Revenge is not justice  

~~Mani Shankar Aiyar

I had just boarded a flight when someone from a television channel called me on the mobile to ask for my reaction to the hanging of Afzal Guru. I did not know till then that he had been strung up to die. I instinctively replied that I felt saddened. It is a comment that is likely to haunt me, for many well-wishers have asked me why I did not hold my tongue or tailor my remark to the popular mood, for it seems that there is national rejoicing at the hubris that has overtaken those who sought to end our democracy in one fell blow on Parliament.

It may have been an instinctive reaction but it reflected my deeply held abhorrence of the death penalty. I had certainly articulated the same position when Nalini was spared the death sentence for her part in the assassination of my friend and patron, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. I had felt relief then that we were not taking a life to punish the taking of a life, even the taking of the life that was the staff of my life; my belief is that all life is infinitely precious, howsoever misused; that to imitate assassination by assassination is to become complicit in assassination.

I had felt the same when I heard of Ajmal Kasab’s hanging, with this one difference — it can be said that Kasab had sought martyrdom when he embarked for Mumbai, and the Indian state was helping him realise his most ardent desire. On the other hand, Afzal Guru sounded resigned to his fate, rather than welcoming it.

Revenge is not justice. For revenge often engenders counter-revenge. That is why so many terrorists are born in the crucible of the injustice they see themselves being subjected to, or believe they have been subjected to — whatever the facts of the case. So, putting them away — for all of their natural life in high security prisons in the “rarest of rare” cases — is a reasoned response to terrorism. But leaving them dangling in the air is almost certain to be fertile breeding ground for more terrorism.

As for the hanging of ordinary murderers — as distinct from ideological murderers — the record seems to show that the death sentence is hardly ever a deterrent. That is why a vast majority of countries, some 139 of the member-states of the United Nations, have abolished the death sentence. They have discovered that murderers, whether ideological, like terrorists, or personal, like killers, tend to be either schizophrenic or psychotic or both, neither being a category that yields to the common fear of retribution, especially final retribution. Even in cogent moments, the psychopath is likely to regard the risk of death in inflicting death as a risk worth taking. Perhaps that explains why, in the United States, where it is state law rather than federal law that prevails, those states that have retained execution tend to have higher murder rates while states that have abolished execution have lower murder rates.

The nexus between awarding the death penalty and deterring crime was discredited centuries ago with the saying that one might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. The origins of that expression lie in 17th-18th century England, where almost every crime was punishable by public hanging — and so the highwayman consoled himself with the profitable thought that if one were going to be hanged anyway for stealing a lamb, one might as well steal the whole sheep. The relationship between death and deterrence has never been established. This explains why our Supreme Court has long held that death may be awarded in only the “rarest of rare” cases.

Except, of course, in Afzal Guru’s case. There, the Supreme Court confirmed that the only evidence against Afzal Guru was “circumstantial”, that is, uncorroborated by other evidence that would link him to the heinous crime. Yet, decided the learned judges, death would be the appropriate condign punishment to salve the “collective conscience of the nation”. Certainly, this was the rarest of rare judgments. Challenging the collective conscience of the nation is an everyday occurrence in a vibrant democracy. It is perhaps the highest duty of the public intellectual. There would have been little human progress without radical challenges to the received wisdom that constitutes the collective conscience of any nation.

But I felt saddened at Afzal Guru’s hanging, not primarily because it might constitute a grave miscarriage of justice but because I am perforce part of a system that considers the taking of human life as “justice”. I am diminished as a human being. For, as John Donne sang centuries ago, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls/ It tolls for thee”.

Note:The writer is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha, express@expressindia.com

Courtesy: The Indian Express