The
juvenile in the Delhi gang rape deserves adult punishment. The probe in Jodhpur
must discount Asaram’s mass following. But justice for the victims alone may
not change the ground reality
The outrage is justified. The
severity of a crime should determine if an underage accused be tried in an
adult or a juvenile court. I am not sure how many delinquents were informed
enough to have factored in their legal impunity, but now that the media has
made it common knowledge, we should push for a law that brands rape an adult
crime. It is possible to cause even death without meaning to. But rape does not
happen accidentally. Whatever his age, a rapist knows what he is doing.
Now if all that happens with
retrospective effect and happens fast enough, we may yet get the juvenile accused
in the December 16 gangrape hanged or shifted from the reformatory to a prison
proper for a suitably longer term. In Jodhpur, if an uninhibited probe finds
Asaram guilty as charged, he should be convicted irrespective of the violence
unleashed on the streets by his followers.
That, we believe, will serve
two purposes: one of justice and the other of deterrence. The first -- justice
-- is a construct in philosophy and there can never be a consensus on what
really constitutes it. Deterrence, on the other hand, rests on the rationale of
negative motivation, of facing the consequence of one’s action.
While I agree that acceptable
standards of justice demand stricter punishment -- a life term or even death --
for the exceptional cruelty perpetrated by the accused in the Delhi gang rape case,
I doubt if even such punishment will have the expected deterrent effect on
potential rapists of that age group and socio-economic bearing.
For negative motivation to work,
one must have one’s faculties at hand to consider the possible consequence of
one’s action. One may fear loss of reputation more than one fears death. Scores
of rape victims, and some rapists when caught, commit suicide. The idea of
being snatched away from the good things of life and one’s loved ones make most
fear long imprisonment. Capital punishment, of course, hits the most primary of
our instincts. But what happens when one has no sense of good and evil? No reputation,
no family, and no life worth caring for?
If you believe this is an
irrelevant argument, I don’t blame you. Nor do I expect you to explore the
underbellies of our big cities and check for yourself the unsettling process of
dehumanisation that goes on. Children, as young as five years, addicted to
drugs. Boys, some born in city ghettos and others sent out from villages,
fending for themselves even before turning eight. No home or family, at least
not functional ones. So routinely abused that many learn to enjoy, or at least
make peace with, sodomy.
We may still reason that not
all such boys turn out to be rapists but we will only delude ourselves. Just
scan the media and see how frequently such kids are finding victims. Remember,
only a fraction of rapes get reported and most victims anyway belong to
socio-economic classes that are rarely entertained at police stations or
considered headline material. Try talking to domestic helps and many will tell
you why they stop sending daughters to school after a certain age and “keep them
locked up at home till they are marriageable”.
Why only women, everyone is a
potential victim here. How many headlines bemoan the fate of young executives
from small towns who were victims of Gurgaon’s infamous share-cab killers who
murdered dozens of unsuspecting passengers for as little as fifty bucks in
their pocket? How many corpses lying in the roadside ditches of Ghaziabad --
robbed, slashed and thrown away by three-wheeler gangs -- make news?
Unfortunately, there is
nothing that deters this wasted lot. What possibly do these ‘delinquents’ have to
lose or care for? If you meet these hollowed addicts, you can tell many of them
will anyway not go on to live very long. When they are not trying to make an
illegal living, they loiter around in bunches, drinking, smoking, snorting and looking
for easy targets. Do they even discriminate between snatching and rape?
I am not even remotely
suggesting that the plight of these youngsters justifies any leniency. Every
single crime needs to be punished. But what do we do when punishment loses its
deterrent effect on its most notorious target group? Do we propose a social ‘cleansing’?
Since last week, I have met
dozens of devotees of Asaram in Gujarat and elsewhere. The top sevaks who run
his many ashrams may have vested interests in assisting the godman in his shady
operations. But what about those crores of devotees who swear by his controversial
teachings and seemingly murky dealings? If he is found guilty, do we expect the
tens of millions of his followers to denounce him and, more importantly, not
fall for another Godman in the future? Will an exemplary expose of one guru act
as a deterrent for such blind cult following that emboldens individuals to
consider themselves above the law?
The problem is far too big
than we are perhaps ready to accept. Given the magnitude of this social rot, amputation
cannot be the only remedy. It demands an internal cure. The government must be made
accountable for thousands of kids who slip through its social safety net long in
tatters. The society needs to deal with the insecurity that makes millions
gravitate to false hope.
We will never be able to forget
what happened in December. We will find some peace if all four surviving
accused are hanged. But let’s not fool ourselves by claiming that such
punishment alone will make women safer.
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