yakub Memon who is to hang.  

It is important to recall the magnitude of Sanjay’s offence. He is not being punished because he happens to be a star and the son of famous parents. His offence is grave because he used his privileged position to arrange a safe venue for a cache of arms and explosives that had been received from Pakistan by the underworld to organise the serial blasts in March 1993 that killed 257 innocent people and seriously injured another 713. What Sanjay did was not merely brandish an AK-56 assault rifle and a 9mm revolver before a mirror and pretend he was Rambo. He directly facilitated a massacre of monumental proportions, an offence that was no less serious than the massacre by Pakistan-trained terrorists on November 26, 2008.

In fairness, as the Public Prosecutor has pointed out, Sanjay should have been prosecuted under the stringent TADA. Instead, the CBI, for reasons that don’t need too much probing, dropped the charges under TADA and prosecuted him under the Arms Act where conviction involves a lesser quantum of punishment. Now that the punishment has been sanctioned by the highest court, there is a clamour to spare him all further punishment.

In 1994, shortly after Sunjay had first been arrested for his role as a facilitator in the Dawood-organised act of terrorism, I met Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray who told me ominously of an impending “civil war” in India. Having heard him out, I gently asked him why, in that case, was he pleading for leniency for Sanjay. In his inimitable style, Thackeray retorted: “What that boy needs is three tight slaps.”

In a normal case of truancy, three tight slaps delivered by the Tiger himself may have done the trick. But Sanjay wasn’t guilty of bunking school or whistling at a passing girl. He knowingly participated in the logistics of mass murder. The Establishment may see this as akin to rash driving, but are we obliged to forget? 

Sunday Pioneer, March 24, 2013