Justice - Bleak Idealism or a Right worth fighting for?

It slithers from one broken tree branch to the other. The sound of dry leaves breaking under its smooth skin is so faint that it cannot mar the happy delusion of the creature trying to suck out some left out nectar out of a dead flower. The journey of a hopeful bud had to end as the last meal of a creature, unaware of its imminent demise. Whether the snake gets to devour the insect, the insect gets to suck the flower’s nectar, or the flower gets to be plucked by a beautiful dame, one thing is clear – none of this is or can be motivated by the idea of justice. 

Justice is not something that we inherited from nature. It is something that was developed by humans alone, because our consciousness dictates that a civilization without justice will dig its own grave. Further, if your tribe includes only 40-50 people, it is imperative to maintain justice lest there will be no future of that tribe. However, as the size of the tribe increases, so does the pretence of justice. Moreover, the fear of evolution coming to a standstill is also diluted when the count of tribesmen in a civilization increase. If tribe A is not given justice and therefore, ends up perishing, tribe B has no problem with it because they can ensure the evolution of civilization.

However, the reason why justice even came to be is to counter ‘Might is Right’ philosophy. It does not make sense in any way to question whether the weak should get justice or not.  Justice is a concept which was devised only for the weak and the voiceless. If everyone could ‘fight’ for justice, justice as a societal concept would hold no meaning. Then, justice would be a personal issue. It is part of the ‘social contract’ because peace is the only way forward and justice can be ensured only through peace. Implementing justice requires power for which we have police and the government.

Going with the assumption that justice is NOT an inherited concept for humanity but a devised concept to ensure survival and evolution, it is embarrassing that most of us indulge in victim blaming. Once a criminal is nabbed, everyone wants quick fix solution of death – but swift justice can never ever give voice to the voiceless. It just reaffirms the belief that justice is only for the powerful. The only way to get justice is by a vulgar display of power. “These criminals deserve this”

The only thing that this does is dehumanize a group of people. Once, as a society, we agree that ‘Mr. A’ deserves to be killed, we deem him and people like him less than others as humans. A divide like that will just increase the number of categories which aren’t ‘equal’. When America was dealing with school shootings there was a strong voice in PMRC which demonized heavy metal music. Now, once that is accepted as a norm ‘Kids who listen to heavy metal music shoot school children’ it becomes so easy to keep at bay, the idea of Justice for the artists because they are not musicians anymore, they are ‘harbinger of destruction’.

I do not believe that revenge as a personal emotion is a bad thing. The need for revenge is our primal instinct and it cannot be suppressed for an extended period. However, once revenge becomes a collective emotion instead of a personal emotion against the dehumanized, that’s a sure-shot way to anarchy.  

I’m writing this article to show my dissent against the encounter of Vikas Dubey. It should not have happened. The politicians and civilians trying to mask this as some great victory of the police forget that police are there to implement the law. Law is there to ensure justice. And justice through law can come only and ONLY by strength. If you’re weak, you will kill; if you’re strong, you will nab the criminals and break the nexus of crime. Norway is a brilliant example of this. Now, I’m not naïve enough to compare Norway and India. Both are VASTLY different countries, culture and most importantly, have very different populations. But we could learn from Norway’s outlook on crime and criminals. Their jails aren’t the bleak houses of suffering and anguish that so many of our jails are. The idea is not to punish the criminal, it is show them that they can lead a life as rational members of society capable of performing their civic duties, without indulging in crime.

When a criminal is murdered as a criminal, the voice of people who support crime, who support violence gets even stronger. The voice of dissent against the murder of a criminal will always be more violent than the voice of dissent against the murder of a policeman not because the life of the former more important than the latter, but precisely BECAUSE the support for the former, the criminal, ONLY comes from violence, whereas the support for latter, the policemen, comes from a trust in law, order, justice, government and all the tenets of the social contract a peace-loving society must adhere to. Since the support for the policeman does not come from violence, the dissent against their murder will also not take a violent shape.

When we laud the murder of any human being – criminal or otherwise, we’re killing the idea of justice for the weak, justice for the poor. That kind of justice is dependent on the powerful supporting the weak in seeking revenge. That kind of justice will only encourage those who support criminals like Vikas Dubey to create more haters of policeman. I wish I could make this as clear to you, my dear reader, as it is in my mind – I DO NOT support violence, I DO NOT support crime and I BELIEVE that justice through the legal system is the only kind of justice that is worth anything. A criminal justice is an insult to a society that calls itself inclusive, secular, open-minded, peace loving and progressive. 

I want to touch upon one more topic before I close this article. If you’ve stuck around this long, thank you for being tolerant of my opinions mentioned above. A lot of times when people use the word ‘racism’, they end up making some error in using the word in the right sense. Some may link racism to ethnicity, others to religion, even other to language and so on and so forth. And every time someone makes that mistake, they are attacked for not understanding the problem of racism, for diluting it by using the word ‘racism’ frivolously. There may be some things that I’ve said above that might be factually incorrect – maybe Norwegian jails aren’t as great as I make them out to be (my source is a documentary on black metal where noted black metal musicians recorded their albums from a jail cell, successfully), maybe the things that I spoke about tribes is not really the genesis of justice and so on. But as with the ‘frivolous’ use of the word ‘Racism’, I leave you with the following two questions:

1. Are the linguistic technicalities more important than the dissent against discrimination?

2. Are the examples and analogies around the concept of Justice more important than the conversation itself?

Thank You.